Patients forced to flee al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza after Israeli evacuation order
We reported in an earlier post that one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals – the al-Aqsa martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah – has been emptying out in recent days as Israel has ordered the evacuation of nearby areas.
The military has not ordered the evacuation of the hospital, located in central Gaza, but patients and people sheltering there fear that it may be engulfed in fighting or become the target of an Israeli raid.
Gaza’s health ministry has called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who had remained to care for them, to be protected.
Associated Press reporters saw people fleeing the hospital and surrounding areas on Monday, many of them on foot. Some could be seen pushing patients on stretchers or carrying sick children, while others held bags of clothes, mattresses and blankets. Four schools in the area are also being evacuated.
“Where will we get medicine?” Adliyeh al-Najjar told the Associated Press. “Where will patients like me go?”
Fatimah al-Attar fought back tears as she left the hospital compound heading in the direction of the tent camps. “Our fate is to die,” she said. “There is no place for us to go. There is no safe place.”
The Israeli military said it was operating against Hamas in Deir al-Balah and working to dismantle its remaining infrastructure there. Medical staff have denied allegations there are militant fighters hiding in hospitals.
Only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization.
Key events
Closing summary
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Israel issued new evacuation orders for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, forcing more families to flee. The new orders forced many families and patients to leave al-Aqsa hospital, in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of Israeli bombardments. Gaza’s health ministry called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who remained to care for them, to be protected.
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The UN’s World Food Programme warned that the food distribution centres and community kitchens it supports in Gaza are increasingly being disrupted by Israeli evacuation orders.
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At least 40,435 Palestinian people have been killed and 93,534 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement.
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Witnesses and Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondents reported airstrikes and shelling in Gaza overnight. Medics said an airstrike on a Gaza City house killed at least five people, with two rescuers telling AFP more victims may be buried in the ruins in Al-Rimal neighbourhood.
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Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, told his Italian counterpart, Antonio Tajani, that Iran’s response to the July assassination of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran – which it blames on Israel – would be “definite and calculated”.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Jordan’s flag carrier Royal Jordanian is set to resume flights to the Lebanese capital Beirut starting on Tuesday morning, Jordan’s state news agency reported.
Jordan’s carrier briefly suspended flights to Beirut on Sunday after tensions between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-aligned Hezbollah movement escalated earlier in the day.
Multiple airlines announced suspensions of flights to Israel on Sunday. British Airways, for example, said it would cancel all flights to and from Israel until Wednesday.
A far-right Israeli minister has sparked fresh outrage by saying he would build a synagogue at Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound if he could.
Agence France-Presse reports:
National security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has repeatedly ignored the government’s long-standing ban on Jews praying at the site, told Army Radio that if it were possible he would build a synagogue at the al-Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The al-Aqsa compound is Islam’s third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity, but it is also Judaism’s holiest place, revered as the site of the second temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
“If I could do anything I wanted, I would put an Israeli flag on the site,” Ben Gvir said in the interview.
Asked several times by the journalist if he would build a synagogue at the site if it were up to him, Ben Gvir finally replied: “Yes.”
Under the status quo maintained by Israeli authorities, Jews and other non-Muslims are allowed to visit the compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem during specified hours, but they are not permitted to pray there or display religious symbols.
In recent years, the restrictions at the compound have been increasingly flouted by hardline religious nationalists like Ben Gvir, prompting sometimes violent reactions from Palestinians.
The Al-aqsa mosque compound is administered by Jordan, but access to the site itself is controlled by Israeli security forces. Ben Gvir told Army Radio that Jews should be allowed to pray in the compound.
“Arabs can pray wherever they want, so Jews should be able to pray wherever they want,” he said, claiming that the “current policy allows Jews to pray at this site”.
Several Israeli officials condemned Ben Gvir after his latest comments, and a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said “there is no change” to the current policy…
Palestinian presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh also condemned Ben Gvir, warning that “Al-Aqsa and the holy sites are a red line that we will not allow to be touched at all”.
Hamas, with whom Israel is locked in a bitter war in the Gaza Strip, said the minister’s comments were “dangerous” and called on Arab and Islamic countries “to take responsibility for protecting the holy sites”.
Residents of Lebanese cities felt only partial relief on Monday that one of the biggest exchanges of fire between armed group Hezbollah and the Israeli military the previous day was over.
Early on Sunday, Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel to avenge a commander killed in an Israeli strike last month. Israeli jets struck dozens of targets in south Lebanon, in what residents there said felt like the “apocalypse”.
“People are relieved, or are relieved a bit, because they took a breather after this attack,” Mohamed Ftouni, a Lebanese shop owner in the southern port city of Tyre, told Reuters.
“We hope that something good will happen, to have some commercial activity and for the situation to improve. Our only hope is that there will be a ceasefire so that we can be done (with war) in Gaza and here, for people to relax more.”
Ibrahim Hussein, another shopkeeper in Tyre, said Lebanon was now back to “the same situation as before”.
Talal Sidani, the owner of an artisanal shop in the capital, Beirut, said he would rather get a war over with than be constantly nervous about when it could start.
“War? Let there be war. We want to work. There’s no work, here we are sitting. Especially us, we have touristic stores, and we rely on tourism – if there is no tourism, bye bye my dears,” he explained.
Both Hezbollah and Israel have both indicated they do not want a full-scale war, though tensions remain extremely high.
We mentioned in an earlier post that there have been reports that Egypt has said it will not accept the continued presence of Israeli forces along its border with the Gaza Strip. We now have some more detail on this.
Cairo, a key mediator in efforts to secure a ceasefire in the conflict, “reiterated to all parties that it will not accept any Israeli presence” along the strategic Philadelphi Corridor, state-linked Al-Qahera News said, citing a source.
The current sticking point in the negotiations is the insistence of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that any peace agreement must allow an Israeli presence along the Philadelphi corridor, and on a road bisecting the Gaza Strip, the Netzarim corridor.
Hamas has rejected any such presence, saying it contravenes a three-stage peace plan announced by Joe Biden at the end of May, and later endorsed by the UN security council, which ultimately envisages a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
“Egypt is managing the mediation” between Israel and Hamas “in accordance with its national security”, the source told Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egypt’s state intelligence service.
The White House insists that the peace plan outlined by Biden has been accepted by Israel, but Netanyahu has repeatedly called its terms into question, vowing his government would continue the war until Hamas is completely destroyed.
The UN’s Palestine relief agency, Unrwa, has described life for Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza as a “never-ending tragedy”.
“This is a complete stripping of humanity,” Unrwa wrote in a post on X a day after the Israeli army ordered Palestinians to evacuate an area east of Deir el-Balah which was previously classified as a “humanitarian area”.
“Families across the Gaza Strip continue to be forced to flee, forced to leave their homes and belongings behind. All they can now do is try to stay alive,” Unrwa added as it reiterated its call for an immediate ceasefire.
This is a complete stripping of humanity. A never-ending tragedy.
Families across the #GazaStrip continue to be forced to flee, forced to leave their homes and belongings behind. All they can now do is try to stay alive.
People have lost absolutely everything. #CeasefireNow pic.twitter.com/qL22oawYPM
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) August 26, 2024
The UN estimates the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced since last October, with many left with nowhere safe to escape Israeli bombardments. There are severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine across the devastated enclave.
Patients forced to flee al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza after Israeli evacuation order
We reported in an earlier post that one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals – the al-Aqsa martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah – has been emptying out in recent days as Israel has ordered the evacuation of nearby areas.
The military has not ordered the evacuation of the hospital, located in central Gaza, but patients and people sheltering there fear that it may be engulfed in fighting or become the target of an Israeli raid.
Gaza’s health ministry has called for the 100 patients inside the hospital, and the medical teams who had remained to care for them, to be protected.
Associated Press reporters saw people fleeing the hospital and surrounding areas on Monday, many of them on foot. Some could be seen pushing patients on stretchers or carrying sick children, while others held bags of clothes, mattresses and blankets. Four schools in the area are also being evacuated.
“Where will we get medicine?” Adliyeh al-Najjar told the Associated Press. “Where will patients like me go?”
Fatimah al-Attar fought back tears as she left the hospital compound heading in the direction of the tent camps. “Our fate is to die,” she said. “There is no place for us to go. There is no safe place.”
The Israeli military said it was operating against Hamas in Deir al-Balah and working to dismantle its remaining infrastructure there. Medical staff have denied allegations there are militant fighters hiding in hospitals.
Only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization.
Egypt has reiterated that it has not accepted an Israeli presence in the Rafah border crossing or Philadelphi corridor, according to a source quoted on state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV and reported by Reuters.
A key sticking points in Gaza ceasefire talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar has been Israel’s insistence on a presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5-km-long (9-mile-long) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
World Food programme operations ‘severely hampered by intensifying conflict’
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the food distribution centres and community kitchens it supports in Gaza are increasingly being disrupted by Israeli evacuation orders, as desperate Palestinians are squeezed into an “ever-shrinking space”.
In a press release, the WFP said:
WFP’s operations are severely hampered by intensifying conflict, the limited number of border crossings and damaged roads. In the last two months, amid continuing catastrophic hunger, WFP has had to reduce the contents of food parcels in Gaza as inflows of aid dipped and supplies dwindled.
With two, or occasionally three, border crossings open, roughly half of the required food assistance entered Gaza in July. August is set to end with a similar result.
WFP is also warning about the state of the war-scarred roads it uses to transport food assistance around Gaza. The shell craters and debris make driving slow and challenging for truck drivers even in dry weather. In two months, when rain and flooding is expected, most roads will become unusable.
🚨News alert 🚨
WFP’s operations in #Gaza are severely hampered by intensifying conflict, limited number of border crossings and damaged roads.
Read on 👇🏽https://t.co/8GBiqx9GDa
— WFP Media (@WFP_Media) August 26, 2024
The WFP Palestine country director, Antoine Renard, said the agency won’t be able to bring food to Palestinians in Gaza unless “urgent repairs” are done on these roads, which are critical for the safe transportation of food, water, medicine and hygiene equipment.
Israel imposed a complete siege on the territory at the start of the war and has only gradually eased it under pressure from Washington. The war has destroyed most of Gaza’s capacity to produce its own food and damaged much of its infrastructure.
In recent days, Israel has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza, the most since the beginning of the war, which broke out in October, prompting an outcry from the UN and relief officials over the reduction of humanitarian zones and the absence of safe areas (see post at 09.59 for more on the latest evacuation orders).
An Israeli strike on a tent on the coast in Gaza City killed six Palestinians and injured several other people, medics have told Reuters.
Israeli forces have arrested at least 15 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during raids since last night.
Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reports that the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said the detentions took place in the areas of Nablus, Qalqilya, Hebron, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
The occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state along with Gaza, has seen a surge in violence since the start of the war last year, and a major crackdown by Israeli security forces, which have made thousands of arrests.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 40,435, says health ministry
At least 40,435 Palestinian people have been killed and 93,534 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The ministry has said thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the enclave.
The ministry amended the number of Palestinians it reported as having been killed in the enclave in the last 24 hours to 30. Earlier, it said the toll was 33. The number of people injured over the last 24 hour reporting period remained at 66.
As we mentioned in the opening summary, Israeli evacuation orders forced many families and patients to leave al-Aqsa hospital, the main medical facility in Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of bombardments.
The hospital is close to the area covered by the evacuation notice.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said yesterday that an explosion approximately 250 meters (820ft) away from the MSF-supported al-Aqsa hospital triggered panic.
“As a result, MSF is considering whether to suspend wound care for the time being, while trying to maintain life-saving treatment.”
From around 650 patients, only 100 remain in the hospital, with seven in intensive care unit, it said, citing Gaza’s health ministry.