The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has roundly denounced the latest Israeli military onslaught on the northern Gaza Strip, saying the offensive is meant to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population in the area.
“The current Israeli onslaught aims to displace the population of northern Gaza towards the south. The Israeli army aims to use maximum firepower in Gaza to paint an image of achievement and success,” Osama Hamdan, the group’s senior representative in Lebanon, said on Monday.
He stated that the so-called general's plan, proposed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Knesset (parliament) by a group of retired generals, is only meant to play with the emotions of the illegal settlers in the occupied territories, as the regime has failed to achieve any of its "goals" in the Gaza war.
The plan reportedly seeks to give Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone. Those who remain would be considered combatants and denied food, water, medicine and fuel.
“There must be efforts to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Resistance operations will continue and expand to defend our people despite all circumstances,” the senior Hamas official told Al Jazeera.
He described the unfolding developments in Gaza as a genocide process in the besieged coastal territory, calling upon the international community to spring into action and stop the Israeli aggression.
“Israeli aggression will spread if it is not stopped,” Hamdan pointed out.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza.”
“He (Guterres) strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasizes that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
Meanwhile, medical sources at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip say they are running short of medical supplies and essential medical needs, including fuel that is highly required to guarantee that surgeries can be performed amid high rates of casualties among civilians.
The sources say that lots of patients and injured people are succumbing to their wounds due to the lack of essential medication because the Israeli military is still enforcing stringent restrictions on the flow of essential medical supplies to the northern sector of the Gaza Strip.
The vast majority of neighborhoods in the region have been under relentless attacks and now lie in ruins.