Gaza is home to many people who loathe Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls this one of two Palestinian territories (the other is the West Bank) and the Israelis tried to reach them prior to their retaliatory attacks yesterday.
The Warnings
All this stuff about Gaza being an "open-air prison camp" and Gazans having nowhere to go to escape airstrikes once they have been warned by Israel to evacuate. Let's dispel some untruths. Firstly, Israel is unique in the emphasis it places on warning civilians to evacuate before…
— Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) October 11, 2023
Hamas attacked Israel by surprise and with great brutality. Israel responded by following international protocol to protect civilians. As you can see in these two examples below they are trying not to kill civilians. Hamas, however, knows the effect of a dead child on a sensitive Westerner and continues to use children as human shields, fire munitions from hospitals and imperil their citizens. The promise of martydom is significant to an uneducated Gazan, a characteristic which is manipulated to sinister effect.
🔴BREAKING 🇮🇱 Lieutenant Colonel Avihai Adrai, spokesperson for the #IDF (#Israel Defense Forces) in Arabic, delivers an unusual message to the residents of the #Gaza Strip, preparing them for the IDF’s entry into Gaza and ordering the evacuation of their homes for their safety. pic.twitter.com/0gDS73efVF
— Breaking News (@PlanetReportHQ) October 8, 2023
The IDF has issued specific instructions for residents in 7 areas of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to predetermined points. Targeted text messages are also outgoing. https://t.co/vV4UlkoKi2 pic.twitter.com/NMu6T6DbtA
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 7, 2023
Some history
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918.
The British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a public statement announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, on 2 November 1917.
In Palestine, the Mandate required Britain to put this into effect alongside the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population.
During the Mandate, the area saw the rise of two nationalist movements: the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs. Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine ultimately produced the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine.
In 1947 the newly created United Nations came up with a Partition Plan for Palestine. This envisaged the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states operating under economic union, and with Jerusalem transferred to UN trusteeship. Two weeks later, the British announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948. On the last day of the Mandate, the Jewish community issued the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
Gaza is not directly controlled by the Israelis. When Hamas won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, the opposing political party, Fatah, refused to join the proposed coalition, until a short-lived unity government agreement was brokered by Saudi Arabia. When this collapsed under pressure from Israel and the United States, the Palestinian Authority instituted a government without Hamas in the West Bank, while Hamas formed a government on its own in Gaza.
Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and many governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still occupied by Israel. This is not technically accurate.
Gaza has a significant population of Christians. And in this densely populated area not everyone supports the ruling power, a fundamentalist Muslim group funded by the biggest US-hater, Iran.