At least 500,000 Israelis have been evacuated and displaced in the 10 days since Hamas unleashed the bloodiest attack in the country’s history last Saturday.
According to AFP, the Israeli military disclosed this on Tuesday.
“There are about half a million internally displaced Israelis at the time,” Jonathan Conricus, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said in an online briefing.
“All the communities around the Gaza Strip have been evacuated as per government directives. We don’t want civilians near the combat zone,” Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the IDF added.
The 500,000 displaced Israelis also include communities around the country’s northern border with Lebanon, as tensions with another militant group, Hezbollah, rise. Missile attacks on the weekend from Hezbollah killed an Israeli civilian and a soldier.
In contrast, more than one million people have been displaced inside Gaza, which is one of the world’s most densely populated territories. Talks of a humanitarian corridor allowing aid to enter and people inside Gaza to exit have repeatedly broken down.
“We are talking about a significant humanitarian situation in Israel,” Conricus said. But he acknowledged that “the situation in Gaza is worse, and that he “wouldn’t want to swap tables for even a second.”
