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Israel using displacement as weapon to escalate collective punishment against civilians: Hamas

Saturday, 17 August 2024 5:14 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 17 August 2024 5:48 PM ]

Palestinians set up tents in the yard of the Asdaa Central Prison facility, which has been converted into a shelter for internally displaced people, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on August 14, 2024. (Photo by EFE)

A senior Hamas official has roundly denounced the Israeli military’s new evacuation order for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stating that the move represents another bid by the Tel Aviv regime to escalate collective punishment and genocidal crimes against civilians in the war-battered coastal region.

“The Israeli army uses displacement as a weapon against defenseless civilians in an attempt to exacerbate their humanitarian ordeal,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement, said in a statement on Friday.

The Hamas official noted that forcing thousands of civilians to repeated displacement has resulted in severe congestion, threats to their lives and exacerbation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza in a flagrant violation of international humanitarian rules and conventions.

Rishq held the US administration responsible for the heinous Israeli crimes and the ongoing aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip.

He called on the international community and human rights organizations to take immediate action and to shoulder their legal and humanitarian obligations “to stop the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”

Israel airstrikes kills 17 in central Gaza, 15 of them members of same family

At least nine children and two women were among the victims of the attack in the Gaza town of Al-Zawaida.

On Friday, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in southern and central Gaza, tightening the area they previously designated as a so-called “safe zone”, while talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire deal are ongoing in Qatar.

The orders were issued for the area north of the southern city of Khan Younis, and the eastern part of Deir Al-Balah, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter from Israeli strikes in other parts of the besieged strip.

The Israeli army claimed that the areas had been used by Hamas as a launch pad for attacks against Israel.

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.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured tens of thousands of others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

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