GAZA, (PIC)
“I no longer know what to do or where to go? I’m tired and I have no energy for anything,” with these words full of pain and despair over the situation in the Gaza Strip, Muhammad Zaqout expressed the tragedy of repeated displacement between shelters and displacement camps that have become targets of Israeli bombardment.
Zaqout chose to stay in Gaza City rather than respond to the calls for forced displacement issued by the occupation army to the south of the Strip. Between the option of staying, with its manifold suffering, and the option of searching for a safe place after losing his home in the devastating bombing of the Jabalia camp, Muhammad took refuge in the Hassan Salama school in the Al-Nasr neighborhood west of Gaza City.
Muhammad (45 years old) believed that by taking refuge in the school, his children would be safe from Israeli bombardment, but his expectations were disappointed, like the many hopes that this war would end, as he affirms. The man lost his daughter Aisha in the bombing that targeted the school, and many of his personal belongings that helped him and his family cope with the harsh life of displacement, after the fires consumed the classrooms where they were staying.
Many seek the relative safety of the UN-run shelters, guided by memories of past wars where these spaces provided a safe haven for them, after many UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip were prepared to serve as emergency shelters, equipped with generators, solar power systems, sanitation, and large water tanks. But the situation in this war is completely different.
Mohammed Fathi (37 years old) had hoped that these schools would provide protection for him, his wife, and their three children. He had sought refuge in one of these schools in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, before it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on July 14th.
The young man, who works in the field of law and whose office in Gaza was destroyed, says that the biggest lie he experienced during the war was the safe areas and protected shelters under international law.
He points out that he has moved between three shelters since the beginning of the war of annihilation, where the Israeli occupation forces have wiped out entire families. The occupation continues to violate the principles of distinction, necessity and proportionality.
Mohammed adds that dozens of families are searching for safety that is not available, as there is no place immune from the bombardment. “You don’t know when the missile will come?” he says, adding, “I don’t want to bury my children with my own hands, I don’t want to lose them.”
The young man affirms that he no longer has control over the course of his life in the face of the “horrific firepower used by the occupation forces to harm us and destroy our lives, even if it’s inside a classroom unsuitable for living, let alone the miserable environment we live in without adequate water and food supplies.”
The schools of Abdul Fattah Hammuda and Al-Zahraa in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City, which host thousands of displaced people, were not spared from Israeli bombardment. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documented the direct shelling by the occupation army of nine schools used as shelters for thousands of displaced people in Gaza City over eight days, destroying them over the heads of those inside.
The bombardment, according to the Euro-Med Monitor, resulted in the killing of 79 Palestinians and the injury of 143 others, mostly children and women, in addition to the disappearance of others under the rubble who could not be rescued due to the lack of appropriate rescue equipment.
The Monitor affirms in a documentation report issued on Friday that the bombardment and destruction of the schools over the heads of the displaced people within them had no actual justification, and the military necessity was absent, although the Israeli army in every instance tried to justify the bombardment by targeting a military or political activist, without the validity of this claim being proven.
It stresses that the occupation forces are adopting a systematic policy of targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip, who are protected under international humanitarian law, wherever they are, and depriving them of any stability, even temporary, in centers of displacement and shelter, insisting on imposing forcible displacement and destroying all the basic requirements of life within the ongoing crime of genocide for 10 months.
The data from the Government Media Office in Gaza indicates that the occupying army has targeted 174 inhabited shelters housing tens of thousands of displaced persons since the start of the war. The deliberate and direct bombardment without prior warning has resulted in the martyrdom of 1,030 citizens.
Al-Thawabteh, in an interview with the Palestinian Information Center, states that “the occupying army did not warn the Palestinians in the shelters of this bombardment, which means that it deliberately inflicted human casualties among them.”
He adds that the army is using ready-made and fabricated data, full of lies, “claiming that the resistance is using the shelters, and the promotion of this propaganda is nothing but an attempt to justify the massacres.”
Al-Thawabteh affirms that the occupation wants to inflict the greatest possible number of victims as a tool for political pressure on the course of ceasefire negotiations.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says that 120 of its educational institutions have been targeted by bombardment since the Israeli occupation began its war on Gaza.
UNRWA’s Communications Advisor, Louise Wateridge, explains, “People choose these schools because they believe that taking refuge under the United Nations flag, as stipulated by international law, will provide safety. For civilians, the schools provide safety during times of war. Under the United Nations flag, these schools must be protected.”
Wateridge adds in statements to Al Jazeera that civilians in Gaza are subjected to forced displacement on a daily basis, and estimates indicate that nine out of every ten people in Gaza have been displaced at least once, and many of them have been displaced up to 10 times since the start of the war.
She affirms that civilians are paying a heavy price for the repeated forced displacement due to the Israeli attacks that seriously violate the rules of international humanitarian law, especially the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
She points out that the Israeli bombardment of the shelters prevents the flow of humanitarian supplies to the displaced, and restricts the movement of humanitarian aid workers.
