Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay in their homes after Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s more than 2.3 million people ahead of an expected ground offensive.
The Hamas authority for refugee affairs today told residents in the north of the territory to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation”.
I’m opposed to what Israel is doing but the truth is that Israel has repeatedly given back land they have captured during conflicts. So yes, they will not be annexing any land. As well, there is way too much international attention on them right now, whereas their approach of taking tiny bites has been subtle enough to avoid causing repercussions, so they most likely just go back to doing that at a later date.
The thing I don’t understand about this invasion is what’s stopping Hamas from just relocating south with the rest of the Palestinians? Sure they’ll lose some heavier equipment that might be hard to move but they don’t have that much of it to begin with. If they stay and fight they’ll lose the equipment anyways, and only end up getting killed. Whereas if they leave with the civilians, then Israel will look stupid after invading Gaza only to find nothing. Huge failure for them.
And they never built illegal settlements and evicted Palestinians from their homes. /s
Never claimed otherwise. In fact, I literally mentioned Israel stealing land when I wrote:
I guess that was too abstract?
In Gaza they stopped doing so in the mid 2000s.