[Source: Reuters]

Palestinians living in the ruins of Gaza City were bombarded with Israeli leaflets on Tuesday ordering them out, after Israel said it was about to obliterate the area in an assault to wipe out Hamas, causing panic and confusion.

Hamas’ armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed six people on the outskirts of Jerusalem the previous day. Israel said it would demolish homes of residents of the attackers’ villages in the occupied West Bank.

Residents of Gaza City, home to a million Palestinians before the war, have been expecting an onslaught for weeks, since the Israeli government devised a plan to deal Hamas a fatal blow in what it says are the group’s last strongholds.

The Israeli military airdropped leaflets with evacuation orders on residents standing amid the rubble, who say there is no safe place to go. Some said they would have no choice but to leave for the south, but many said they would stay and there were no immediate signs of a mass exodus.

Anxiety was spreading through a tent area in Gaza City housing displaced cancer patients.

Displacement is a profound issue for Palestinians who fear that Netanyahu and his far-right allies in government want a repeat of the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation.

Israel has been accused of genocide, including this month by the world’s biggest group of genocide scholars, over its nearly two-year campaign in the Palestinian enclave that has killed more than 64,000 people according to local authorities.

Israel rejects the accusation, citing its right to self-defence following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the capture of 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

The health authorities in Gaza announced they would not evacuate Gaza City’s two main operational hospitals, Al Shifa and Al Ahli, adding that doctors would not leave patients unattended.

Most Gazans have already been displaced several times since the war started, much of the territory lies in ruins and a hunger crisis has grown far worse in recent months.

The Israeli military has instructed residents in Gaza City to move to a designated “humanitarian zone” in the already overcrowded Al-Mawasi area along the coast in the south, where thousands of Palestinians have already been sheltering in tents. Israel has also regularly bombed the south.

Um Samed, a 59-year-old mother of five, said the choice now was whether “to stay and die at home in Gaza City, or follow Israel’s orders and leave Gaza and die in the south”.

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