The global rift over Israel‘s response to Hamas‘ deadly terror attack grew wider on Friday as Israel and the United Nations traded public barbs.
An Israel official called the U.N. a “disgrace” after the international body balked at Israel‘s evacuation warning to more than 1 million residents of the Gaza Strip.
Israel said the Gaza residents should leave the northern section of Gaza by midnight Saturday amid escalating Israeli military strikes against Hamas targets in the densely packed enclave. Israel also has built up military assets along its border with Gaza ahead of a possible ground incursion.
U.N. officials said the Israeli evacuation warning simply isn’t feasible. And even if it were, they say, the humanitarian consequences of moving so many people in such a short period, in such an already impoverished area, would be devastating.
“The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How are 1.1 million people supposed to move across a densely populated warzone in less than 24 hours?” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.‘s emergency relief coordinator, said in a social media post. “I shudder to think what the humanitarian consequences of the evacuation order would be.”
The U.N. said that the evacuation warning will also apply “to all U.N. staff and those sheltered in U.N. facilities, including schools, health centers and clinics.” Officials said such a move is “impossible.”
Israeli officials punched back hard. They said that the U.N. has long glossed over Hamas and its use of civilians as human shields in Gaza, while instead focusing solely on the perceived humanitarian abuses in Israel‘s response.
“The U.N.‘s response to Israel‘s early warning to the residents of Gaza is a disgrace,” said Gilad Erdan, Israel‘s ambassador to the U.N. “For many years, the U.N. turned a blind eye to the arming of Hamas and its use of civilian populations and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip for murder and for stockpiling its weapons.”
“Now, instead of standing with Israel whose citizens were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists and which still tries to minimize harm to non-combatants, it preaches specifically to Israel,” he said, according to Israeli media. “It would be better for the U.N. to focus now on returning the captives, condemning Hamas and supporting Israel‘s right to defend itself.”
The public Israel-U.N. spat underscores the difficult questions that the world must grapple with in the coming days and weeks. Hamas, with the aid of its chief financial sponsor, Iran, used Gaza to build up significant military capabilities and to plan last weekend’s well-coordinated terrorist attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and more than two dozen Americans. The group also took about 150 hostages, including U.S. citizens.
Israel maintains it must crush Hamas to prevent any such attacks in the future. The eradication of Hamas will require an unprecedented military operation in Gaza. Israel already has cut off food, water and fuel supplies to the enclave.
Those Israeli moves, critics warn, will worsen an already severe humanitarian crisis. Hospitals are running out of electricity and food, aid groups warn, and the mandatory evacuation of more than a million people will make the situation far worse.
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told reporters that the Israeli order is a virtual “death sentence” for many in Gaza.
It will be “impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients from the north of Gaza,” he said.
