Israel Orders Gaza City Evacuated
The inevitable has finally arrived.
NYT (“Israel Orders Total Evacuation of Gaza City, Threatening Full Invasion“):
The Israeli military issued a sweeping evacuation order for Gaza City on Tuesday, signaling that it was moving ahead with its full-scale invasion of the largest city in northern Gaza.
The order will force hundreds of thousands of people to decide whether to risk staying in the city or to flee south to areas that are already overcrowded. Many of those areas are also in ruins.
[…]
For weeks, Israel has been preparing to take over Gaza City, intensifying its military offensive there and calling up an additional 60,000 reservists. Israeli officials say that Gaza City is one of the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has pushed for a wider offensive on Gaza City, even as senior Israeli security officials have expressed reservations about the plans. International aid agencies and some longstanding allies have also condemned them.
The evacuation order on Tuesday came as indirect cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel remained stalled.
In a post on social media addressed to “all of the residents of Gaza City and everyone in its neighborhoods,” Avichay Adraee, an Arabic-language spokesman for Israel’s military, said its forces were “insistent on finishing Hamas and will act in Gaza City with great force as it has in the different areas of the strip.”
“For your safety, evacuate immediately,” he added.
Mr. Adraee instructed people to go to a “humanitarian area” south of Gaza City, where he had said last week that efforts were being made to deliver aid. Earlier in the war, the Israeli military told Palestinians to go to the same general region and defined it as a “humanitarian area,” but still conducted airstrikes there.
The humanitarian effects of this will be horrendous, given that there’s really no place for these people to go and there will almost certainly be no place to return to once this is over, even if they’re given that option. This almost certainly amounts to ethnic cleansing.
At the same time, this outcome has long seemed inevitable. The Netanyahu government has never wavered from the war aims of totally destroying Hamas and making another October 7-style attack impossible. Realistically, even though the government denied it, that meant the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and permanent Israeli occupation.
That’s not the sole motivation. Re-establishing the borders of the Biblical Israel is the supreme goal of the religious zealots in the current Israeli government. Never mind that they commit ethnic cleansing to accomplish it. Never mind that they become pariahs in the eyes of the civilized world. Never mind that they wreck their economy. Never mind that they widen and deepen a rift in the heart of the nation, between the ultra-religious and everyone else. Never mind.
Why do you think that ethnic cleansing is “realistic”? Or, if I’m reading that sentence correctly, necessary? Maybe finding a solution that doesn’t inspire people to hate you eternally might be an equally “realistic” way of increasing security?
If a people has no place to go, and no place to return to, the implication is that they will find it impossible to exist. Would that not deserve an elevation of definition from “ethnic cleansing” to “genocide” particularly if a good many perish as a result?
Can it be ethnic cleansing when they’re given nowhere to flee to? Imagine an Israeli boot stamping on a Palestinian face forever. There must be a term for that. In the end the goal is the same as Big Brother’s – the death of hope.
@Kingdaddy:
From the river to the sea, amirite?
@Rob1:
Sure, make all the Nazis happy and call it genocide. Because once you get everyone to agree to that particular word everything will be fixed. Right?
Maybe we could compromise and call it mass murder? Seems a little more specific than the anodyne “ethnic cleansing” and avoids the political minefields around “genocide.”
@wr:
Murder implies an intent to kill.
That reamins unproven.
Mass killing might be more accurate.
If announcing “we’re going to level this city and if you don’t evacuate whatever happens to you is on your head” does not imply an intent to kill, I’m not sure what does.
But if that’s a bridge too far, it would be at the very least recklessly negligent homicide.
@JohnSF: Mass Manslaughter is alliterative, and we all like alliteration is our crimes against humanity.
Bonus points if you can order the crimes in patterns to form rhymes.
@Kingdaddy:
In 1389, the Serbian army was destroyed in a battle in Kosovo, blunting the Ottoman expansion into Europe. The field of blackbirds (named for the blackbirds that were eating the dead) became a key part of the Serbian myths. In the late 1990s, this was used as motivation for the ethnic cleansing* of Kosovo.
I do not hold out a lot of hope.
There’s no way that this sparkling mass slaughter of a civilian population in Gaza will not become an ingrained element of the Palestinian culture.
We’ve seen how the sparkling mass slaughter of Jews in Europe** has done to create the modern Israel, after all.
——
*: Since this did not occur in the genocide region of Bavaria, it was merely ethnic cleansing.
**: most of the camps were outside of Germany and the Genocide region of Bavaria. Also, as Mr. Reynolds has reminded us on many occasions, it can’t be a genocide if so many people survive.
@Gustopher:
Mass killing is not necessarily a crime against humanity.
The allied war operations in WW2 caused mass killing of civilians, including citizens of non-enemy states, such as France etc.
They were not considered a war crime either at the time or subsequently.
It’s entirely possible, indeed likely, that IDF units, and perhaps the IDF generally, have been resposible for war crimes in Gaza.
But “crimes against humanity” are another matter, and generally taken to entail deliberate intent.
Hence the distintion between “mass killing” and “mass murder”.
Intentions matter.
Agree that this is part of the goal all along. I think the ultimate goal is to remove all of the Palestinians from Gaza and also the West Bank. From the river to the sea, no Palestinians will you see. While I dont think they will deliberately kill all of those Palestinians I dont think they will be too upset if there are some more “accidental” bombings, some people starving and some people dying in the process of trying to find new places to live.
Steve
@wr:
The intiation of intensive operations without warning the civilans and advising them to leave, would seem rather more indicative of either an intent to kill, or of indifference to the consequent casualties.
As I’ve mentioned before, Allied operations in WW2 frequently caused, and were expected to cause, large scale civilain casualties.
And not just to nominally “enemy” civilians either.
That did not make them intentional killing, or even “recklessly negligent homicide”.
@steve222:
That is pretty certainly the preference of some parties in the Israeli government coalition.
Whether it’s actual government policy is another matter: Netanyahu’s policy priority seems to be more “whatever keeps Bibi’s ass in power and out of jail”.
It’s fairly obvious that the IDF Command think the entire government policy re Gaza from the outset has been a mess, and that they are highly sceptical that simply assualting Gaza City will alter that.
That does not mean they are necessarily motivated by concerns about Palestinian casuslties.
Just that they don’t think the approach of repeated whacking of moles has any viable end state without some conception of a “day after” governance/security framework.
I have this odd feeling, based on little more than vibes, that a lot of people think Trump is not long for this world, and they are looking to make hay while the sun shines.
I do not expect there to be an effective polity known as “Gaza” in a couple of months. All I can say is that I think there are probably lots of people there who had nothing to do with making any of this happen, and I hope they will be ok.
@Kingdaddy: I just don’t think the stated end state is achievable without ethnic cleansing. And there’s no winning hearts and minds; at least not for generations.
To be annoyingly pedantic, this means post 7 Oct, since beforehand it was Netanyahu’s stated aim to elevate Hamas to block a two-state solution.
I’m not sure Netanyahu and Trump turning Israel and the US into isolated and despised pariah states make more attacks on Israelis and Americans less likely. On that score, both would benefit from the competent, tough, moral leadership they currently lack.
@Michael Reynolds:
Notwithstanding that we will likely never agree on this matter, precisely what is your definition of “genocide?” Is there a precise percentage of mass extermination that must take place first? 50%? 75%? 99.99%? Or does the extermination have to be fait accompli rather than a work in progress?
Similarly, in your view, would it be presumptuous or wrong-headed for someone call out a killing as such (you are killing them!) before the victims are dead?
You ask if I think use of the word “genocide” will “fix everything.”
In truth, I’m not sure how this catastrophe will be fixed. But, talking about this unending horror with every conveyance of understanding from our shared human experience, is the only way to get more people to attend to what is going on in Gaza, and how absolutely destructive it is.
Certainly, some people do not want that level of understanding, of perception, to transpire. But, why would that be, when the wholesale slaughter of Gazans is inescapable from our view —- unless we are being persuaded not to look at this horror in full?
So within your own question about whether I think using the word “genocide” will fix everything, I hear either frustration over this intractable horror, or a rhetorical parry couched in an extreme way. I don’t know which because I’m thinking I might have missed some comment down the line that provides your definitive take on these massing killings in Gaza, still ongoing 2 years after the horrific Hamas attack.
I would like to know your exact feelings about the Israeli state actions against the Gazans. Should we observers continue to pressure Israel to back off? To give the Gazans a chance to exist? Are you willing to condemn the Israeli campaign as myself and many others do, or are you in some way in agreement with the trajectory of events? Because, it is difficult to understand why someone of your humane beliefs, as expressed here on OTB, would be so knee-jerk about the use of the term “genocide” every time it is used.
@DK:
Netanyahu certainly viewed Hamas dominance in Gaza as tactically useful.
However, its worth thinking back not so many years, when “Hamas are the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people” was the default position of much of the “anti-imperialist” Left.
I invite you consider, what would have been the reaction of such to Israel refusing to permit funds to be supplied to the Hamas rulers of Gaza?
Or should Israel perhaps have mounted a military campaign to restore Fatah to pwer in Gaza?
Netanyahu exploited Hamas dominance in Gaza: he did not cause it, and probably could not have ended it without military action on a major scale.
@Rob1:
I can’t speak for Michael Reynolds, but I would simply observe that if the intent of the Israeli operations in Gaza was genocide, one would expect a much higher number of deaths.
Which is lower in percentages terms than many other urban battles, over shorter periods, where there was no judged genocidal intent.
Therefore it seems unlikely that the IDF is fixated on genocide.
That does not man IDF soldiers, or units, or command, or the government of Israel, is not guilty of specific war crimes.
They may well be, and in my opinion likely are.
But while genocide is a war crime, not all war crimes equate to genocide.
If it were an attemt at genocide, it’s a really quite remarkably ineffective one.
If an effective military, which the IDF is, was tasked with, and agreed to, a policy of genocide, then it could by now have killed the majority of the population of Gaza.
The population of Gaza is about 2.2 million.
Current Hamas GHM and Israeli figures indicate about 80,000 dead.
In Warsaw alone in 1944 some 250,000 civilans were killed, in just a couple of months.
However, the entire Israeli policy re Gaza is also both ineffective and incompetent, because of Netanyahu’s self-serving refusal to plan an end-state.
Apart from the “Trump whispering” nonsense about Gaza as an “international beach resort”, which I suspect causes considerable amusement to Israeli hardliners, ever happy to gull idiot Americans.
What word fits the Cherokee’s “Trail of Tears”?
@JohnSF:
Invitation declined. Netanyahu’s regime doesn’t even care about the mainstream liberal reaction to its refusal of adequate food supply to Gaza civilians, a horror that forced even some on the right to publicly recoil. These intransigents were somehow constrained by what “the anti-imperialist left” might say about it denying resources to terrorists? LOL
Like Putin, this Israeli premier’s #1 cause is keeping his people in a perpetual state of siege-minded victimhood and fear, so his corrupt rear end stays out of a prison cell and away from a war crimes tribunal. He has never given a rip how anyone of any ideology reacts to his blockades, bombs, or land grabs. Certainly not the far left. Puh-leaze.
Netanyahu is quoted as saying Hamas needed to be funded and boosted. This was amoral and wrong then and still is. No, Hamas did not need to be funded and boosted. Hamas needed to be undermined.
Attempts to rationalize Netanyahu’s unethical acts with “the anti-imperialist left made him do it” revision reeks of desperation. Bibi apologists cannot heap scorn upon powerless college students for alleged Hamas support then trot out tortured excuses for he who did more than any non-Arab to elevate Hamas and expose Israelis to 7 Oct.
This game of looking under rocks to find excuses for Netanyahu can’t survive the contradiction: if boosting Hamas is gross — and it is — it’s still gross when Israel does it. And, no, Netanyahu did not do so passively or out of fear of blue-haired leftist opinion. He did it for the same reason he helped incite Rabin’s assassination: he’s a violent, fringe-right Holy War fanatic. An Israel that enables Netanyahu’s monstrous acts (like he enabled Hamas’s) deserves no decent person’s benefit of the doubt. Hence why they’re losing it, fast.
@Rob1:
Inability to let go of priors + desperation at losing control of the narrative. Plus not wanting to seemingly agree with the awful, antisemitic, and/or dumb people who were flinging around the word genocide way too soon, in the early months after 7 Oct. Which is fair, tbh
For first time, two leading Israeli human rights groups accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza (CNN, 30 June 2025)
When one is reduced to blithely dismissing the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch — and rigorous, reluctant analysis from Jewish human rights orgs — as aiding Nazis, one’s well has run dry of serious and rational arguments.
@DK:
I rather dislike Netanyahu, if you had not already deduced that.
And he is primarily focused, it seems, on his own advantage.
However, either an Israeli operation in Gaza to remove Hamas and restore Fatah, or a denial of funding for Gaza, would have had major problems, at the time.
Would they have been the better option in retrospect?
Almost certainly.
But you really should consider my suggestion of consideration, and think how either such actions would have been regarded at the time.
You may also want to think about why Netanyahu in particular, Likud in general, and the far-right in Israel more widely, have the influence that they do, regrettable as it is.
If I had my way, Israel would now be facing sanctions for its behaviour.
Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, I’m not God-Emperor of the West.
And Hamas did NOT emerge solely because of the whims of Netanyahu, and Hamas WAS and IS upheld as the true voice of resistance, by a lot of fools who should have known better. Yet still do not.
And the reality of the internal political appeal of Hamas to Palestinians is one aspect of the damnable intractability of the Israel/Palestine issue.
Just as is the obverse of the resolution via violence approach of the “Greater Israel” expansionist fanatics.
@JohnSF:
Thank you for parsing out your view of this now likely viewed as a tedious discussion on the meaning of genocide. I can understand why there might be disagreement given the feverishness of events.
But I circle back to several points:
Is there a threshold of deaths for genocide? (should there be?)
Does the action of mass killing need to be culminated to be considered genocide, or can it be in process (Because it may be impactual to say hey, this is looking like genocide.)
The quote I pulled from James Taylor in my earlier post,
—- pretty much describes a physical “limbo” for a large group of human beings who certainly must subsist somewhere in order to exist at all. And certainly, Israel is not making any effort towards that end.
In fact they have been thwarting efforts to provide bare essentials to the people of Gaza, and have been actually killing rescue workers, medical personnel, provisioners, and even Gazans themselves merely seeking relief supplies.
I really am not seeing how the time/intensity (pace of killing) you seem to reference is a reason to dismiss the term genocide. Pace is relative to context, not the resulting outcome.
Fairly, you also mention “intent” on the part of the Israelis as lacking. But, we don’t know that. We do not have access to the true inner world of Netanyahu’s leadership regardless of what is represented to the public. We do have documented instances of hardliners making genocidal statements. We do have documented instances of Israelis of significant stature condemning these ongoing mass killings as genocidal. And most importantly, we have the arc and impetus of nearly two years of concerted murderous activity on the part of the Israeli military with very little respite or mercifulness towards the most vulnerable of the Gazan population. Entire families and social groupings have been wiped out.
A reasonable assessment of this mass human destruction does not require signed documentation by the hand of the Israeli leadership (although some facsimile may exist), because we have witnessed that the Israeli leadership has not taken reasonable measures to alleviate their outsized violence against an entire civilian population. Intent cannot be written off here simply because there is no paper in hand.
So perhaps, the problem is that critics of the term genocide, have confined their understanding to a too narrow view of the word vis a vis historical usage.
The US Department of Justice own legal definition:
There’s enough in that definition to give us all serious pause before we dismiss the term genocide and it’s horrific implications.
I shall end this comment stating what I have stated previously: the Israeli state actions towards the Gazans is genocidal — that is, having the characteristics and appearance of genocide.
@DK:
I will say this again:
Israel may well be guilty of war crimes in Gaza.
In my opinion, it very likely is guilty of such.
However, if it’s policy was intentional genocide, it’s going about it in a very clumsy way.
Setting aside all morality, for a moment, if I were tasked with extirpating the population of Gaza, and (which I would not) accepting such orders, it could be done far faster and and more comprehensively and effectively.
This is quite evident from multiple historical examples.
There is little doubt that the far-right component of the Israeli government would not shrink from genocidal acts to secure their ambitions.
There is good reason to doubt that that is the effective policy of the Israeli government at this point, despite the moral turpitude of Netanyahu, or informs the operations of the IDF.
Nonetheless, genocide or not, the Israeli operations in Gaza need to be halted.
Because they are not working to any rational purpose, and are therefore causing massive suffrering without being able to achieve a useful outcome.
@Rob1:
I come back to my rough estimation:
Israel may well, and in my opinion likely is, guilty of war crimes.
But if the intent was genocide, most German SS generals of WW2 would regard their approach as rather ineffectual.
The crucial legal point, if you take § 1091 as defintional, is “specific intent to destroy” a “group”.
It does not seem to me evident that Isreali policy in Gaza is intent on such destruction.
What it plainly IS, is unacceptably careless of the collateral damage to civilians of it’s effort to extripate Hamas.
For instance, accepting mass starvation as an acceptable consequence of denying Hamas control of food distribution
Genocide or no genocide, this is intolerable.
@JohnSF:
Ah, but this is an incorrect assessment. There are now many, many recorded instances of civilians being targeted — in relief lines, hospitals etc. This cannot be reasonably written off as 24 months of clumsiness. Israeli has top notch weapons and intel. Then there is the indicting matter of mass starvation and all out assault on relief efforts. ALL speak to intent.
I also point you back to words said by current and former members of the Israeli leadership, and I question your reliance on WWII Nazi genocide as point of reference.
@Rob1:
Again, doubtful.
It may be deliberate.
But it also may just be sheer f@cking up.
A lot of the hospital strikes, for instance, seem to relate to Hamas deliberately using hospitals for operational cover.
Once again: if the intent were genocidal, it being done very ineffectively.
WW2 Nazi actions seem to me a rather valid baseline for considering genocidal operations.
As to the statements of Israeli politicianns, as I have said, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and others, are, pretty obviously, inclined to accept or incite genocide. And therefore criminal.
Which is why they are now subject to sanctions by the UK, and other states.
And to hell with the US, on this.
However, that still does not mean they are determinative of Israeli state policy, given how that works.
If they were, or come to be so, such sanctions would apply to the Israeli government generally, and ultimately perhaps to Israel as such.
As I have said before, Israel is coming close to the limits of what European countries will tolerate.
The question then is, what are the consequences for US/Europe relations if the US continues a policy of unlimited support for Israel?
Given the petulance of Trump, and the radicalistion of the Republicans and their identification with the Israeli right, this could entail a full breach with Europe before we are prepared for it, given the current confrontation with Russia.
Once again: de Gaulle was right.
Reliance on the US could be the death of us.
@JohnSF:
An arbitrarily cute personal quirk perhaps, but no governmental body, human rights group, or dictionary defines genocide as “mass slaughter but only if it meets the WW2 Nazi baseline.”
One who has intentionally killed multiple people does need not Jack the Ripper’s grisly baseline and body count to still be accurately described as a serial killer.
So? An incompetent criminal is still a criminal. Many such examples.
@JohnSF:
No, I really shouldn’t. Once again, invitation declined, because the argument is a red herring. You’d first have to show that Netanyahu governments care about how their decisions are regarded by the lefter than left. They didn’t and don’t. So it’s a moot point.
Netanyahu did not argue that Hamas should be funded and boosted because he was worried about how not doing so would be regarded. That’s a fake, made-up, ex post facto excuse backed by zero evidence.
As to why the far right has influence, it’s the same everywhere: grifters, corruptocrats, dishonest leaders, and fake strongmen enriching themselves by seizing on society’s anger, bigotry, fears (legitimate and invalid), and worst impulses — manipulating a populace into sneering at moralism while racing to the socioeconomic bottom, since rightwing policy just doesn’t work long term. Same as it ever was.
@JohnSF:
There have been a series of claims to that effect, but evidence has been elusive. Even the recent hospital stairwell strike apology was effectively retracted when it was later claimed that a Hamas camera was indeed the target, only to find out that the camera in question almost certainly belonged to a professional journalist.
The hospitals were always going to have Hamas casualties, and at times the ones that brought them there, but the command center claims consistently fell flat. Even the IDF event that involved bringing in western journalists to show once and for all that Al Shifa hospital was a command center fell apart. While Adm Hagari showed off a cache of small arms to reporters, he acknowledged, to his credit, that they were not found in one place but were gathered from the area around the hospital complex. The IDF led reporters on tours of tunnel sections, but none of the tunnels connected to the hospital buildings; in fact they appeared to parts of the old tunnel network that was mapped years ago and the map publicly available, including tunnels alongside and under part of the hospital real estate. The mere existence of those tunnels in that area did not implicate the use of the hospital as a command center.
@DK:
What the “It’s not really genocide” crowd never engages with are the plain facts that 1) the international community post WW2 deliberately defined genocide using a lower threshold (in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide); and 2) that Israel ratified said convention.
God forbid that a country is held to a standard that it signed up to.
But, you know, every time someone raises that point, it’s crickets.
@JohnSF:
On the rhetoric and semantics of genocide denial;
If intent is your litmus test, then the intent of those who refuse to apply the words “genocide” must also be under discussion, particularly given the documented violent targeting of civilians in hospitals, in humanitarian relief lines, in social groupings etc. 60,000+ deaths cannot be written off as collateral damage.
The people being killed, being forced out of their communities, forced into starvation, with no place to go, are Palestinians —– but they are also Gazans. And as Gazans, they and their ability to sustain themselves is being systematically eliminated. This process is genocidal, as “on the path to genocide.”
@JohnSF:
Once more time for the people in the back row: FOCUS ON IMPACT, NOT INTENT.
Trying to figure out intent–especially in an unfolding situation–rarely makes sense and tends to shift the argument into hypotheticals rather than address the complex realities of what’s happening.
We can spin our wheels creating different intent theories. Maybe it didn’t start as direct ethnic cleansing. Maybe they are adopting ethnic cleansing because it’s the easiest option and the Israeli public and sponsor states like the US are going to ultimately accept it. Maybe they always intended ethnic-cleansing and forever-occuptation and realized that doing it ineptly was the best way to achieve that goal in the current political environment.
WE WILL PROBABLY NEVER KNOW. We definitely will not know in the near visible future.
More importantly, every time anyone (especially folks sympathetic to the plight of Gazans) focuses on intent (or decides to take up that argument), we’re NOT talking about the on-the-ground reality of how the war is being prosecuted and using the facts we have to extrapolate future real-world consequences.