Israel’s Gaza offensive pushes hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into an ever-shrinking bubble
By Tim Lister and Oren Liebermann
(CNN) — The Israeli military is extending its ground operations deep into Gaza, creating a large buffer zone between the Strip and Israeli territory and pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into an ever-smaller area on the Mediterranean coast.
By CNN’s tally, the Israel Defense Forces has issued 20 evacuation orders since March 18, encompassing large parts of Gaza, including all of Rafah in the south.
In all, according to the United Nations, some 400,000 people have been told to move over the past three weeks, as the Israeli military intensifies efforts to force Hamas to free Israeli hostages. In the process much of Gaza has become uninhabitable or out of bounds.
The streets of Gaza City were crammed with waves of fleeing civilians Friday, carrying what they could as they left other parts of central and northern Gaza.
One displaced man, Raed Radwan, watched as hundreds more people entered the neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, describing it as “completely filled with tents and displaced families.”
“I see tents and people lining both sides of the road in heartbreaking conditions.
Bulldozers are clearing the rubble of bombed homes to make space for more tents,” he told CNN.
Hatem Abdulsalam, also in Gaza City, told CNN that he could not “describe what we’re suffering due to garbage, flies, mosquitoes and strange insects, they are everywhere due to the waste piling up in the streets.”
“You see tents for the displaced everywhere, even among piles of garbage, because of the lack of space.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday that more than two-thirds of Gaza is now either under active displacement orders or designated as “no-go” zones – areas where humanitarian teams are required to coordinate their movements with Israeli authorities.
The Israeli strategy, set out by Defense Minister Israel Katz, is to empty large parts of Gaza and treat anyone staying behind as a combatant. Israeli officials have spoken of ratcheting up the pressure on Hamas to force it to make concessions on the release of the remaining hostages.
“Many areas are being captured and added to the security zones of the State of Israel, making Gaza smaller and more isolated,” Katz said on a visit to Gaza last week.
Katz spoke of “cutting Gaza into parts, even in places like the Morag route, where we have not operated until now.”
The Morag Corridor refers to the dismantled Jewish settlement of Morag in southern Gaza that once existed between Khan Younis and Rafah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that with the occupation of the corridor, “the encirclement of Rafah has been completed.”
A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Israel is planning to hold a significant portion of Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time.
Still, after 18 months of war, Israel is still facing a dogged adversary.
In August last year, Israel declared that Hamas’ Rafah Brigade had been defeated as it established control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border. But earlier this week, the new IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told Israeli troops in Gaza, “I expect you to defeat Hamas’ Rafah Brigade and to achieve victory wherever you operate.”
And on Saturday, three rockets were fired from southern Gaza towards Israel, despite the IDF’s control over much of the area.
Israel’s strategy may have another purpose; to make life so unbearable for Gazans crammed into an ever-smaller pocket of territory without proper shelter that they begin to head for the exit.
Katz suggested as much when he said: “We are working to advance the plan for the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents, in accordance with the vision of the US President,” referring to Donald Trump’s controversial plan to relocate Palestinians in Gaza and redevelop the territory.
At the White House last Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want.”
Trump had “put forward a vision, a bold vision, which we discussed as well, including the countries that might be amenable and are amenable to accepting Palestinians.” Netanyahu said.
But at least in public, Trump showed little enthusiasm for following through on that vision.
For civilians, the unrelenting misery of the last 18 months has just got a lot worse – especially as no aid has entered Gaza for six weeks. The United Nations says it has storage and distribution sites within the displacement zones.
“Overcrowded shelters are in terrible condition, service providers are struggling to operate, and resources are being depleted,” OCHA said on Friday.
“Everything is running extremely low: Bakeries have shut down, life-saving medicines have run out, and water production has been drastically reduced,” the agency said.
It added that many of its efforts to distribute what aid is left within Gaza are blocked by Israeli authorities.
Gaza’s health ministry says that 37% of essential medicines are now completely out of stock, as are more than 50% of cancer drugs.
The United Nations and several NGOs, as well as civilians in Gaza who have spoken with CNN, say hunger is spreading.
Israel implemented the blockade in March to pressure Hamas into accepting new terms for an extension of a ceasefire agreement which had been in place since January. But there is no sign of a new ceasefire being agreed.
CNN has spoken with just a few of the tens of thousands on the move. They are exhausted and disoriented, confused as to whether to obey evacuation orders or hunker down.
Thirty-year-old Faisal Jamal Faisal from Al-Shujaiya in central Gaza arrived in Gaza City with scant possessions.
Speaking as drones buzzed overhead, Faisal said he had stayed at home despite one order to leave. Then an adjacent building had been struck and many people killed, and yet another evacuation order was issued. So he left.
Surrounded by eight members of his family, five of them children, Faisal said: “We don’t know where we are going, wherever our feet take us. We have left everything behind us.”
Gesturing towards his children, he asked: “What have they seen from life, no education, no playing, no sense of childhood?”
The UN Human Rights Office says Israeli strikes have reduced the shelter available, calculating that in the three weeks since March 18, “there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people.”
“In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children,” the office said.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for a response to the claim.
Israel has insisted that its strikes are precisely targeted, and care is taken to warn civilians of impending military operations.
That’s of little comfort to 71-year old Abu Mohammad, who suffers from glaucoma and diabetes and is now in Gaza City with nowhere to go.
Visibly distressed and struggling to move, he told CNN on Friday: “Maybe this is the twentieth time we have been displaced. Life has no meaning or future, even the past has been taken from us.”
The-CNN-Wire
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