New Israeli Evacuation Order in Gaza Displaces Palestinians Again

The Israeli army ordered the evacuation of several neighborhoods in southern Gaza on Saturday, the latest in a series of such directives recently that have forced tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians to relocate yet again.

The decision affects an area around the city of Khan Younis that Israel had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for Palestinian civilians, who are weary from nearly a year of unrelenting war and a daily struggle to avoid disease and find enough food and clean water to survive.

“People aren’t being regarded as people,” said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re being treated as pinballs and chess pieces.”

The Israeli military said its recent evacuations and operations in Khan Younis have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency and accused Hamas of installing weapons infrastructure in the area under the latest evacuation order on Saturday.

Over the past week, amid new evacuation orders, more than 190,000 people have fled the places where they were sheltering in southern and central Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.

Dozens of people have been killed in fighting in the area, according to both Israel and Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military said on Friday that its forces had killed more than 100 militants in Khan Younis in recent days, while Palestinian health officials have said that at least some casualties arriving at local hospitals with severe blast wounds have been women and children.