Thousands of Palestinians began fleeing from the besieged northern Gaza Strip to the southern part of the enclave in cars, trucks, donkey carts and on foot after Israel issued an evacuation order.
Among them was Amal al-Shanty, who was walking with her family, including several children.
“We don’t know where we’re going. I can’t imagine we’ll be displaced again,” Alchanti said as the family dragged their luggage down the street on Friday.
Gazans began pouring south after the Israeli military on Friday told half of Gaza’s population, about 1.1 million people, to move from the northern Gaza Strip for “the safety of their families.”
The order comes after nearly a week of heavy bombing by Hamas following its deadly incursion into Israel a week ago. This alarmed the United Nations, which said it “considers that such movements cannot occur without devastating humanitarian consequences”.
Israel’s latest move has also aroused deep concern in neighboring Egypt. In addition to the border crossing in Israel, the Egypt-Gaza corridor only has the strictly controlled Rafah crossing. Cairo has resisted pressure to allow large numbers of Palestinians to flee to its territory. On Friday, Egypt’s foreign ministry warned that the order to leave was a “serious violation” of international humanitarian law.
Alshanty said she believed her hometown of Gaza City would be razed to the ground and its residents forced into Egypt. Israel “told us to go south in the direction of Rafah because they would destroy the city and drive us into the Sinai Peninsula,” she said.
For Palestinians, the mass movement echoes the displacement that characterized the founding of the Israeli state. “Today is the worst day I have ever experienced as a Palestinian. This is one second disaster day“, said Basel al-Sourani, international advocacy officer at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, using the Arabic word “catastrophe” used by Palestinians to describe the events of 1948.
“It’s very heartbreaking,” he said. “It is shameful that the international community only protects one side in this conflict. War crimes are happening before everyone’s eyes.”
Israel is planning a ground offensive in response to the worst attack in the Jewish state’s history. The attack, in which Gaza-based Hamas militants crossed into Israel, killed more than 1,300 civilians and soldiers and kidnapped dozens more. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has killed nearly 1,800 people and injured more than 6,300.
As people fled on Friday, the United Nations said more than 423,000 people in Gaza had been internally displaced, up from 187,000 three days earlier. “Whether we will come back, no one knows,” Surani said.
For many people in northern Gaza, leaving has not been easy. Evacuation orders were issued after Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks reduced parts of the city to rubble and left many streets impassable. Gas stations were open briefly on Friday and then closed, citing government orders to conserve fuel.
There is no public transportation, and in a poor area where children make up almost half the population, many families don’t have cars and nowhere to go south.
Hamas’ interior ministry called on people to stay where they were. “We remain in our lands, homes and cities… There will be no displacement or evacuation,” Izzat al-Reshiq, a member of the militant movement’s politburo, said on social media site X .”
Israel’s neighbors Egypt and Jordan are wary of the Jewish state’s intention to completely expel Palestinians from their land. Those fears were heightened this week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gazans to leave the blockade, without specifying where they should go.
Ayman Safadi, the foreign minister of Jordan, which borders the Israeli-occupied West Bank, warned on Thursday that there were attempts to “shift the problem to neighboring countries”. He said all Arab countries confirmed at an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Wednesday that they would “collectively fight” any attempt to expel or “transfer” Palestinians from their homes.
As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens, Egypt has resisted growing pressure from the United States and other countries to open a humanitarian corridor to the Sinai Peninsula for Palestinians fleeing Israeli aerial bombardment and an expected ground offensive.
Gaza’s population includes many Palestinians displaced by Israel’s last war. Gazans fear that if they leave their homes, they will not be allowed to return.
“Calls to evacuate half the population have prompted many hypotheses about forced transfers and displacement at the local and regional scales,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“The history of the conflict resonates. Whatever the intentions of Palestinians fleeing attacks in the past, their subsequent displacement became permanent.”
Cairo prefers to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing, but Israel has warned it will bomb any trucks carrying supplies.
Senior EU diplomats have led Western diplomatic efforts to persuade Egypt to allow the use of the Rafah crossing to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza, but Cairo has rejected the demands, two people involved in the negotiations told the Financial Times.
“They were not prepared to think about what it would be like to have 2 million people trying to cross into Egypt in 72 hours,” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Frankly, even that’s physically impossible.”
Egyptian officials say they lack the infrastructure to handle the influx of people from the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula, and they are already struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people arriving from other countries, including Syria and Sudan.
“As Palestinian suffering intensifies and more displaced people head to Rafah and Egypt, pressure on Egypt is likely to increase,” Hanna said. “The spectacle of utter poverty in Gaza, coupled with the international response, will Pressure the Egyptian authorities to allow Gazans to cross the border.”
The population movement comes at a time when Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are facing an increasingly serious humanitarian crisis after Israel cut off electricity, water, fuel and food supplies in the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s health ministry has warned that the overwhelmed health system is beginning to collapse.
Some people in northern Gaza believe the best option is to stay home. “I was confused whether we should go or stay,” said Mai Youssef, a mother of three who lives in western Gaza City. “But my husband and I decided to stay here with our family because they refused to leave. , and we will not leave them.”
The United States is working to establish a “safe zone” for civilians in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday. But Gazans are skeptical that it can provide real security.
“We face injustice and humiliation,” Hisham Saleh said as he drove his wife, children and two sisters to the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah. “I hope I’m dead before I see this.”
Additional reporting by Simeon Kerr
Svlook
