In the turbulent world of the Middle East, days of rage can cut both ways. Mounting anger in Israel and most of the world except for Iran over the murderous attacks perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Israelis last Saturday have led to a potentially explosive moment in the region today, as the IDF delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants Friday. 

The order came ahead of a possible ground offensive aiming to eradicate the Hamas terrorist group after its grisly assault on Israel, UN officials said. Earlier in the week a former Hamas chief had called for a global Islamic “day of jihad” on Friday to protest against Israel. That call by the  Qatar-based Hamas operative, Khaled Meshaal, put Jewish institutions around the world on a heightened state of alert. 

In the densely populated Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the order sent panic through civilians and aid workers already struggling under Israeli airstrikes and a blockade. The Israeli military sent one evacuation order directly Friday morning, warning the hundreds of thousands of civilians of Gaza City to flee deeper south into the Gaza Strip. Israel’s directive charged that Hamas terrorists were hiding in tunnels under the city.

“This evacuation is for your own safety,” the Israeli military said, in a warning it said was sent to Gaza City civilians.

The UN said it received a separate directive from the Israeli military shortly before midnight, giving all 1.1 million civilians of northern Gaza 24 hours to flee south.

An officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency at Gaza City said all the UN staff at Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.

Egypt is moving to avert a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip into the Sinai Peninsula. Earlier in the week border crossings at Rafah, the sole crossing point between Egypt and the Strip, were halted. 

The flurry of directives was taken as signaling an already expected Israeli ground offensive, though the Israeli military has not yet confirmed such a decision. On Thursday it said that while it was preparing, no decision had been made.

The Israeli military did not immediately confirm the broader evacuation order.

The UN said the broad evacuation warning it received for all of Gaza’s north also applies to all UN staff and to the hundreds of thousands who have taken shelter in UN schools and other facilities since Israel launched round-the-clock airstrikes Saturday.

“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” a UN  spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said. Another UN official said that the United Nations is trying to get clarity from Israeli officials at the senior most political level.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

A ground offensive in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas and where the population is densely packed into a sliver of land only 25 miles long, would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.

Hamas’s unprecedented assault last Saturday and smaller attacks since have killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including 247 soldiers — a toll unseen in Israel for decades — and the ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed more than 1,530 people in Gaza, according to authorities on both sides. Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas terrorists were killed inside Israel, and that hundreds of the dead in Gaza are Hamas members. 

As Israel pounds Gaza from the air, Hamas terrorists have fired thousands of rockets into Israel. Amid concerns that the fighting could spread in the region, Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes on Thursday put two Syrian international airports out of service.

Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to “crush” Hamas after the terrorists stormed into the country’s south on Saturday and massacred hundreds of people, including killings of children in their homes and young people at a music festival.

Amid grief and demands for vengeance among the Israeli public, the government is under intense pressure to topple Hamas rather than continuing to try to bottle it up in Gaza.

On Thursday, the Israeli military pummeled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, prepared for a possible ground invasion and said its complete siege of the territory — which has left Palestinians desperate for food, fuel, and medicine — would remain in place until Hamas terrorists free some 150 hostages taken during their grisly weekend incursion.

A visit by Secretary Blinken, along with shipments of American weapons, offered a powerful green light to Israel to drive ahead with its retaliation in Gaza following Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, told reporters Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground maneuver” should political leaders order one.