A sweeping new evacuation order by Israel’s military covers much of northern Gaza, warning residents that these areas will soon turn into dangerous combat zones.
Many of the inhabitants have already been displaced at least once during the war that began almost 20 months ago and little humanitarian aid has been reaching the area, where hunger is widespread.
Maps show that only a few neighborhoods in Gaza City, the main population center in the north, were still unaffected by evacuation orders over the past 10 days. The latest order, issued Thursday night, urged residents of northern Gaza to move west toward the Mediterranean coast.
“From this moment on, the mentioned areas will be considered dangerous combat zones,” Avichay Adraee, an Arabic-language spokesman for the Israeli military, said in a statement on social media late Thursday. He said residents of northern Gaza had been warned several times to leave.
Northern Gaza is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. But most humanitarian aid has not been reaching the area for months.
Three aid distribution centers set up this week by an Israeli and American-backed system to bypass Hamas militants are all in southern and central Gaza. The United Nations and other aid organizations have declined to cooperate with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the group behind the new aid mechanism, describing it as a militarized distribution operation that violates humanitarian principles.
As hungry Gazans grow more desperate by the day and aid distribution continues to fall far short of needs, insecurity and chaos around distribution sites and food storage areas are growing.
Patience among much of the international community is growing thin, largely because of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. Even Israel’s allies such as France, Britain and Canada have been threatening repercussions unless there is immediate action to ease the dire conditions in Gaza.
“It’s very clear today that we cannot let this situation last,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Friday at a security forum in Singapore. “If there is not a response to the humanitarian situation in the next few hours today, we will have to harden the collective position.”
The lack of aid distribution in northern Gaza has forced residents to wait for hours for charity-kitchen food that runs out too soon and to dig boreholes for water to drink, even if it is not clean.
Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid, selling it for profit and using it as a tool to control Gazans. Israel had barred aid from entering Gaza in March, when a cease-fire agreement broke down. The new distribution centers opened this week and were thronged by desperate people seeking food.
The United Nations and other humanitarian organizations have criticized the aid centers as woefully insufficient to meet the basic needs for Palestinians’ survival after the Israeli blockade brought much of the territory to the brink of famine.
On Friday, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said it had enough food, blankets, medical supplies and hygiene kits for 200,000 people sitting in a warehouse in Amman, Jordan, a three-hour drive from Gaza.
“An unhindered, uninterrupted flow of supplies must be allowed in,” the agency said in a statement.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said on Friday that it had delivered 2.1 million meals in its first four days of service and planned to build additional sites across Gaza, including in the northern region, in the weeks ahead.
The new evacuation order comes as Israel and Hamas consider a new cease-fire proposal that would free a few dozen Israeli hostages, alive and dead, still being held in Gaza, and release hundreds of Palestinians prisoners held by Israel.
On Friday, the Hamas official Basem Naim said his group was still reviewing the latest proposal offered by Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s chief envoy to the negotiations.
Vivian Yee contributed reporting.
Lara Jakes, based in Rome, reports on diplomatic and military efforts by the West to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years.
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