20 July 2025
This morning, Sunday 20 July, the Israeli military issued new forced displacement orders targeting nine blocks in the southwestern areas of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. These orders directly endanger vital humanitarian and primary healthcare sites, including those provided by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), and are accelerating the systematic dismantling of Gaza’s already-decimated healthcare system.
Several humanitarian organisations’ offices and guesthouses have been ordered to evacuate immediately. Nine clinics, five shelters, and a vital community kitchen have been forced to shut down. Among the impacted facilities is MAP’s Solidarity Polyclinic, one of the last lifelines in Gaza’s shattered health system. The clinic provides critical care, including physiotherapy and mental health services, to around 320 patients a day – many of whom are severely malnourished and have no access to alternative care.
The forced displacement orders do not allow for the transport of lifesaving medical equipment or supplies, thereby further obstructing efforts to provide emergency assistance to a population that has endured 21 months of bombardment, repeated forced displacement, and deliberate starvation – a population that is now being pushed beyond the limits of survival. It is in this dire context that UN experts and human rights organisations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide and extermination against the Palestinian people.
Steve Cutts, MAP’s Interim CEO, said: “This latest forced displacement order is yet another attack on humanitarian operations and a deliberate attempt to sever the last remaining threads of Gaza’s health and aid system.”
“MAP now has to suspend critical services we have been providing to the Palestinian population, including a primary health clinic that serves hundreds of civilians every day. With Israel’s systematic targeting of health and aid workers, no one is safe. Not only are we prevented from carrying out our lifesaving work to support Palestinians, we are also unable to protect our own teams.”
Key infrastructure, including a major water desalination plant that provides clean water to people driven from their homes, also falls within the forced displacement orders and remains at high risk.
This latest escalation comes at a critical moment in Israel’s genocide, amid the deliberate, mass starvation of Gaza’s population. Food is being systematically blocked from entering Gaza. Markets are empty. More than 5,800 children were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in June alone and some are fainting in the streets.
Steve Cutts added: “Newborn children are starving to death as mothers are unable to produce breast milk due to their own malnutrition and Israel cruelly restricts life-saving baby formula from entering Gaza. Israeli forces have stooped to new depths of depravity, having now killed more than 900 Palestinians attempting to reach food to feed their starving families.”
Healthcare workers themselves are also starved and exhausted, and with hospitals overwhelmed, they are unable to cope with thousands of injured and ill Palestinians.
World leaders, including those in the UK, cannot continue to stand by while Gaza’s population is starved, displaced, and denied the basic right to survive. The evidence of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza is impossible to ignore. Its suffocating siege and renewed military offensive are destroying the health system, starving two million people, and threatening the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
These atrocities demand immediate and effective action to ensure the protection of Palestinians and humanitarian space, the lifting of the siege, and for food, water, fuel, and medical aid to flow freely and safely into Gaza. This can only be achieved through an immediate and permanent ceasefire as the first crucial step. The UK government is not doing nearly enough to put real pressure on Israel and its complicity with these war crimes must end. The UK must not continue to be an ally to atrocities.
