The U.S. urges major changes to Israel’s evacuations in Gaza, a leaked memo says

TEL AVIV, Israel — 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.

The document recommends several “mitigating measures” including that the Israeli military “rescind lapsed evacuation orders to allow greater freedom of movement, hold operations at least 48 hours after issuance of evacuation orders to enable populations to safely move, and protect humanitarian sites, ensuring ongoing accessibility.”

The U.S. is concerned the Israeli military’s increasing evacuation orders in Gaza in the past month have driven repeated displacement of Palestinians and decreased the size of the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” for civilians, according to the document.

The State Department did not immediately respond to NPR for comment.

USAID said in a statement to NPR that while the agency does not comment on internal documents, “The humanitarian conditions in Gaza are incredibly dire, and the U.S. government is working relentlessly to increase assistance reaching the most vulnerable.”

The Israeli military has issued at least 20 evacuation orders in Gaza since July 22, a drastically increased pace over the previous10 months of Israel’s ground offensive, according to the memo. Several of those evacuation orders have been in the so-called “humanitarian zones,” driving civilians into increasingly smaller areas deemed safe by the military. The U.N. estimates that more than 88% of Gaza is now under evacuation orders.

“The continuation of this pace of evacuation orders could debilitate remaining humanitarian operations in the enclave and, as a result, continued assistance to the 2.1 million people in dire need,” the document says.

The “humanitarian zones” — which the document says have “long been problematic” — are small slices of land that the Israeli military says will be safe for Palestinians to shelter from airstrikes and receive humanitarian aid. But Palestinians say that the spaces are crowded and squalid, with little access to clean water or bathrooms. Garbage piles up in these areas, leading to disease. Meanwhile, aid groups also say it has become near-impossible to deliver aid to these areas.

The document also says repeated and often hurried evacuation orders have led to civilian harm. The Israeli military “has issued evacuation orders under unsafe conditions and in quick succession and with little warning before operations begin, heightening protection risks,” it states. It goes on to say that hostilities “posed significant protection risks to those complying with evacuation orders.”

NPR has independently interviewed multiple civilians in Gaza who have described Israeli airstrikes hitting their area just hours after they were told to evacuate, forcing them to flee in haste and dangerous conditions.

“If these evacuation orders are meant to protect civilians, they are in fact doing the exact opposite,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Muhannad Hadi said in a statement last week. “They are forcing families to flee again — often under fire and with the few belongings they can carry with them — into an ever-shrinking area that is overcrowded, polluted, lacking services.”

The U.S., along with Qatar and Egypt, has been trying to inch Israel and Hamas closer to a cease-fire deal to eventually end the war in Gaza. While talks continued this week, mediators said they presented a proposal that bridges the gaps between the two sides. Israel and Hamas have yet to reach a deal.

More than 40,000 Palestinians — many of them women and children — have been killed by Israeli forces in the war, according to Gaza health officials. The war was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people.