Hamas’ government media office said the IDF was “deliberately suffocating” Palestinians in “narrow, inhumane areas” that are “not prepared for human life.”
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian aid, said that the orders are changing “almost by the hour” and that people were leaving behind toothbrushes and shoelaces as they fled newly declared conflict zones.
“Sometimes the military action that follows has been within 30 minutes of the order given,” she told NBC News. “There’s a lot of confusion and panic.”
The IDF did not directly address a request for comment from NBC News on the limited time people have to respond to evacuation orders, but acknowledged that they have issued evacuation notices, published information on the adjusted humanitarian area, to provide residents and humanitarian organizations "an option to evacuate from the area to ensure their personal safety."
The U.N. says evacuation orders issued since the current conflict began have displaced 90% of Gaza’s residents, often multiple times.
Doaa Qeita, a mother of three children, told NBC News that her family had been moved “at least seven times” since the war began. She said they had moved from Gaza City to Khan Younis to Rafah and back to Khan Younis.
Two weeks ago, they received another order to leave.
“She was born on Jan. 10,” Qeita says of her 7-month-old baby. “This is the seventh time she has been displaced in seven months.”
The IDF issued a new evacuation order for Palestinians in Khan Younis this month, as well as eastern Deir Al Balah, an area it had not invaded before. The IDF said in a statement that it distributed flyers in both areas, explaining that they had become dangerous “due to significant acts of terrorism,” adding that militants had regularly been firing rockets from Khan Younis.
Ever-blurrier lines between safe zones and conflict zones have led to casualties.
Last week, at least seven people — two children and five women — were killed in an Israeli tank strike on the Bani Suhaila district of Khan Younis, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense, which provides emergency services in the enclave.
Eyewitness Ahamed Samour said he and others believed they had been in a safe zone as families ate lunch together. He added that “there isn’t any ‘safe zone’ so far in the entirety of Gaza.”
Another UNWRA spokesperson, Adnan Abu Hasna, said that the displaced were being treated like “chess stones” and that congested safe zones were subject to diseases spreading widely across the population, such as hepatitis C.
In response to a request from NBC News on the challenges of delivering humanitarian aid the impact of crowded conditions on basic services, sanitation and the spread of disease, the IDF said “the State of Israel is committed to supporting the UN and the international community in addressing logistical challenges related to the collection and distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.”
The IDF cited a water desalination facility in Khan Younis powered by electricity from Isreal, and that they had allowed for the entry of over 2 million doses of the polio vaccine.
The IDF's statement stands in contrast with reports from aid agencies in Gaza. The U.N. said a 10-month-old baby has been partially paralyzed after having contracted polio, which had been largely eradicated in Gaza for 25 years but is now in danger of surging because of the dire sanitation crisis. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said this month that hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of contracting polio.
In August, the U.N. was forced to halt its aid operations in Gaza after Israel issued evacuation orders for Deir El-Balah, and the World Food Program suspended operations after one of its vehicles was hit by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.
A consortium of international aid agencies warned that humanitarian operations in Gaza are on the brink of collapse due to displacement, restrictions and ongoing hostilities which are preventing the distribution of aid and services, including a report from the Norweigan Refugee Council that 12 water reservoirs have become inaccessible following a relocation notice, "which will result in a 70% reduction of water available for domestic purposes."
On a phone call Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Joe Biden stressed the urgency of reaching a cease-fire and hostage release deal. He also spoke with the leaders of Qatar and Egypt as negotiators seeking a cease-fire deal met in Cairo.
An Israeli official told NBC News that Israeli diplomats will head to Cairo for further talks despite intensified fighting between Israel and Hezbollah over the Lebanese-Israeli border Sunday and concerns that the latest regional escalation could stifle an elusive deal. Hezbollah is an ally of Hamas, and both are backed by Iran.
H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington, D.C., said he believes the cease-fire negotiations were “already in pieces” before the latest round of strikes.
“I don’t think those negotiations were really going anywhere anyway,” he told NBC News.
Israel’s monthslong assault on the enclave has killed more than 40,000 people and injured 90,000, according to local health officials; the numbers do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The offensive was launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, in which 1,200 people, 790 of them civilians, were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
