Consider This from NPR - Israel's Evacuation Order in Gaza

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

How do you evacuate more than a million people across a cramped, urban bombed out territory and get them to safety — in just one day? In the lead up to a likely ground war invasion, Israel on Friday gave residents of Gaza an ultimatum: move to the southern end of the territory, or face the full force of the Israeli military as it plans to go after Hamas militants on the ground. Israel's government is intent on stamping out the Hamas militants who planned and carried out last week's attack that killed 1,300 Israelis. Since then, Israel has launched a wave of airstrikes into Gaza that Palestinian health officials say have killed at least 1,500 civilians. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Mark Regev, Senior Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ari Shapiro speaks to Dr. Mustafa Barghouti a member of the Palestinian National Initiative in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. How do you evacuate more than a million people across a cramped, urban, bombed-out territory and get them to safety in just one day? We believe that it cannot happen in a safe manner and certainly not in 24 hours. That's Lynn Hastings, the UN's top humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories. In the lead-up to a likely ground war invasion,

Israel on Friday gave residents of Gaza an ultimatum, move to the southern end of the territory or face the full force of the Israeli military as it plans to go after Hamas militants on the ground. But with roads destroyed and entire city blocks reduced to rubble amid the ongoing conflict, that's not going to be possible for everyone. At an overwhelmed hospital in the Gaza Strip, for example, Dr. Nadal Abed said many patients there are still waiting for surgery or other crucial treatments and can't be moved. The wounded patient may have difficult injuries due to explosive multiple injury in head, in chest, in abdomen, in extremities. Consider this.

Israel's government is intent on stamping out the Hamas militants who planned and carried out last week's attack that killed 1,300 Israelis. Since then, Israel has launched a wave of airstrikes into Gaza that Palestinian health officials say have killed at least 1,500 civilians. We'll hear from a senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about what might come next and why Israel isn't doing more right now for civilians caught in Gaza. And we'll also look at what happens to the Palestinian civilians

trying to get out of the way of the fighting and what will happen if they can't in the small window they've been provided. It's Friday, October 13th. I'm Scott Detrow. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

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When we recorded this on Friday evening in Washington, that 24-hour ultimatum was already more than halfway over. Israel had given more than a million residents of Gaza just a day to relocate or risk being caught in a full-scale invasion. This all followed the surprise attack Hamas militants launched on Israel a week ago, which killed more than 1,000 people. The UN says an evacuation of this scale, 1.1 million people, would lead to devastating humanitarian consequences.

Earlier on Friday, NPR's Leila Fadl spoke to Mark Regif, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about what this means for civilians in Gaza. Does this call for civilians to evacuate mean a ground invasion is imminent? So obviously, you and the listeners will understand I can't go into operational details before things happen, for obvious reasons. But I can say this. The reason we've asked civilians to move out of where we expect fighting to happen is we don't want to see civilian casualties. And so we urge people who are next to Hamas strongholds to move away.

And people in the north where there's a whole network of Hamas tunnels and missiles and so forth, please leave the area. We don't want to see innocent civilians caught up in the crossfire. But where are they going to go? The borders are closed. Gaza's under siege. We're suggesting that they get out of that specific area where we know there will be intensive fighting. There are no perfect solutions here, but we're trying to save civilian lives.

We didn't want this war. This was forced upon us by that brutal, horrific attacks that we saw on last Saturday. We are responding. We want to hit Hamas and we'll hit Hamas hard. And we want to minimize civilian casualties as much as is possible. There's never been a war in modern history which hasn't involved civilian death, but we want to keep that number as low as possible. But the UN says that the time frame, the 24 hours, is impossible to move about 1.1 million people without devastating humanitarian consequences, and they're asking for it to be reversed. How much does that matter to you? Obviously, we take such matters seriously, but there's a dilemma here. On one hand, they say don't attack when there are civilians in the area. On the other hand, they say you can't ask the civilians to move. And there's a problem there because it's almost saying because Hamas works and has positioned itself amongst civilian population that they have immunity, preventing us from hitting back to their horrendous attack upon us.

And so within the framework of a wartime situation of many dilemmas, asking people to leave is the best realistic proposal. The UN, the US, many in the international community are calling for humanitarian corridors for aid to get in and paths for civilians to get out of Gaza. Why hasn't Israel created a path? I think people have to understand what the feeling is in Israel following the attacks over the last few days and specifically the big attack on Saturday. To ask the Israeli people today to start providing aid to Gaza while we have over 100 hostages there held illegally and who knows in what conditions.

After they have fired countless, hundreds of rockets on Israeli cities, after they have butchered in cold blood so many of our people. You can't declare war on a country, and that's what they did. They declared war on us. And at the same time say, well, you have to supply us with this and you have to supply us with that. No, if you declare war, there are consequences. What happened on Saturday, these were atrocities. That's very clear. It's been declared a war crime by human rights organizations, but some of the same human rights organizations say the cutting off of food, water, and power to over 2 million people could also constitute a war crime. What is the goal of starving the civilian population? There's no intention to starve the civilian population. That's just not true. What has to be said is clear. They attacked us. We didn't want this war. But it's illogical

to expect that Israel keep the crossings open and supplies going in and out. They attacked us brutally. And we are responding. You can't declare war and say, well, we still want normal relations. It doesn't work that way, not in the real world. And I'll give you an example. They complain that Israel has cut off the electricity. First of all, we know that they use the electricity for their own missile network to attack us. And second, their own rockets have destroyed parts of our electricity grid. So basically what we're being asked to do is that we have to fix the electricity grid that they destroyed with their rockets so that they can have more electricity to shoot more rockets at us. It's not logical.

What about the Rafah border crossing? It was open, but then it was struck three times. Is that an option for people to get out? Are there discussions? The rougher cross, the border crossing is between Gaza and Egypt, and that's decisions for, sovereign decisions for the Egyptian government. But there have been Israeli airstrikes on the crossing that caused it to close. So I'm asking about that. There have been Israeli airstrikes in the crossing in the vicinity on the Gaza side, not on the Egyptian side. And that's because there have been Hamas targets there. There's Hamas infrastructure there. But once again, if the crossing is open or closed, that's an Egyptian decision.

What is the strategy at this point to get the hostages out? I mean, could these airstrikes inadvertently hurt the captives there? I mean, Hamas is now claiming 13 have been killed in the strikes. So we say the following. Number one, the taking of hostages is against all the rules of international law. It's unacceptable. And there should be a consistent demand from the entire international community. The hostages have to be released unequivocally and immediately. The other thing that we'd say to Hamas is that we are watching, we are following,

and anyone involved in harming a hostage, anyone, we will, in the end, bring justice to them. In other words, if it takes one year or five years or 25 years, we will punish people who are involved in any harm done to hostages. That's Mark Regev, Senior Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. As we just heard, Palestinian civilians have largely been cut off from electricity, food, and medicine. For more on what Palestinians are facing right now, my co-host Ari Shapiro spoke to the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party in the occupied West Bank, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. You are geographically not far from Gaza in the West Bank, but you are a world away in the experience. I mean, it's maybe

a 60 mile distance. What are you hearing from people who you know living in Gaza today? Have you been able to reach people? Yes, we are, of course, following the matter because we have many doctors and nurses who are working there in our organization, Palestinian Medical Relief Society. And what we hear from them is horrifying because Gaza Strip, the 2.3 million people, are now under total siege by Israel. They are depriving people from water, electricity, food, and even medicines. Nobody can get to Gaza.

Nothing can be transported to Gaza. We have lots of supplies waiting even on the Egyptian side, but Israel bombarded the entrance to Palestine and the passage was bombarded. And Israel made it very clear that they would not allow anything into Gaza. What do the doctors tell you about their medical supplies? Do they have bandages? Do they have medicines? Do they have the basic necessities to treat injured people?

They are saying, they told us that the whole medical system is about to collapse. We received panic calls from patients with kidney problems who are going to die because there is no access to kidney dialysis. Oh, so beyond acute injuries, people with basic medical needs that need ongoing treatment can't get it. Exactly. And because of so many injuries and so many people shot by Israeli airstrikes, the whole system is collapsing. And you have to add to the fact that there is siege, is the fact that Israel is conducting indiscriminate airstrikes. These are not just bombarding certain places or houses or institutions. They're bombarding everything, universities, schools, clinics, hospitals. Many hospitals have already been evacuated because they were bombarded by airstrikes.

They are demolishing everything in Gaza down to earth. Can I just ask, you are, as I mentioned, both a medical doctor and a politician. And in a moment, I want to ask about your view as a politician. But if you were in Gaza right now as a medical doctor with such overwhelming need, what would you be doing? What would your approach be? I think my approach would be to try to help people as much as I can to help injured people overcome the injuries. You know, helping people survive will be the first goal. The second goal would be to try as much as we can to stay in Gaza and help the people who need us because so many old people, so many children, so many families, so many women

are unable to move. And the roads are destroyed. The streets are destroyed. The pipelines are destroyed. The infrastructure is totally destroyed. It's a matter, I mean, it's really awful. And when I talk to our people there, my heart breaks down because we are distant from them. We don't know how to help them. I was there in Gaza in 2014 when the war broke out. But people tell me it's nothing to be compared with now. It's total and complete demolishing of everything. Total and complete cleansing of everything. And so is it a feeling of guilt, anger? I mean, when you have conversations with your neighbors, with your friends, with people who live around you there in Ramallah, what do people say?

Frustration, anger, and fear that if the world, and especially the United States, allows Israel to conduct ethnic cleansing in Gaza, people are feeling the fear that this will come to the West Bank as well, and that this government in Israel, which is the most extreme ever, is capable of doing anything. If they allow, and mind you, I don't justify killing any civilian, whether Israeli or Palestinian, but what's happening now, what is going to happen is the worst crime ever of ethnically cleansing a whole population. Does that change your underlying philosophy? I mean, you've spent your whole life saying nonviolence is the correct approach.

To see this happen now, does it fundamentally change the way you view the world? No. As much as nothing changed my views when a sniper, an Israeli sniper, shot me twice with live ammunitions when I was treating an injured person, this did not change my opinion. I still carry the shrapnels, but I carry in myself the same deep belief in not only in nonviolence, but in justice as well. And that's why I'm so angry now. I am so angry because I never thought in my whole life that I will see, I will witness another act of ethnic cleansing in the 21st century.

And what worries me most is that if this continues, and if the United States allows this to happen, we will end up in a situation where the whole world, the people of the world, will stop believing that there is something called international law. Dr. Barghouti, if I may ask about the term ethnic cleansing, which you've used several times, according to the UN, the term has not legally been defined and is not recognized as a crime under international law. Tell me why you choose to use it in this instance. Because that's what happened to Palestinians in 1948 when Israel conducted, and I have to say that, 52 massacres against Palestinians and erased to earth, erased completely 522 communities. 72% of the people in Gaza today are refugees who lost their homes and their

communities back in 1948. I mean, their grandfathers and fathers. Now these are the sons of these refugees who were expelled from their country. And now they are trying to repeat the same thing with the people in Gaza. And ethnic cleansing is our crime, in my opinion. Do you see any potential for talks about humanitarian corridors? It's all in the hands of the United States now. Israel would not listen to any country but the United States. And the only country that has that leverage to tell Israel enough is enough and allow human beings to receive humanitarian aid is the United States.

So it is the responsibility of Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is an activist and member of the Palestinian National Initiative speaking with us from Ramallah in the West Bank. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. That was my co-host Ari Shapiro speaking with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. found couples who were successful had a really different way of talking to one another when there was a disagreement or a conflict. How to be brave in our relationships. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from NPR. This message comes from Wondery. Kill List is a true story of how one journalist ended up in a race against time to warn those on the list whose

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