Andrea De Domenico, who heads the U.N. humanitarian office for the Palestinian territories, said that nine months into the Israeli war on Gaza, the U.N. “for the sole purpose of humanitarian planning” lowered the pre-war population estimate of a little less than 2.3 million, based on two numbers it has.

He said that 110,000 people have left Gaza and crossed into Egypt since October, according to the border authority, and more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Palestinian health authority.

This doesn’t preclude that some people who left might come back, De Domenico told a U.N. press conference from Jerusalem. “But just for our programming purposes, as the humanitarian community, we estimate that the population present in Gaza comprises about 2.1 million people.”

Major challenge

Many of the 250,000 Palestinians that Israel ordered to evacuate from the Gaza Strip’s second-largest city Khan Younis are heading toward already overcrowded areas near the sea where there is not enough water and no toilets, De Domenico said.

He said that it is “a major challenge” to even bring food to the two main places Palestinians are going: Muwasi, the coastal area designated by the Israeli army as a safe zone, and the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.

He stressed that Gaza is unique – “the only place in the world where people cannot find a safe refuge, and can’t leave the frontline.” Even in so-called safe areas, there are bombings.

De Domenico said Monday’s Israeli evacuation order from much of Khan Younis also included the locations the U.N. was planning for new warehouses, which are desperately needed since the main U.N. warehouses in the southern city of Rafah are off-limits because of ongoing Israeli military operations in that area and the closing of Rafah’s border crossing to Egypt.

De Domenico added that the U.N. is hoping to reach an agreement with Israeli authorities that the area for the new warehouses will be protected and not hit “by the military operation that could unfold in the coming hours.”

Then, he said, the U.N. could possibly restart humanitarian operations in the area.

The UN official said the U.N. is now able to meet basic needs in northern Gaza but getting aid into the south has been “very problematic” for the last four weeks, partially due to “the internal criminality linked to the smuggling of cigarettes.”

“That has become … the biggest challenge we have,” he said.

He explained that the U.N. has tried to find logistical solutions to deliver aid, but “there is no logistical solution to a political problem which resonates with the lack of law and order.”