Israeli ground forces are moving closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be Israel’s first official recognition that it systematically removes Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday evening, IDF Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops were twice forced to enter some areas such as the Jabaliya camp, “the intention is not to harm the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return. to their homes.”

He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to enter the south of the area “regularly” but not the north because there are “no civilians left.”

International humanitarian law experts have said such actions would amount to war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

On Thursday, an IDF spokesperson said Brigadier General Cohen’s comments were taken out of context during a discussion about Jabaliya and did not “reflect the objectives and values ​​of the IDF.” The spokesman also said the briefing was about background and that the brigadier general should not have been quoted in Hebrew media reports that emerged.

The Israeli army and government have repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during a month-long renewed offensive and intensified siege. Residents of the north who are still holding on say the new operation has created the worst conditions of the war so far. Israel said this pressure is necessary to combat the regrouped Hamas cells.

Rights groups and aid organizations have claimed that, despite the denials, Israel appears to be implementing a version of the so-called “general’s plan,” which proposes giving civilians a deadline to leave and then treating anyone who remains as a fighter.

It is unclear how many people are still in northern Gaza; Last month, the UN estimated that about 400,000 civilians could not or would not follow Israeli evacuation orders. On Wednesday, images on social media showed waves of several dozen displaced people walking south through bulldozed areas of Gaza City with children and backpacks.

Many had not eaten for days, Huda Abu Laila told the Associated Press. “We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. There is no food or drink,” she said.

An Israeli airstrike on the northern city of Beit Lahiya killed at least 15 people on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported, but there was no official account of the attack from Gaza’s health ministry due to communication problems. Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, posted a video of patients fleeing from the upper floors of the building when it was hit by artillery fire.

Israel bisected the area earlier this year by creating what it calls the Netzarim Corridor, separating what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip. In Tuesday’s briefing, Cohen also confirmed that northern Gaza has now been split again, to separate Gaza City from the more rural north.

Resettlement or permanent reoccupation of Gaza is not an official Israeli policy, but senior Israeli defense officials recently told the Israeli daily Haaretz that with no other alternatives on the table, the government is aiming to annex large parts of the territory.

Israel’s new war with the powerful Shiite Lebanese group Hezbollah, now in its second month, also shows no signs of slowing or ending. At least thirty people were killed on Tuesday evening in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Barja, near Beirut. Rescue efforts continued into Wednesday. According to Mahmoud Seif al-Dine, a local municipality worker, many of the dead were women and children.

“This was a civilian building in a civilian neighborhood, there were no indications that it had anything to do with Hezbollah or weapons. We don’t know why they struck, what we saw were women, children and civilians being killed,” Seif al-Dine said.

Tuesday’s attack was the second hit in Barja, a Sunni town that is home to about 27,000 people displaced by Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon over the past year. The attack made residents afraid to welcome displaced people, Barja Mayor Hassan Saad said.

Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets into Tel Aviv and other areas in central Israel on Wednesday afternoon, with at least one rocket landing in Ben Gurion’s parking lot without causing injuries. Video footage from the scene showed a car impaled by the remains of a Hezbollah missile.

Hezbollah’s new secretary general, Naim Qassem, said in a speech on Wednesday that the group had “tens of thousands” of fighters on standby and that nowhere in Israel was “off limits” to its attacks. He added that Hezbollah was now in a “defensive state” in southern Lebanon, indicating that Hezbollah fighters had dug into their positions and that the group was prepared for a war of attrition against Israel.

“We believe that only one thing can stop this aggressive war, and that is the battlefield – both on the border and inside Israel,” Qassem said. The group has said it is open to a ceasefire, but that comes with its own conditions for stopping fighting.