Planned evacuations on Saturday of United Nations staff and international citizens including more than a dozen Irish people from the Gaza Strip have been postponed as Israel has reportedly refused to guarantee the evacuees safe passage.
Organisations and embassies coordinating the evacuations of foreign nationals and Palestinians with dual nationality had been informed by the Unit for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (known as Cogat), which is responsible for implementing the Israeli government’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, that there would be a five-hour window for the evacuees to cross the border at Rafah into Egypt on Saturday.
However, at midday on Saturday, Cogat cancelled the crossing with a statement that said: “Due to the concerning information received, we instructed to get back [sic] and stay away from the area.” Cogat provided The Irish Times with copies of both statements.
A UN source later told The Irish Times that the border crossing had been cancelled as the Israeli authorities would not guarantee safe passage for the evacuees. Just days earlier, on the 9th and 10th of October, the Rafah crossing was struck by Israeli air strikes as hundreds of people with permission to leave and foreign passports attempted to leave Gaza and an unrelenting campaign of aerial attacks conducted by the Israeli military.
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Israel cut off supply of electricity to Gaza following the massacre of 1,300 people in southern Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza.
Since the attack, the Israeli authorities have refused to allow food and humanitarian aid supplies arriving in Egypt to be delivered to Gaza through the Rafah crossing; while the already fragile Gazan healthcare system is facing a total collapse without new medical supplies, water or electricity.
Located in the southern part of Gaza, Rafah has now seen an influx of tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians after Israel announced on Friday that the local population of the northern half of the Gaza Strip – an estimated one million people – should leave as it intensified its military campaign against Hamas. Palestinians and some Egyptian officials fear that Israel is planning to displace Gazans by pushing them through the southern border with Egypt.
Yara Alagha, an Irish Palestinian with 10 family members trapped in Gaza including several with Irish citizenship, said: “We currently have a situation whereby the death toll of Gazan civilians has surpassed 1,900 people, including 614 children and Israel is refusing to allow for facilitation of humanitarian corridors and safe passages for innocent civilians to leave. This is a genocide, there is no other way to comprehend it.”
Alagha is critical of the visit to Israel this week by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and believes it “further emboldened Israel’s attack on Gazan civilians”.
The Department of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment but has previously said it is providing consular support to Irish citizens in Gaza.