This Yom Kippur, There Will Be No Forgiveness for Israel's Sins

Smoke rises from an Israeli strike, as displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip Friday. (Credit: Dawoud Abu)

Israeli media: Israel is not sending Gazans to ‘humanitarian spaces,’ but forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing them – war crimes and crimes against humanity that only serve to make the humanitarian disaster even worse, and perpetuate irreversible demographic change.

By SHai Grunberg, Reposted from Haaretz, September 30, 2025

In the midst of the destruction that Israel is wreaking in Gaza City and the mass famine that has already been declared in the northern Gaza Strip, Israel is trying to present the displacement of about a million residents of the city as an “evacuation to a humanitarian space” in the southern Gaza Strip. In reality, this is a mass deportation of a hungry and exhausted population to a small, crowded area lacking basic infrastructure and not safe from its shelling.

From the start of the Gaza war, Israel created a false narrative of humanitarian aid. Initially, it insisted there were “no limits” on entry at a time when it was undermining (and continues to today) the work of the United Nations and international aid organizations. When the shortages were revealed and it could no longer deny them, it directed the blame at Hamas for “looting” or at aid organizations, as if this lessened its responsibility toward the residents of the Gaza Strip.

Since late May, Israel has been working to bypass the UN and the international aid groups that work with it through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a private body operating in collaboration with the United States, whose compounds became death traps for those turning to its distribution centers for basic food supplies.

Thus, humanitarian aid was turned by Israel into a weapon and an instrument for pressuring Gaza’s civilian population and deepening its control over them. Israel has not been content with bypassing international bodies that operate according to humanitarian principles, but also has strived to neutralize their criticism of its policies.

This policy was given a legal seal of approval by the High Court of Justice. The first petition filed by Gisha and other organizations to compel Israel to allow significant amounts of aid into Gaza was rejected after a year, precisely when the government completely closed the crossings into the enclave. A second petition was not taken up by the court at all for months, until it had to be withdrawn in protest of the High Court’s functioning as a rubber stamp for war crimes.

On September 9, another link in the chain of lies was added when the army issued evacuation orders for Gaza City and environs, where more than one million people were living “for their safety.” Just three days later, Israel closed the Zikim crossing, which had been the only direct entry point for food and fuel into northern Gaza. Since then, no aid has reached the area, and the UN has warned that inventories of food and fuel will run out in days. Of 50 food distribution centers, 21 have been closed, leaving thousands of children without life-saving treatment for malnutrition.

Thus, the residents have been given the stark choice of death by shelling and starvation, or forced displacement. Tens of thousands of starving people are walking for kilometers with their meager possessions on their backs. The area that was designated as “humanitarian” on September 9 covers less than 12 percent of the Gaza Strip, and even after its “expansion,” it only reaches about 21 percent. Parts of it are actually sand dunes and without infrastructure, making it uninhabitable.

Impossible living conditions prevail in the southern Gaza Strip, another consequence of the reality that Israel imposes. The main water line from Israel to Deir al-Balah has been shut down since January, and desalination plants are inoperable due to power outages and a lack of equipment that Israel is blocking. As a result, many families are forced to drink contaminated water, risking an outbreak of disease.

Half of all intensive care beds and 36 percent of all hospital beds are in the north, while in the south, the health system is collapsing under the strain. According to the UN, 1.4 million people need shelter, but tens of thousands of tents and essential equipment are stuck at crossings awaiting Israeli approval.

International law states that the evacuation of a population can only be legal if it is temporary, carried out for the protection of civilians or out of military necessity, and provided that it is carried out to safe areas from which the residents can return to their homes at the first opportunity. In practice, none of these conditions have been met: Israel has not presented a real military need for the evacuation and is making life in the north unbearable to accelerate displacement, even as the areas to which the population is being pushed are unsafe.

Public statements by senior government officials that Gaza City will become “a ruin like Rafah and Beit Hanoun” make it clear that they have no intention of allowing the residents to return. Gisha and other human rights organizations have warned the government and military officials that the displacement orders are clearly illegal.

The term “humanitarian” masks a policy of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, which are war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the aid itself is used to exacerbate the existing humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip and perpetuate irreversible demographic change.

Yom Kippur is upon us, but as has been the custom of the State of Israel on Jewish holidays for years, the crossings will be closed or partially open, completely ignoring the dire consequences for the dying population. There will be no forgiveness for Israel’s sins and crimes in Gaza – the starvation, devastation, displacement, and extermination, while continuing to abandon the hostages to their fate.

Shai Grunberg is the spokeswoman for Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.

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