A month to the day after Hamas’ attack on civilians in southern Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) secured a humanitarian corridor in Gaza for Palestinian civilians to flee south. The IDF released video showing hundreds of civilians leaving Gaza City while an Israeli Merkava tank provided security.
Many of the civilians held up white flags to show they were non-combatants. Hamas claimed the IDF made the civilians act that way in order to humiliate them.
The humanitarian corridor remained open for four hours. It was long enough for able-bodied people to get out, and perhaps help some others, but Gaza’s Interior Ministry said around 900,000 Palestinians are still in northern Gaza.
The IDF said Hamas’ primary base of operations is centered in northern Gaza inside a maze of underground tunnels. The IDF provided video evidence of what it said shows Hamas hiding entrances to the “Gaza Metro” throughout Gaza, including under hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian locations.
Hamas released video of its fighters firing mortars and rockets from within the tunnels, and popping out of the subterranean strongholds to launch ambush attacks against Israeli soldiers. Operating from within civilian populations and wearing civilian clothing during military attacks are both considered violations of the rules of war.
In the month since the war in Gaza started, Israel’s campaign of airstrikes has been brutal and unrelenting. The IDF maintains it doesn’t set out to target civilians, but because Hamas is operating from within the civilian population, civilian casualties are inevitable.
Critics are accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza on a grand scale. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health asserts more than 10,000 Palestinians are dead as a result of Israeli airstrikes.
“It has been one full month of carnage of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Volcker Turk said in a statement before touring the region.
The U.N. says Gaza services are close to “breaking point” without fuel supplies. All bakeries in northern Gaza are reportedly out of service as a result of Israeli attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rejecting calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that would only allow Hamas time to regroup and launch more attacks. Instead, the IDF will keep up the pace of the fighting to keep Hamas on the defensive. However, the prime minister did say he was open to “small windows” when the fighting could pause to allow aid into Gaza and more civilians out.
In his first public comments about what Israel’s plans are for after the war, Netanyahu told ABC News’ David Muir that Israel would need to reassert control over Gaza to maintain security.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility,” Netanyahu said. “Because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale we couldn’t imagine.”
President Biden said another Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a “big mistake” and that America’s closest ally in the Middle East should learn from the mistakes the U.S. made in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reuters contributed to this report.
