On Friday, the Israel military ordered over a million civilians living in the northern half of Gaza to evacuate within 24 hours. Israeli forces have been massing at the border, and tanks and infantry units carried out the first ground attacks inside Gaza earlier on Friday.
Map of the Gaza Strip showing the Israeli ordered evacuation zone in the north.
The United Nations spokesperson said Israel's call for Gaza civilians to leave was impossible to carry out “without devastating humanitarian consequences.” The comments prompted a rebuke from Israel which said the U.N. should condemn Hamas and support Israel's right to self-defence.
The evacuation area includes the enclave’s biggest metropolitan area, Gaza City, which is home to over 645,000 people. The Israeli military told civilians to “evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields.”
The order did not tell Gazans where they should go, and refugee camps in the south of the enclave are already much more crowded than those in the north.
According to projected population figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 1.19 million people live in the region now under evacuation order.
Map of the population density in the Gaza Strip, showing the population density in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah. Approximately 1,190,000 inhabitants live in the Israeli-ordered evacuation zone. There are two refugee camps within the evacuation zone, and a cluster of camps just south of the zone, near Deir al-Balah.
With power supplies cut and food and water in the Palestinian enclave running short after a week of retaliatory air strikes and a full Israeli blockade, the U.N. said Gaza's civilians were in an impossible situation.
“The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How are 1.1 million people supposed to move across a densely populated warzone in less than 24 hours?” U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths wrote on social media.
In a post on social media site X Friday evening, the Israeli Defense Forces said “The IDF will protect the people of Israel. Hamas indiscriminately slaughtered innocent Israeli civilians. Now Hamas is hiding behind the people in Gaza. That's why we're asking them to move.”
There are only two major roads leading from northern Gaza to the evacuation zone. Israel announced overnight that it would guarantee the safety of Gazans fleeing the area on those roads until 4:00 p.m. Saturday. A perennial shortage of cars and dwindling fuel supplies under the blockade make it difficult for Gazans to travel.
Both crossing points out of Gaza have been closed since Israel’s blockade.
Map of the Gaza Strip road network, highlighting the two major roads connecting the evacuation zone in the north to the south of the Strip – the coastal road that runs along the Mediterranean Sea, and the Salah Al Deen and Al Karameh roads that converge into one.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday local health authorities in Gaza had informed it that it was impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients.
The WHO said hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip were overflowing, while the two major hospitals in the north had exceeded their combined 760-bed capacity.
Map showing that most of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip are in the north, within the evacuation zone. They include al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital, and the Beit Hanoun hospital that was damaged in an airstrike.
In defiance of the Israeli order, mosques in Gaza broadcast messages telling residents to stay put on Friday.
Hamas, which controls the territory, vowed to fight until the last drop of blood. The Israeli military said a significant number of Gazans had begun moving southwards “to save themselves”.
Several thousand residents could be seen on roads heading towards the evacuation zone on Friday, but it was impossible to tell their numbers. Many other Gazans said they would not go.
Read more: Mapping the conflict in Israel and Gaza.