Gaza evacuation warnings from IDF contain many errors, BBC finds
Israel’s issuance of evacuation warnings to Gaza residents prior to attacks has been highlighted by BBC analysis to contain numerous noteworthy inaccuracies.
These warnings have presented contradictory details and at times incorrectly identified locations, causing confusion for Gazans endeavoring to seek refuge.
According to experts, these errors may potentially breach Israel’s obligations under international law.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied any claims suggesting that the warnings were ambiguous or conflicting.
In a statement, it said the alerts analysed by the BBC were only one element of its “extensive efforts to encourage the evacuation [of] civilians out of harm’s way”.
International humanitarian law requires attacking forces to give effective advance warning of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.
Israel says its warning system is designed to help civilians flee danger as it continues its war against Hamas. The system divides a map of Gaza into hundreds of numbered blocks.
Israel has produced an interactive online map of the blocks that geo-locates users, showing their live location and which block number they are in.
This IDF post from late January shows a social media post on X with a link through via QR code to the master block map.
Graphic showing annotated IDF social media post – highlighting the evacuation instructions, the shaded evacuation area and the QR code link to the IDF’s online master map
But people we spoke to have described struggling to get online to access the system, as well as finding the block system difficult to understand, notwithstanding the errors.
The BBC analysed the IDF’s Arabic language social media channels on Facebook, X and Telegram, where we found hundreds of posts containing warnings. The same warnings were often posted repeatedly.
We also searched for leafleted warnings which had been photographed and shared online. The IDF says it has dropped 16 million such leaflets over Gaza.
We have focused our analysis on warnings issued since 1 December, which is when the IDF launched its block system as a way of providing more precise instructions than previously, after coming under international pressure.
We grouped all of the IDF’s posts and leaflets that we found after this date into 26 separate warnings. The vast majority made reference to the master block system.
The IDF told the BBC it also warned of impending attacks through pre-recorded phone messages and live phone calls. Due to damage to Gaza’s phone network we have not been able to compile data on these phone calls.
And our analysis of leaflets was limited to those we could find photographed and shared online.
The 26 separate warnings we found contained specific information from the IDF that people could use to escape areas of danger. But 17 of them also contained errors and inconsistencies.
These included:
Ten warnings in which the evacuation zone shaded on the map cut blocks in two, potentially causing confusion
Seven in which arrows on the map that were supposed to point to areas of “safety” actually pointed to areas also under evacuation
In addition, one warning listed neighbourhoods as being in one district when they were actually in another. Another mixed up the block numbers of two neighbourhoods. And in a third, some blocks listed in the text were on the opposite side of Gaza to those highlighted on the accompanying map.
When we put these errors to the IDF, it did not respond to the issues we raised with the maps specifically but said the text of posts had been sufficiently clear.
It also said that when arrows were used to direct people to safety, “it is obvious that the arrows point to a general direction” and reiterated that the key information had been provided in the text.
These inaccuracies and errors may violate Israel’s obligation under international law to provide “effective advanced warnings”, says Janina Dill, co-director of the Oxford Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.
If the majority of warnings contain errors or are unclear to the point that civilians can’t understand them then, she says, “these warnings do not fulfil the proper function they have under international humanitarian law”.
This, adds Kubo Macak professor of international law at the University of Exeter, undermines their function to give “civilians the chance to protect themselves”.
