The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are setting the stage for the mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt whereas creating situations that can make it unattainable for them to ever return to their destroyed properties within the Gaza Strip, the UN’s refugee company chief has claimed.

“The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip,” UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on Saturday in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. “But the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere.”

An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman denied Lazzarini’s accusation, saying West Jerusalem has by no means had a plan to push Gazans into Egypt. However, two Israeli lawmakers wrote final month in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that they want to see international locations world wide welcome Gazan refugees who select to relocate.

The Israel-Hamas battle has pushed greater than 1.8 million Gazans from their properties, the biggest pressured displacement of Palestinians since 1948, Lazzarini mentioned. Nearly 18,000 individuals have been killed in Gaza, and an Israeli examine discovered that 61% of the individuals who perished in IDF airstrikes had been civilians. The battle started when Hamas launched shock assaults in opposition to southern Israeli villages on October 7, killing round 1,200 individuals and taking a whole lot of hostages again to Gaza.

The Palestinian casualties included greater than 270 individuals who had been sheltering in UNRWA services on the time they had been killed. Lazzarini mentioned lots of these shelters had been in areas of central and southern Gaza that had been thought to be safer than the north, the place Israel’s bombing marketing campaign was largely centered. “The sad reality is that Gazans are not safe anywhere: not at home, not in a hospital, not under the UN flag, not in the north, middle or south,” he added.

The survivors are actually besieged and holed up in a “tiny area” of southern Gaza, close to the Egyptian border, Lazzarini mentioned. Many are being left with just one possibility: leaving the Palestinian enclave altogether.

“Judging by policy and humanitarian discussions underway, it is hard to believe that the Palestinians of Gaza who are displaced today will be allowed –or even willing– to return to their destroyed homes anytime soon,” the UN official mentioned.

If this path continues, main to what many are already calling a second Nakba, Gaza is not going to be a land for Palestinians anymore.”

A UN Security Council decision that might have demanded a ceasefire in Gaza was vetoed by the US on Friday. President Joe Biden’s administration has claimed that the US is doing greater than some other nation to assist civilians in Gaza, however it’s additionally aiding the Israeli battle effort. A CBS News ballot launched on Sunday discovered that solely 20% of Americans consider that Biden is making a peaceable decision of the battle extra probably.

Lazzarini mentioned civilians are getting used as pawns within the battle, with Hamas abdicating all accountability for his or her well-being to the UN and Israel inflicting “collective punishment” on the greater than two million individuals of Gaza. The “meager” humanitarian provides that Israel has allowed to trickle into the enclave have supplied little aid, he added.

“Bombardment and a tight siege are again creating conditions under which nothing more than mere survival is possible,” Lazzarini mentioned. “The deprivation of humanitarian aid is key to this plan. After the destruction of the north, the destruction of the south is ongoing, except this time, people have nowhere to go.”