Exodus from northern Gaza displaces 1 million

As the Israeli military on Saturday said it was preparing for “the next stages” of its war in the Gaza Strip – including “a significant” ground invasion – the United Nations reported that a mass exodus from northern Gaza had displaced nearly 1 million people amid a dire scarcity of water, fuel and other essential supplies.

Scenes of Gaza residents fleeing in cars, in horse-drawn carriages and on foot came as Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees, said an electricity blackout and a lack of drinking water had become “a matter of life or death.”

Evacuees struggled to find food, water and shelter in southern Gaza. Displaced families crammed into schools and hospitals while others crowded into the houses of friends and family. As the United States, Egypt and Israel discussed terms for a safe passage of U.S. citizens out of the territory, a vast majority of the more than 2 million residents in Gaza were trapped, some sleeping in cars, on chairs and on the ground, even as Israeli airstrikes continued.

Gazan authorities said Israel was responsible for an explosion Friday that killed at least 70 people traveling in a convoy of vehicles fleeing south. Israel said it was looking into the matter.

With its troops and armor inching closer, the Israeli military said it was expanding operations to include “an integrated and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land.” The statement did not say when the ground operation would begin.

Stepping up its efforts to persuade hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza, the Israeli military said it was showering the population with warnings. It released a video Saturday of fluttering pieces of paper dropped from the sky, pamphlets that warned that Gaza City had become a “battle zone.”

“You must evacuate your home immediately and go south of Wadi Gaza,” the pamphlet said, referring to a strip of wetlands that roughly divides the territory in half.

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, warned of “challenging weeks” ahead as the military operation escalated. The goal, he said, was “the defeat of Hamas and the elimination of its leaders.”

Saturday marked one week since Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, attacked Israel, an operation that appears to have been planned over many months and that targeted specific Israeli military bases and residential neighborhoods along the border with Gaza, as well as an open-air music festival. The attacks killed more than 1,300 people, the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year history and the worst mass killing of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.

The fate of more than 150 hostages that Hamas seized during the incursion remained unclear.

On Friday, the Israeli military conducted limited raids into Gaza, the first time troops had entered the territory since the military began its relentless bombardments. The military said the ground troops had since left. Palestinian militants have fired more than 5,500 rockets into Israel since the fighting erupted, the Israeli military said.

While there was no sign that Gaza residents would be allowed to leave the blockaded territory into neighboring Egypt, the Israeli and Egyptian governments agreed to allow U.S. citizens trapped in Gaza to cross into Egypt, a senior State Department official said. The transfers were supposed to take place Saturday afternoon, but by nightfall it was clear they had hit a snag.

“This is absolutely nerve-racking,” Lena Beseiso, 57, an American who was waiting on the Gaza side of the border with her husband, two of her daughters and a 10-year-old grandson, said in a text message. “I’m so worried now more than ever before.”

Israel’s top military and political leaders found themselves caught between a deeply wounded nation’s desire for reprisal and calls for restraint, including from some of the country’s closest allies.

The United States has sent weapons to Israel in the past week and President Joe Biden on Friday called Hamas “pure evil.” At the same time, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday during a visit to Israel that it was a “time for resolve, not revenge.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday continued his frenetic travels across the Middle East, a four-day trip that includes stops in Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. Blinken also called Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, on Saturday to ask for the Chinese government’s help in ensuring that other actors in the region do not get involved in the Israel-Hamas war, a State Department spokesperson told reporters.

In Blinken’s meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi minister of foreign affairs, stressed the importance of keeping civilians safe. “It’s important, I think, that we all condemn the targeting of civilians in any form at any time,” the prince said at the start of their meeting, adding that “the priority now has to be to stop further civilian suffering.”

Retaliation by Israel since the Hamas attacks has imposed a heavy toll on Gaza’s population, around half of whom are under 18 years old. Palestinian officials say about 2,215 people have been killed in Gaza in the past week and that more than 8,700 have been injured.

Lazzarini, who leads the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said Saturday that no humanitarian supplies had been allowed into Gaza for the past week.

“I appeal for the siege on humanitarian assistance to be lifted now,” he said in a statement. Lazzarini said the U.N. had moved its operations to the southern portion of Gaza.

The territory’s water plant and public water networks had stopped working, he said, forcing residents to drink dirty water from wells, increasing risks of waterborne diseases.

Aid convoys from Egypt to Gaza have been held up by disagreements over how and where the convoys should be screened for weapons, according to a senior diplomat familiar with the discussions. Egypt on Saturday was refusing to allow foreigners to leave Gaza until aid was allowed in, the diplomat added.

“It’s a struggle for life here,” said a Gaza resident, Zeina Ghanem, speaking Saturday morning from a training center in southern Gaza run by the United Nations. “There’s no food. There’s no water. There’s no sleep.”

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

The war is being waged in what, in global terms, are slivers of land. But the massacres, the missile strikes and the fighting of the last week have reverberated around the world. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Friday that the conflict may have ushered in “the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades,” warning of “far-reaching impacts on energy and food markets, global trade and geopolitical relationships.”

Already, scores of citizens from countries outside the Middle East have been killed in the conflict.

Twenty-seven Americans died in the attacks by Hamas in Israel, U.S. officials said. France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said Friday that 15 French citizens were confirmed to have been killed. Twenty-four Thais have been killed and 13 have been wounded, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday. The dead include citizens of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Brazil, Britain, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ireland, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Turkey.

The United Nations reported last week that 11 of its workers had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said five of its members had been killed in the conflict.

The Israeli army said Saturday it was investigating the death of Issam Abdullah, a Reuters journalist who was killed on Friday night amid escalating clashes on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. Six other journalists were injured in the incident.

There was a sense of urgency in northern Gaza on Saturday as Israel’s invasion loomed. Mohammed Ziara, a 30-year-old painter, was scrambling to leave and head south with his wife and two children. “There is no time,” he said by phone, his voice trembling.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.