Israel withdrew an evacuation order in Gaza for the first time this week — the day after the Biden administration sent Israeli officials a memo urging restraint on the sweeping evacuation orders that have displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s population so far.
On Thursday, the Israeli military announced that, on August 29 and 30, Palestinians could return to certain parts of central Gaza that were previously forcibly evacuated. The UN notes that these areas contain crucial infrastructure like water wells. All other evacuation orders — which double as an expansion of Israel’s military presence in Gaza — remain in place. There have been a total of 40 evacuation orders since the beginning of this year.
The announcement came one day after the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem sent a cable to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department warning of Israel having “drastically increased the pace of evacuation orders” in recent weeks, squeezing Palestinians into an “increasingly limited” humanitarian zone. The leaked cable was first reported and posted online by journalist Ken Klippenstein.
The timing of the cable and the withdrawal of evacuation orders suggests that Israel acted on recommendation from U.S. officials.
Further compounding this notion is the fact that Israel withdrew orders issued on August 16, 21 and 25 — ones that were specifically called out in the cable for their impact on a number of humanitarian groups’ warehouses holding crucial aid materials. Those orders had sent humanitarian groups scrambling to move employees and transfer materials that were now in Israel’s “combat zone.”
This shows the power that the U.S. can wield over Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Many commentators have argued that the U.S. can’t affect Israel’s actions, ignoring that the U.S. is a major supplier of Israel’s military. On top of history proving this argument untrue, Israel’s withdrawal of orders seemingly at U.S. urging is another show that the U.S. does have leverage — but consistently chooses instead to give Israel the diplomatic and military support to continue its genocide.
The cable directly suggested that Israel should “rescind lapsed evacuation orders to allow greater freedom of movement, hold operations at least 48 hours after issuance of evacuation orders to enable populations to safely move, and protect humanitarian sites, ensuring ongoing accessibility.”
The withdrawal of some orders may restore some access to infrastructure and aid — but aid groups have said that Israel has already destroyed the humanitarian aid system in other crucial ways.
“The IDF so-called humanitarian zone is no longer a viable place for us to render aid,” said Georgios Petropoulos, who heads the Gaza office for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to The Washington Post. “The system is dead.”
The World Food Programme said on Thursday that it was suspending staff movement across Gaza after Israel shot one of its vehicles 10 times as it was approaching the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. The group also noted that it lost access to its last operational warehouse as a result of evacuation orders last week.
According to the cable, Israeli officials have been denying movement requests from humanitarian groups — including one from WFP contractors that would have left 800,000 people without bread and 200,000 without hot meal items if the contractors hadn’t decided to make the delivery without Israel’s clearance.
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