Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip, Sept. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

The Israeli military said it was opening an additional route for 48 hours that Palestinians could use to leave Gaza City as it stepped up efforts on Wednesday to empty the city of civilians and confront thousands of Hamas terrorists.

Hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering in the city and many are reluctant to follow Israel‘s orders to move south because of the dangers along the way, dire conditions, a lack of food in the southern area, and fear of permanent displacement.

“Even if we want to leave Gaza City, is there any guarantee we would be able to come back? Will the war ever end? That’s why I prefer to die here, in Sabra, my neighborhood,” Ahmed, a schoolteacher, said by phone.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Israel now estimates about 400,000 people, or 40 percent of those who were in Gaza City on Aug. 10 – when it announced plans to take control – have already fled. The Gaza media office says 190,000 have headed south and 350,000 have moved to central and western areas of the city.

A day after Israel announced the launch of its ground offensive to seize control of Gaza‘s main urban centre, tanks had moved short distances towards the city‘s central and western areas from three directions, but no major advance was reported.

An Israeli official said military operations were focused on getting civilians to head south and that fighting would intensify over the next month or two.

The official said Israel expected around 100,000 civilians to remain in the city, which would take months to capture, and the operation could be suspended if a ceasefire was reached with the Hamas terrorist group.

The prospects of a ceasefire appear remote after Israel attacked Hamas leaders in Doha last week, infuriating Qatar, a co-mediator in ceasefire talks.

Defying global criticism of the attack, including a rebuke by Israel‘s stalwart ally, the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would strike Hamas leaders anywhere.

In leaflets dropped over Gaza City, the Israeli military said Palestinians could use the newly reopened Salahudin Road to escape towards the south and that they had until lunchtime on Friday to do so.

But the situation remained chaotic and dangerous for civilians, who have been streaming away on foot, by donkey cart, or in vehicles in recent days.

Much of Gaza City was laid waste early in the war in 2023, but around 1 million Palestinians had returned there to homes among the ruins.

Israeli forces control Gaza City‘s eastern suburbs and have been pounding three areas in the southeast, north, and northwestern coastal areas of the city, from which tanks have been pressing towards the center and western areas.

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Growing up in communist Prague, I was exposed to antisemitism expressed largely by government officials and communist outlets, rather than by citizens themselves.

I learned in school about three major enemies of the socialist republic of Czechoslovakia: Germans seeking to conquer back the Sudetenland, American imperialists, and, you might have guessed, Zionists. And I was one of them.

The propaganda during the Six-Day War was unrelenting and hostile to Israel. Some years later, during my studies in medical school, I was invited to continue as a graduate student at the genetics institute after obtaining my MD degree. However, a year or so later, I was disinvited because I was Jewish.

Surprisingly, the old Jewish quarter in Prague was relatively well maintained — it was a big tourist attraction, especially for Germans, and a good source of Western currency for the state. There was also a permanent exhibit of art by Jewish children imprisoned in Theresienstadt during World War II. And we did read Anne’s Frank diary. Prague was still much better than the Soviet Union and Romania.

At that time, Western Europe, the US, and Canada were the beacons of freedom for everybody, including Jews. A few decades later, it appears to me that the sides have switched.

Central and Eastern Europe (not counting Russia) have become more hospitable to Jews, and Western Europe and Canada are outright hostile. The situation in the US is somewhat mixed. What happened?

Most Western officials and leaders blame Israel for the war in Gaza, and they accuse Israel of genocide, intentional famine, and starvation of Gazans. Hamas has become — or at least is becoming — a beacon of freedom, especially among younger generations. In the meantime, the EU, UK, and Canada are threatening Israel with sanctions and recognizing a State of Palestine, which is basically a reward for Oct. 7.

Affairs have further deteriorated after Israel’s bombing of a meeting of Hamas leaders in Doha last week. Everybody runs to the defense of Qatar — after all, Qatar is considered an “honest” mediator between Israel and Hamas. This is the same Qatar that is the instigator of anti-Zionism and antisemitism by infiltrating Western institutions, particularly universities and subverting the education of Western values into support for radicalism, and is also the host of Hamas leaders and financiers, including those who planned the October 7 massacre.

Do Western countries really believe that Qatar, led by an emir with three wives, with a track record of slave working conditions of its foreign workers and with funding of Hamas terrorists, deserves support?

Furthermore, the hate in Western Europe is not being directed just at Israelis (which is still wrong, since Israel is not a monolith) — but against all Jews.

Jews, and particularly Israeli Jews, are disinvited from conferences, art performances, collaborations with their colleagues, sports events, and more. They are dehumanized and physically attacked on the streets of Western cities. The Spanish Prime Minister has been attempting to throw out Israeli athletes from several competitions because they were attacked by pro-Palestinian demonstrators rather than preventing demonstrators from attacking Israelis.

What is going to happen to Jews living in the West? Will they really be protected? Overall, Western governments appear to be willing to throw their Jewish citizens under the bus. Why is that? Do they really trust Qatar as an honest mediator, and even more as the most important non-NATO ally? Do they pretend they’ve never heard about Qatar’s subversive role in Western countries and support of the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they afraid of their increasing Muslim populations due to immigration and high birth rates in their own countries? Don’t they realize that they are falling into a moral morass at an accelerating rate?

It is unclear how long Western outrage at Israel will last. Is it going to be short-lived, like when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981? Or will the West try to humiliate Israel and force (or at least attempt to do so) a solution to the war that leaves Hamas in power and isolates Israel internationally? One can only hope that the West, led by the US, will make the right decision not only for Israel, but for all democratic countries.

Dr. Jaroslava Halper has been a professor of pathology at The University of Georgia in Athens, GA for many years. She escaped from communist Prague because of antisemitism, and lack of freedom and free speech. The gradual increase of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in certain circles in her second homeland, and the devastating October 7 massacre by Hamas, led her to realize that more active engagement is necessary to combat antisemitism, including anti-Zionism.

Benjamin Netanyahou and Marco Rubio. Photo: David Azagury, US Embassy Jerusalem

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador Mike Huckabee visited the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was incensed by this visit, and publicized a long condemnation by the PA Jerusalem Governorate against what they called a “crime” against Islamic holy places:

The participation in these invasions by high-ranking American officials in an official capacity constitutes unacceptable collusion with the occupation’s policy, and dangerous willful blindness to the daily crimes committed against the holy city, its residents, and its holy places.

When Jews and Christians pray at the Western Wall or on the Temple Mount, the PA condemns what they call “Talmudic ceremonies.” The visit “offends the feelings of our Palestinian people”:

The Jerusalem Governorate viewed the invasion of the occupation’s Prime Minister — Benjamin Netanyahu, American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and American Senator [sic, Ambassador] Mike Huckabee into the Western Wall plaza, and the fact that they held Talmudic ceremonies at this purely Islamic site, as a provocative step that offends the feelings of our Palestinian people and constitutes a blatant violation of the historical and legal status quo in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Even though Muslims built a mosque in Jerusalem on the site of the Temples specifically because it was a Jewish holy site, today the PA proclaims that the Western Wall is a solely Islamic site:

The governorate emphasized that the Western Wall is an inseparable part of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and that it is part of the Islamic Waqf lands under Palestinian sovereignty. It further stressed that there is no legitimacy for any Israeli or foreign presence within it, without the approval of the relevant Palestinian authorities.

The PA even threatened that this “escalation” would have “consequences”:

The governorate warned of this escalation’s consequences on the situation on the ground within the city. It emphasized that the Palestinian people would not agree to any harm to the Arab identity of Jerusalem or its Islamic and Christian holy places, and that they would resist all attempts to impose the occupation’s sovereignty over the land and the people. The governorate called on the international community… to curb the occupation’s violations and stop the American involvement in support for the Judaization projects of the occupied city.

[PA Jerusalem Governorate, Facebook, September 14, 2025]

The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.