Israel has issued new evacuation orders for all remaining civilians to leave Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza as part of a blistering three-month-old campaign that Israel denies is aimed at depopulating a third of the Palestinian territory, amid reports Israeli attacks have damaged two more struggling hospitals in Gaza City.
The Israeli army forcibly evacuated Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia on Friday, leaving the northern third of the strip, which is cut off from the rest of Gaza, with just one small functioning medical centre – al-Awda in nearby Jabalia. On Sunday, everyone remaining in Beit Lahia was ordered to leave after Palestinian militants launched five rockets from the area that targeted Israeli territory.
Some patients were taken to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which is without water or electricity and is not in service. Medics were prevented by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from joining them there, the local health ministry said.
The World Health Organization said it would send an emergency mission to the Indonesian hospital on Sunday “to safely move patients to southern Gaza for continued care”.
Israel’s military said Kamal Adwan was being used as a base for Hamas operations, and that it will not allow services to resume there. The Palestinian militant group denies using medical infrastructure as cover for its activities.
The IDF said it interrogated 950 people during the Friday raid on the hospital and claimed that 240 were found to be militants. Thirteen had pretended to be patients and attempted to flee on stretchers or in ambulances, it added.
Most of the medical staff detained have since been released but the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya, was still unaccounted for. Nurses and doctors told local media they had been beaten, stripped, and then forced to walk towards southern Gaza, reports corroborated by the WHO.
Sunday’s evacuation order for Beit Hanoun triggered a new wave of displacement for the relative safety of areas below the Israeli-enforced Netzarim corridor, which has cut off Gaza City and satellite towns to the north from the rest of the strip.
The WHO estimates that 75,000 people remain in Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia; approximately 325,000 people have fled since Israel began a new offensive and tightened sieges on the area in early October, cutting off almost all aid.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in Beit Lahia and it was unable to send teams into the area because of Israeli forces on the ground. Later on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven people in a house in the town, relative Said al-Zaaneen said. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Israel denies carrying out a deliberate “surrender or starve” campaign, saying the new offensive is necessary to stop Hamas fighters regrouping, although Israeli media reports suggest that the government aims to annex the area as a military buffer zone.
Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the territory killed at least 23 people on Sunday, including a direct hit on Gaza City’s al-Wafa hospital that killed seven. The Israeli military said the strike was aimed at members of Hamas’s aerial defence unit, which operated from the compound. The top floor of a building at Al-Ahli, another hospital in Gaza City, was destroyed by Israeli tank fire on Sunday, residents said. There were no reported injuries.
In Deir al-Balah, a central town, a fourth infant died of hypothermia, as almost all of the strip’s 2.3m population struggles to survive in squalid makeshift accommodation and tents amid the onset of freezing and wet winter weather.
Twenty-day-old Jomaa al-Batran was found with his head as “cold as ice” when his parents woke up on Sunday, his father, Yehia, told the Associated Press. The baby’s twin brother, Ali, was moved to the intensive care unit of Deir al-Balah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which like the rest of Gaza’s medical infrastructure is suffering from a lack of medicine and supplies and overwhelmed by people in need of care.
Israel’s 15-month-old war on Gaza has killed at least 45,300 people and caused a devastating humanitarian crisis amid accusations from the international court of justice and aid organisations that Israel has deliberately strangled food and aid supplies to the Palestinian territory. Israel says humanitarian agencies are to blame for slow deliveries, and Hamas is siphoning off aid.
About 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken captive in Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the conflict. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza, although a third are believed to be dead. A new Israeli government report, expected to be delivered next week to the UN special rapporteur on torture, has compiled grim testimonies from freed hostages, including physical, sexual and psychological abuse of adults and minors.
Also on Sunday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had his prostate removed in a routine operation after a urinary tract infection stemming from the benign enlargement of the prostrate.
The procedure raises fresh questions about the Israeli premier’s health: the 75-year-old was rushed to hospital in July 2023 for an emergency operation to fit a pacemaker, at which time it emerged he had a chronic heart condition that had not been disclosed to the public. He also underwent hernia surgery earlier this year.
The justice minister, Yariv Levin, a close Netanyahu ally, is serving as acting prime minister while Netanyahu is incapacitated. The premier’s hospital visit comes as Israel faces fronts in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Syria, and a new escalation with the Iran-allied Houthi movement in Yemen. Netanyahu is also facing a personal battle in the form of an ongoing corruption trial.
