Israel orders Gaza Strip evacuations; Hamas tells residents to stay put

Israeli commanders have said they’re readying a ground invasion of the territory in a bid to end Hamas rule there. The militant group launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Saturday, killing more than 1,300 civilians and soldiers and taking scores of hostages.

Israel has responded with airstrikes and a siege. With exits to Israel and Egypt shut and food, drinkable water, medicine and fuel running low, the operations have effectively turned the densely populated 140-square-mile strip into a death trap.

No fuel has been allowed into the territory since the crisis began; many users, including the largest power plant, have run out or will soon. Nearly 1,800 people, roughly half of them women and children, have died in the bombing campaign, according to the territory’s health ministry. Another 7,300 have been wounded.

Israeli officials on Friday said Hamas militants were endangering Palestinian civilians by hiding among them, in tunnels beneath civilian homes and in heavily populated areas.

“Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

“We need to separate them,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters. “Those that want to save their life, please go south.”

Hamas dismissed the warnings as “psychological war” and told citizens to stay.

“Our Palestinian people reject the threat made by the leaders of the occupation and its call for Gazans to leave their houses and leave to the south or to Egypt,” the group said.

Hamas continued to fire rockets from Gaza into Israel; dozens of people have been wounded, but most of the missiles appear to have been intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system. The IDF said Friday they were conducting “wide-scale strikes” in the Gaza Strip against “terror targets” belonging to Hamas.

The United Nations and international rights groups urged authorities to rescind the evacuation order, saying it was unworkable and would have devastating humanitarian consequences.

“The situation in Gaza has reached a dangerous new low,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told reporters. “Moving more than 1 million people across a densely populated war zone to a place with no food, water or accommodation when the entire territory is under siege is extremely dangerous and in some cases simply not possible.”

Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, warned that the order “does not alter Israel’s obligations in military operations to never target civilians and take all the measures it can to minimize harm to them.”

Nancy Okail, president of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, called the evacuation order “a license to kill. Because those who remain behind, it would be sort of a warranty to kill those who stay.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which operates in Gaza, said the demand to evacuate without clear guarantees of safety and return “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.”

Israel Katz, Israel’s energy minister, rejected criticism of the order.

“What hypocrisy!” he said in a translation of a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “We will not provide an ounce of water and electricity to those who do not evacuate. We will work with all our might to eliminate the Hamas-Daesh murders and restore security. Whatever was will not be.” Daesh is an Arabic-language acronym for the Islamic State.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which says its ambulances have repeatedly been targeted by Israeli strikes, said Friday that the health ministry had decided not to evacuate the area’s hospitals.

The World Health Organization said “a mass evacuation would be disastrous — for patients, health workers and other civilians left behind or caught in the mass movement.”

Israel did not warn or consult with the United States before issuing its evacuation order, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He said the first State Department-chartered evacuation flight for U.S. citizens left Israel for Europe on Friday. The State Department was “exploring other options, including by sea,” to continue transporting Americans out of Israel “as long as there is demand.”

Kirby said the Biden administration was still trying to organize safe passage of U.S. citizens and other foreigners from Gaza. The only non-Israeli exit is the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, which has been closed for several days amid Israeli airstrikes.

Canadian officials said Friday that there “may be an opportunity” for Canadians and other foreign nationals in Gaza to leave through the Rafah crossing during a five-hour window on Saturday afternoon, but they cautioned that the plans were “tentative” and there is much “uncertainty.”

“We are not going to tell Canadians to move until we know that that is a possibility and we have confirmation that these individuals can get across the border,” Julie Sunday, the assistant deputy minister for consular, security and emergency management at Global Affairs Canada, told reporters in Ottawa on Friday. “The last thing we want is Canadians getting stuck.”

U.S. officials said the situation was fluid. People who said they were linked to Hamas have set up checkpoints on the Gaza side leading to the crossing. In recent days, they’ve made several, often changing demands, including that no one can leave the enclave until trucks carrying aid on the Egyptian side are allowed to enter.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters, said heavy equipment will be needed to repair damage from the Israeli airstrikes before trucks can pass. Their Egyptian counterparts, the officials said, have been cooperative, but are concerned that any opening would unleash a flood of Palestinian refugees seeking to escape. They’ve sought U.S. assurances that none of the people the United States has asked be allowed to leave — U.S. citizens, U.S. staff, including Palestinians, and Palestinians associated with American institutions — will stay in Egypt.

Tensions were high on Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Hamas called for a “Day of Rage” in support of Gaza. There have been demonstrations across the territory.

At least 11 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli security forces and tens were injured across the West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The exact circumstances of some of the deaths were not immediately clear. Several people were killed around Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem, frequently the scenes of fighting between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Since Saturday, Israel has prevented Palestinians from traveling between cities and out of the West Bank, leaving the main road that runs through it eerily empty.

Anwar Abu Salem, 26, joined hundreds of mainly young Palestinian men wearing black in clashes with Israeli forces at an entry to Ramallah.

“We came to make an intifada,” he said. “For our people in Gaza who are being slaughtered. We want an end to the occupation and the Palestinian Authority and get our land back.”

Issam Abdallah, a journalist with Reuters, was killed Friday while covering skirmishes along the Lebanon-Israel border, the news agency said in a statement. It did not provide details on the precise circumstances of his death.

At least six more journalists were injured. They included two from Al Jazeera who were struck by what the news channel said was Israeli shelling. All the journalists were wearing blue bullet-resistant vests marked with the word “Press,” Al Jazeera said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew from Israel to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman on Friday and discuss the growing crisis, including “efforts to secure the release of all hostages and prevent the conflict from widening,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said.

Blinken “underscored that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination and discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of civilians in Gaza while Israel conducts legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism,” Miller said.

But Abdullah, in a separate statement, warned Israel against “any attempt to forcibly displace the Palestinians from all the Palestinian Territories or to cause their internal displacement, calling for preventing a spillover of the crisis into neighboring countries and the exacerbation of the refugee issue.”

He also stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors to allow for the provision of food and medicine.

Blinken planned further meetings with Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt with the aim of convincing allies who have influence with Iran and Hezbollah to refrain from entering the conflict. Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation.

The IDF said Friday morning that it struck 750 military targets overnight. They included compounds, guard posts and underground tunnels belonging to Hamas, as well as the residences of senior operatives.

Hamas’s military wing said Friday that 13 of its hostages had been killed by airstrikes within the past 24 hours. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify the claims. The whereabouts of the hostages, some of them toddlers, are not publicly known.

Egypt was one of several governments working “discreetly” to solve the issue, said Mohamed al-Oraibi, chairman of the Egyptian Foreign Relations Council, an organization affiliated with the country’s Foreign Ministry. But so far, the warring parties seemed determined to battle on.

“There is a sort of determination in both sides that they have to keep this level of military exchange,” he said, “and there is no need for talking about any steps to pave the way for a permanent cease-fire.”

Loveluck reported from London, Parker from Cairo, Coletta from Toronto and DeYoung from Washington. Loveday Morris in Jerusalem and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report.