Gaza becoming ‘hellhole’, warns UN

The UN has warned that Gaza is descending into a “hellhole”, as the healthcare system crumbles and crucial supplies run out ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive.

Israeli authorities gave 1.1m people living in the north of Gaza a 24 hour period, ending late on Friday night, to leave “for their own safety” before the launch of a presumed ground invasion.

The UN and aid organisations have warned that the deadline is “impossible” and will lead to vast civilian harm.

The UN’s Palestinian Refugee Agency said that the call to leave was “horrendous” and would “push people in Gaza into the abyss”.

“The scale and speed of the unfolding humanitarian crisis is bone-chilling. Gaza is fast becoming a hell hole and is on the brink of collapse,” the body said.

Queues of vehicles formed outside Gaza City on Friday, with video footage showing civilians crammed into, and even on top of cars, and some leaving on donkey carts and others perched on the back of trucks.

But not all Palestinians are making the journey, with one man living in the north of Gaza vowing that he would “die standing” rather than leave his home.

Mahmoud Shalabi, Senior Programme Manager at Medical Aid for Palestinians, said that “nowhere in Gaza was safe”.

“There are people who have started fleeing their homes, it’s true, but there are also people who are refusing to do so,” he said in a voice note shared with i, which he said may be his last.

“I am one of those. I am not leaving my home… I understand the safety concerns, I understand how it’s going to affect many people, but I will not leave. I will die standing. My existence in itself on this land is resistance.”

He added: “I will not back down from becoming a Palestinian.”

The World Health Organisation warned that “there are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support” and that forcing them to move was a “death sentence.”

Water, food and power are running out in Gaza as Israel continues its siege on the Strip, in response to the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas last Saturday.

Some Palestinian civilians are digging their own wells in a desperate bid to find water.

One man, who lives in Gaza and works for Islamic Relief, said he and his family cannot find drinking water and had resorted to using an unsafe home filtration unit to survive. He has just two days worth of food left in his home but says that leaving the house to get “increasingly rare” supplies would put him in “great danger”.

The Strip’s healthcare system is at “breaking point”, consultants told i, with operating theatres full, generators at risk of running out and wounded patients lying in hospital corridors.

Aid workers said they were being forced to buy what supplies they could from local markets and deliver them to hospitals.

Prior to the Israeli evacuation announcement, Mr Shalabi said: “The Ministry of Health have indicated that they’re running out of bed capacity for ICUs, the theatres and inside in patient wards. It’s a really bad situation we are living in right now. What I know that the Ministry have told the world we are feeling to meet the needs and the health system is collapsing.”

Calls are growing for humanitarian corridors to be set up in Gaza, with charity Action Aid saying this would allow “relief items in, or even people out, safe in the knowledge that they would not be targeted.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed that the US was involved in discussions with Israel and “leading international organisations” to establish “safe areas” in Gaza. However, he claimed that efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza were being “complicated” by Hamas “using innocent civilians as human shields”.

What is the context of the conflict?

The long unresolved conflict between Israel and Palestinians originated over who should own the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea after the creation of the state of Israel following the Second World War.

Decades of conflict have ensued, and Israel has now militarily occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, for half a century.

Hamas, a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood formed in the late 80s, has frequently taken up arms against the Israeli occupation and illegal settlements on occupied land – and advocates for the destruction of Israel. The militants operate out of the Gaza Strip, a tiny strip of land home to some two million Palestinians, which they have ruled since 2006 despite being regarded by many countries as a terrorist group.

Years of violent clashes over Israel’s blockade of Gaza and attempts at de-escalation came ahead of the violence on Saturday. Tensions, already at boiling point, have ratcheted up further since Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in December, at the head of a fractious coalition that includes ultra-nationalists and Jewish supremacists.

As it launched its surprise assault on Saturday, Hamas cited increased Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, as well as the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem, the world’s third-holiest site for Muslims, by ultranationalist Jewish settlers.

The most immediate trigger for Saturday’s assault was an escalating conflict over weeks of protests and riots by Palestinians against Israel’s forces.

The IDF had accused Hamas of orchestrating “violent riots for purposes of harming Israeli security forces” – while medics accused the IDF of deliberately shooting civilian protesters in the ankle.