From the Liveblog of
Friday, August 30, 2024
US urging Israel to make changes to its evacuation procedures inside Gaza safe zone – report
The US is urging Israel to make changes to the way it evacuates civilians in the Gaza Strip, NPR reports, citing a leaked US embassy memo.
According to the report, the Biden administration is pushing for the IDF to wait 48 hours between issuing evacuation orders and launching military operations in the impacted area. The memo also recommends canceling the orders once operations in the safe zone are over, allowing the civilian population to return.
The memo was issued out of concern that the increased evacuation orders issued by the IDF to civilians in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks has considerably shrunk the size of the Israel-designated humanitarian zone and driven the repeated displacement of Palestinians, NPR states.
In response, the IDF tells NPR that once it withdraws from evacuated areas within the humanitarian zone, civilians are able to return.
Some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments in July.
The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group.
As of mid-August, the zone is just over 42 square kilometers, or 11% of the total size of the Gaza Strip.
