The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the Israeli orders to transfer Palestinians from Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip are inhumane and threaten to expose them to more danger and misery, while a UN rapporteur warned of a catastrophe due to the Israeli attack on the city.
High Commissioner Volker Türk warned that these orders could amount to a war crime.
Israel launched air strikes on Rafah yesterday, Monday, and asked the Palestinians to evacuate parts of the city located in southern Gaza, which houses more than a million people who have been displaced by the war that has been ongoing for 7 months, and who live in tents and crowded schools.
He added in a statement, “Gazans are still exposed to bombs, disease, and starvation. Today, they are told that they must move again as Israeli military operations escalate in Rafah. This is inhumane.”
The statement indicated that the Israeli strikes have destroyed other parts of the Gaza Strip and flattened them to the point that there is no location outside Rafah that has the infrastructure and resources to host the people who are currently taking shelter in the city of Rafah.
The statement explained that ordering the displacement of civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law, with a few exceptions that are subject to strict legal requirements. He continued, “If these requirements are not met, such actions may reach the level of a war crime represented by forced displacement.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Tuesday, during his meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, that a ground attack on Rafah would cause “terrible humanitarian consequences and drag the region into chaos.”
Earlier on Monday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, warned that the “mass evacuation” of a portion of Rafah’s residents was impossible to carry out in a safe manner, stressing that the United Nations was not participating in “any involuntary evacuation.”
For her part, the United Nations Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, warned that the possible Israeli attack on the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip would be a “massacre” and “an attack on civilians.”
She said, “The attack on Rafah, where there are desperate, poor, and hungry Palestinians, will be a complete massacre in light of these conditions, and we know that there is also international awareness of this matter.”