The Palestinian Hamas terror group is reportedly preventing civilians from leaving the northern Gaza Strip, after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned residents Friday morning to flee south ahead of an anticipated ground invasion.
As Breitbart News reported, the IDF issued its warning for all residents north of the Wadi Gaza river. It gave residents 24 hours to flee, though it later acknowledged that an evacuation could take days.
However, Hamas discouraged people from leaving.
The Times of Israel reports:
A Gazan resident speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity confirms that Hamas is preventing residents of the north of the strip from evacuating to the south, following an evacuation order issued by the IDF for Friday morning.
“When they find people going to their cars, they force them to go back,” the Gazan man says.
The Palestinian Authority has also criticized the evacuation order, saying it would amount to giving up the land, though Israel has promised residents can return after Hamas is gone. Egypt, which controls the only border crossing other than those into Israel, has refused to open it to Palestinian refugees, urging them to stay.
The United Nations also criticized the Israeli evacuation order, saying that it would be impossible to carry out. Israel denounced the United Nations for ignoring Hamas’s military buildup and for failing to condemn the terror attack on Saturday that has killed 1,300 Israelis thus far. Over 3,000 were wounded, and over 100 were taken hostage.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.