The human toll of the Israel-Hamas war has been truly terrifying. Israel has responded to Hamas’s murder of thirteen hundred civilians this past Saturday by launching a campaign of one-sided, vengeful slaughter of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel has killed more than fifteen hundred Gazans, at least five-hundred of whom are children, and wounded more than six-thousand through indiscriminate bombing that’s outdone the violence of the Ukraine, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars in its ferocity.

But this not-even-week-old conflict has the potential to get much, much deadlier and more dangerous. There is a strong possibility that the war could escalate, widening into a region-wide conflict — one that could wind up dragging even the United States into the fighting.

The latest disturbing news is that just before midnight last night, the Israeli military announced that everyone north of Wadi Gaza had twenty-four hours to evacuate to the region’s south. The implication is that Israeli forces will take no responsibility for whatever happens to whoever is left in northern Gaza by the end of today. The order is being widely interpreted as a sign that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to launch a ground invasion, and one that will almost certainly result in the mass murder of civilians: the United Nations says that moving 1.1 million people in that short amount of time is “impossible.” It has called for the Israeli government to rescind the order, which it says would transform “what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”