A new wave of mass displacement swept across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as Palestinians fled Gaza City under intensified Israeli bombardments and military orders to evacuate immediately.
The Israeli army, declaring its intent to seize the territory’s largest urban centre, told civilians to move southwards, warning that operations would be carried out with “great force.” The United Nations estimates nearly one million people live in Gaza City and its environs, many of whom have already been uprooted multiple times during the nearly two-year war.
Columns of families travelled on tractors, overloaded vans, and hand-pulled carts, carrying only what they could salvage. Behind them, smoke billowed over shattered neighbourhoods, with mosques, homes, and shelters reduced to rubble.
“We were forcibly displaced to the southern Gaza Strip under intensified shelling,” said Saeb al-Mobayed, who was fleeing along the coastal road. “Many buildings have been destroyed. Mosques near areas sheltering displaced people were also targeted, forcing us to leave.”
The Israeli military has directed civilians toward Al-Mawasi, a southern “humanitarian zone” where it promises aid and medical care. But displaced Gazans say the area is overcrowded, unsafe, and lacking the basics for survival.
“People who fled… found no place to stay — no tents, no water, no food,” lamented 36-year-old Khaled Khuwaiter, who fled from Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood. “Bombing and killings are everywhere. We have only God, because the world watches our slaughter and does nothing.”
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Gaza’s civil defence agency warned conditions in the south were dire, with “no shelter, no food, and no drinking water.”
Meanwhile, leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft rained down over Gaza City, urging residents to leave.
For many, however, evacuation has become synonymous with despair.
“Evacuation is humiliating,” said Mirvat Abu Muammar, 30, who fled with her husband and three children. “For two years, we have not known a moment of peace or sleep — only killing, destruction, and despair.”
The war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that left 1,219 dead, has now claimed at least 64,522 Palestinian lives, most of them civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry figures considered reliable by the United Nations.
As the conflict deepens, calls for an end to the bloodshed continue to mount globally, but for families on Gaza’s coastal roads, the struggle for survival has only intensified.