On Saturday morning, a message was posted on social media by the Israeli army’s Arab spokesman, warning people living in the ‘D5’ area in northern Gaza to move south. D5 is a square on the grid overlaid on the maps of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It is a block that is split into several dozen smaller areas.
The message, the latest in a series, read: “The IDF is operating with great force against the terrorist organizations and will continue to do so for a long time. The designated area, including shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone. The area must be immediately evacuated via Salah al-Din Road to the humanitarian area.”
A map is included with a large yellow arrow pointing from block D5 to southern Gaza. Salah al-Din Road is the main north-south route. The message does not promise a quick return to the places where people have lived, an area pulverized by a year of repeated Israeli attacks. The gist of the message is that the IDF will use great force “for a long time.” In other words, don’t expect to come back anytime soon.
The humanitarian area designated by Israel in the message is al-Mawasi, previously an agricultural area on the coast near Rafah. It is overcrowded and no safer than many other parts of Gaza. BBC Verify has tracked at least 18 airstrikes on the area.
Hamas has sent its own messages to the 400,000 people left in northern Gaza, an area that was once the urban heart of the Gaza Strip with a population of 1.4 million. Hamas tells them not to move. The south, they are told, is just as dangerous. In addition, Hamas warns them that they will not be allowed back.
Many people seem to be staying put, despite Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments. As I went to an area overlooking northern Gaza, I heard explosions and saw columns of smoke rising. The intensity reminded me of the first months of the war.
Some people who have remained in northern Gaza while so many others have already fled south are doing so to stay with vulnerable relatives. Others come from families with ties to Hamas. According to the laws of war, this does not automatically make them belligerent.
One tactic used over the past year by civilians who want to avoid IDF operations without taking their chances in Gaza’s overcrowded and dangerous south is to move elsewhere in the north, for example from Beit Hanoun to Gaza City, while the IDF is active near their homes or shelters. When the army moves on, they return.
The IDF is trying to prevent this, say BBC colleagues who have daily contact with Palestinians in Gaza. It channels families moving in only one direction, via Salah al-Din, the main road to the south.
Israel does not allow journalists to enter Gaza to report on the war, except on short, rare and closely monitored trips with the IDF. The Palestinian journalists who were there on October 7 are still doing courageous work. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 128 Palestinian media workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. In northern Gaza, since Israel went on the offensive again, they have been filming panicked families as they flee, often with small children helping by carrying oversized backpacks.
One of them broadcast a short interview with a woman named Manar al-Bayar, who was running down the street with a toddler. As she half-walked, half-ran from the Jabalia refugee camp, she said that “they told us we had five minutes to leave the Fallujah school. Where are we going? Killings are taking place in southern Gaza. they shoot people. Where are we going, O God?
The journey is tough. Sometimes, Palestinians in Gaza say, people on the road are shot at by the IDF. It insists that Israeli soldiers adhere to strict rules that respect international humanitarian law.
But the head of the Palestinian Medical Assistance Protection Unit, Liz Allcock, says evidence from injured civilians suggests they have been targeted.
“When we receive patients in hospitals, a large number of those women and children and people of, if you like, non-combatant age are receiving direct shots in the head, spine and limbs, which is very indicative of the direct targeted attack .”
Once again, the UN and aid agencies working in Gaza say Israeli military pressure is exacerbating what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.
Desperate messages are being relayed from the remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, saying they are running out of fuel to power the generators that keep hospitals running and seriously injured patients alive. Some hospitals report that their buildings have been attacked by the Israelis.
The suspicion among Palestinians, the UN and aid agencies is that the IDF is gradually adopting, in whole or in part, a new tactic to evacuate northern Gaza, known as the “Generals’ Plan.” It was proposed by a group of retired senior officers hired by Major General (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser.
Like most Israelis, they are frustrated and angry that a year after the war, Israel has still not achieved its war objectives: destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages. The General Plan is a new idea that its initiators believe can break the impasse from Israel’s perspective.
At its core is the idea that Israel can force the surrender of Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar by increasing pressure on the entire population of the north. The first step is ordering civilians to leave along evacuation corridors that will take them south of Wadi Gaza, an east-west flow that has become a dividing line in Gaza since the Israeli invasion last October.
Giora Eiland believes that Israel should have immediately struck a deal to get the hostages back, even if that meant withdrawing completely from Gaza. A year later, other methods are needed, he says.
In his office in central Israel, he explained the gist of the plan.
“Since we have already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the last nine or ten months, we must do the following to tell all 300,000 inhabitants [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who are still living in the northern part of Gaza, that they must leave this area and that they must be given ten days to leave through the safe corridors that Israel will provide.
“And after that time, this entire area will become a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, whether some of them are fighters, some of them civilians… will have two choices: surrender or starve. .”
Eiland wants Israel to close the areas as soon as the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all food, water and other necessities. He believes that the pressure would become unbearable and what is left of Hamas would quickly crumble, freeing the surviving hostages and liberating Israel. the victory it longs for.
The UN World Food Program says the current offensive in Gaza is having a “disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinian families.” The main border crossings into northern Gaza have been closed, according to the report, and no food aid has entered the Gaza Strip since October 1. Mobile kitchens and bakeries had to stop operations due to air raids. The only functioning bakery in the north, which is supported by the WFP, caught fire after being hit by explosive ammunition. The situation in the south is almost as dire.
It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in whole or in part, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests that it has at least a strong influence on the tactics used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF, which were not answered.
The ultranationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace the Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among the many statements he has made on this subject, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said: “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth: where there is no solution , there is no security.”
