Israel’s Military Has Shrunk Gaza’s Humanitarian Zone by a Fifth
The Israeli military has designated just one area of the Gaza Strip as a “humanitarian zone” for displaced people — and that area keeps shrinking.
In the latest downsizing, the military on Saturday ordered the evacuation of two more parts of central Gaza that had been part of the humanitarian zone. Similar orders have forced more than 200,000 Palestinians to relocate over the last week alone, according to the United Nations.
A New York Times analysis of the latest orders showed that the zone has shrunk by more than a fifth in recent weeks, going from encompassing nearly 17 percent of the Gaza Strip to 13 percent now. Maps and analysis of satellite imagery show that the zone is already overcrowded, frequently damaged by strikes and lacking sufficient medical services.
The Israeli military has said its recent evacuations and operations have targeted a renewed Hamas insurgency, and it accused Hamas of launching rockets from the areas that came under the latest evacuation order on Sunday.
But the repeated redrawing of the zone’s borders is one more burden among many on Gaza’s 2.2 million people.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, said on Sunday that evacuation orders had affected “almost everyone in Gaza,” adding that many had been forced to flee once a month since the war began in October.
The orders bring “more misery, fear and suffering for people who have nothing to do with this war,” Mr. Lazzarini said on social media.
The Israeli military recently ordered evacuations in tandem with a ground operation in the southern city of Khan Younis, and on Tuesday it said that operation had concluded, with its forces killing more than 150 militants. In a statement, Hamas said the withdrawal revealed “horrific scenes of widespread destruction.”
The withdrawal of Israeli forces allowed some Palestinians to return to the area, where the Palestinian civil defense agency said that its emergency and rescue crews recovered nearly 300 dead bodies on Tuesday.
Some Gazans, weary of the continued orders to move, have chosen to ignore them. Mohammed Harbi, 33, said he received an automated phone call from the Israeli military on Sunday afternoon ordering him to evacuate Nuseirat in central Gaza and head to the humanitarian zone. But after five consecutive displacements, he decided he no longer wanted to put his wife and two young children through another one.
Besides, Mr. Harbi said in a phone interview, he now believes that “there is no humanitarian zone at all,” and that “there is no safety, only despair.”
Duaa Fura, 35, and her nine family members left their home in northern Gaza in the first week of the war and went to central Gaza, moving around multiple times and settling in the Bureij neighborhood nearly a month ago. But on Sunday, the family received some dreaded and familiar news from their neighbors, telling them that another evacuation had been called.
“People started leaving and running in the streets,” said Ms. Fura, who joined the crowds, running until she found a taxi to drive her and her family to the city of Deir al-Balah. “I have seven children who are exhausted from the displacement and running,” she added.
Like many displaced Gazans, Ms. Fura and her family were living in a tent that they could dismantle and take with them when they had to move. She said that if the Israeli military were to order them to move yet again, “We will do the same thing: take the tent, boxes and bags and run.” She added, “This is our life now.”
Osama al-Sammak, a 33-year-old motion graphics designer, left Bureij with his young daughter and pregnant wife on Thursday when bombardment began intensifying in the area. Just four days after they took shelter at his aunt’s house in Nuseirat, the evacuation order on Sunday sent the family fleeing once again, this time to another aunt’s house in Deir al Balah, where they would be relatively close to a functioning hospital if his wife went into labor.
Mr. al-Sammak said most Gazans had few options for shelter. “People are sleeping on the streets. There is no more place for any tents at the beach or in Mawasi,” he added, referring to the humanitarian zone.
Lauren Leatherby and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London, Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar, and Iyad Abuheweila from Istanbul.
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