Israel ‘weaponized’ humanitarian measures in Gaza as tool of mass displacement: Report
A new report has revealed that the Israeli regime’s evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing war in the besieged territory have led to the widespread displacement of Palestinians as well as “genocidal acts” against them.
According to a report by Forensic Architecture, a research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London, published on Wednesday, the Israeli military has “weaponized” humanitarian measures such as evacuation orders and safe zones as a tool to push civilians into areas of active Israeli military operations.
The report went on to say that instead of protecting lives, the employment of such measures has facilitated the forced transfer and mass displacement of Palestinians and contributed to the killings of civilians throughout Gaza.
“Rather than ‘humanitarian acts’ used as preventative measures for the safeguarding of civilian life, Israel has exercised a form of ‘humanitarian violence’, in concert with and in support of its broader genocidal actions,” it said.
UNRWA says almost 1.7 million people (nearly 80 per cent of the population) have been displaced across the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
The 80-page report further noted that such measures frequently contained inconsistencies and led to confusion, resulting in Israel’s bombardment of designated safe zones in Gaza.
The outcome of these measures has been the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians, over 70 percent of them women and children, with thousands more missing, and tens of thousands more civilians wounded, it said.
The significant civilian fatality “has been exacerbated by unparalleled and catastrophic levels of infrastructural destruction and agricultural damage, and the systematic targeting of vital civilian structures, including hospitals, schools, religious and cultural heritage sites, bakeries, and homes,” the report added.
The Israeli regime is trying to ‘deport the majority of the civilian population en masse’ as part of its plan to ‘permanently alter’ the composition of Gaza’s population, a UN expert has warned.
It also stated that despite the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the Israeli regime over the Gaza genocide in January, the occupying regime has persisted in forcibly removing Palestinians from their homes and denying them essential supplies, thus violating the court’s directive.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 31,000 Palestinians and injured more than 72,000 others.
The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
