May 13, 2024
UNRWA denounces 'Israel's safe zones' as false
The Chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, dismissed "Israel's" assertion regarding the establishment of purported "safe zones" for forcibly displaced Palestinians as "false and misleading" via a post on X on Sunday.
"The claim of ‘safe zones’ is false and misleading. No place is safe in Gaza. Period," the UNRWA chief stressed.
He added that Israeli authorities persist in issuing mandatory displacement directives, also referred to as 'evacuation orders', compelling residents in Rafah to evacuate hastily without designated destinations.
"Since the war began, most people in Gaza have moved multiple times: on average once a month. They desperately sought safety that they never found," he further stated.
Lazzarini also highlighted that the Palestinians displaced from Gaza have no alternative but to seek refuge in UNRWA's shelters, many of which have already been targeted and damaged by Israeli military actions.
"No place is safe in Gaza. Period, " he concluded.
Israeli invasion could be 'catastrophic'
In the same context, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, expressed on Sunday that the latest orders "affect close to a million people in Rafah. So where should they go now? There is no safe place in Gaza!"
"These exhausted, famished people, many of whom have been displaced many times already, have no good options," he stated, emphasizing that the offensive could be "catastrophic" with further atrocities anticipated.
"I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice," he added.
Turk voiced grave concern about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza, stressing that the most recent evacuation orders had resulted in "massive displacement of an already profoundly traumatized population."
He highlighted that the communities designated to accept Palestinians displaced from Rafah had already been "reduced to rubble", adding that a full-blown Rafah invasion "cannot take place" and urging all governments with influence to do whatever they could to avoid it.
It is worth noting the Israeli occupation reinforced a forced evacuation order for eastern Rafah on Saturday, forcing 300,000 Palestinians who had already been forcibly displaced to leave the area.