The Biden administration is urging Israel’s military to make major changes to its “drastically increased” pace of mass evacuation orders that is driving repeated displacement of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, according to a U.S. Embassy memo obtained by NPR.
For the first time since the war began last October, Israel’s military withdrew evacuation orders and announced Palestinian civilians could return to their homes in an area of central Gaza on Thursday, a day after the U.S. government memo said officials had urged Israel to rescind evacuation orders it no longer deems necessary. A spokesman for the Israeli military, Nadav Shoshani, told NPR it declared the area a safe zone again following operations thwarting militant rocket launchers and retrieving an Israeli hostage and the body of a soldier.
The Aug. 28 cable by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, marked “sensitive but not classified” and addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department, contained an assessment by officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development on the effects of Israel’s evacuation orders on the Palestinian population.
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