As the drumbeat of an imminent Israeli military takeover of Gaza intensifies, panic and fear are sweeping across Gaza City, the main target of the looming offensive.
Memories of a previous Israeli siege of Gaza City and the complete destruction of Rafah in southern Gaza and Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza are fresh in the minds of hungry and war-weary Gazans who live in the path of the offensive and say they are too exhausted to move.
“These plans keep coming, and they’re all dangerous – dangerous escalations with dangerous consequences,” Abdullah Ahmed Hussein, a civil engineer in Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, which is in the firing line of the intended Israeli assault. “I expect to be displaced at any moment as the occupation increases its threats to invade.”
Why We Wrote This
Israel’s decision to launch an all-out offensive against Hamas in Gaza City will force its 900,000 Palestinian residents to find somewhere else to live. Exhausted by war and hunger, many find that prospect unthinkable.
Amid domestic protests in Israel and objections among Israeli military officials, it remains unclear whether the expected offensive will happen “fairly quickly,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, or whether it is still weeks away.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Eyal Zamir approved the outline for the offensive to conquer Gaza City on Wednesday.
Weary of displacement
An estimated 900,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, designated at an Israeli security cabinet meeting last week as Israel’s new priority military target.
The vast majority of residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas were displaced in October 2023 on Israeli military orders, and returned during a ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas last January, after living in ruins and crowded, disease-prone displacement camps.
In light of the Israeli decision to attack Gaza City itself, one common refrain dominates Gaza City’s rubble-strewn streets and makeshift tent camps: “Where do we go? We are tired of displacement.”
Since January, Mr. Hussein has been living in his partly demolished home, which he says is a vast improvement on the various camps where he and his family had lived in Jabalia, Rafah, and Deir al-Balah.
Now, with Rafah and northern Gaza in ruins, and central Gaza both full to bursting and set to be the target of Israel’s next offensive, Mr. Hussein says he has run out of options.
“I asked friends if they have any land to rent to stay in. It would be great to find any piece of land to pitch a small tent for my family and my parents,” says the father of three. “But there is no hope to find any place right now.”
Mr. Hussein says he is shielding his children from the news of the offensive and potential forced displacement.
Fady Swirki, a physical education teacher who lives in the ruins of his home in the Rimal neighborhood of central Gaza City, says leaving Gaza City is “unthinkable.”
Mr. Swirki is among the several thousand who never abandoned the city despite an Israeli siege and was not displaced beyond its borders.
“Gaza City is my life,” Mr. Swirki says. “It is part of my identity, my land. We’ve faced death and danger here, but leaving is impossible.”
The announcement of the Israeli takeover plans is also impacting prices. “When evacuation orders come, prices soar and transport becomes impossible,” Mr. Hussein says. “It is important to keep as much cash as we can.”
But something even more powerful than a lack of options and city pride is tying Gaza City residents to their land despite the imminent threat of an offensive.
It is a lack of trust.
Throughout the war, Gazans complain, the Israeli military has repeatedly ordered military evacuations that were depicted as temporary, but which turned into long-term military occupation, sometimes involving the wholesale destruction of entire city blocks.
“At the start, Israel said displacement would only last a few days, just for military operations,” recalls Mr. Swirki, a father of five children between ages 7 and 17. “But now it means something else. It means military control. If you leave, you might never return.”
“What happened to the people in the North Gaza governorate like Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia could happen to us, and we will never get the chance to return,” adds Mr. Hussein.
According to the United Nations, some 88% of Gaza’s territory is either classified as a militarized zone or subject to evacuation orders.
“Voluntary” migration condemned
Adding to these concerns is an anxiety that Israel will use the offensive as a pretext to drive Palestinians out of Gaza entirely.
According to Israeli media, the operation will unfold in stages: an evacuation period lasting several weeks, and then a military offensive, followed by a U.S. pledge to accelerate humanitarian aid.
The Israeli Defense Ministry has already created a “migration administration” to encourage and facilitate the mass “voluntary” migration of Gazans.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey have condemned the decision as an attempt to forcibly evict Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with an Israeli TV news channel, i24, on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu said Gazans will “be allowed to exit” from the besieged enclave prior to the offensive. The proposal comes as Israeli-induced starvation has killed 235 Palestinians in Gaza over the past month, according to local health authorities.
An Israeli reoccupation of Gaza would be a step toward “total destruction” that would uproot Palestinians from their homeland, worries Bakr Turkmani, an investigations officer at the Ramallah-based Independent Commission for Human Rights.
This, he says, would constitute “ethnic cleansing.”
The other option – to drive tens of thousands of people into Mawasi – is not viable, he points out. The 14-kilometer-long, 1-kilometer wide strip of coastline is already crammed with tens of thousands of displaced Gazans facing famine and disease.
Mr. Turkmani says Israel’s drive to push Palestinians out of Gaza City and the wider strip is a “test for the entire international system.”
Either foreign governments “live up to their own principles of human rights, or they are complicit,” he says.
