GAZA, (PIC)
From one block to another in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) move carrying out displacement campaigns and forcing hundreds of thousands of exhausted Palestinians to flee once again and look for other places under heavy bombardment and gunfire and in the midst of massive destruction.
Salim Abu Salim hastily packed a few of his belongings and moved with his wife and children to a displacement camp in the west of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after the Israeli army issued an evacuation order against the families living in Block 128 of Deir al-Balah.
Abu Salim told a reporter for the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that it was the second time he and his family had been displaced from their home, expressing his concern that their displacement from the area would be longer than before.
He said that “leaving the house is equivalent to the soul leaving the body these days,” adding that most of those who leave their homes are surprised to see them destroyed, burned or looted after they return.
During the past few days, the IOF issued an evacuation order for the residents of several neighborhoods located to the east and south of Deir al-Balah and those who live in the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the streets around it. Many patients and their relatives started to leave the hospital for fear of their exposure to serious assaults and crimes at the hands of Israeli soldiers as happened before at hospitals across the Gaza Strip. However, the hospital’s medical cadre decided to stay and continue their duties.
According to the Deir al-Balah municipality, 25 shelter centers and a number of water facilities have become out of service after the IOF forcibly evacuated new neighborhoods in Deir al-Balah. About 250,000 citizens were displaced from these neighborhoods during the past 72 hours.
A few days ago, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has warned that the illegal evacuation orders that the Israeli army has been enforcing in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip and Mawasi al-Qarara in the west of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip have raised renewed fear of additional forced displacement and attacks on an area in which nearly two million people are crammed.
“Nearly half of the people living in the Gaza Strip are currently living in Deir al-Balah. They had been forced to flee their homes and relocate there from locations across the entire Gaza Strip, particularly from northern Gaza and Rafah. Those sheltering in Deir al-Balah traveled there under Israeli bombing from the air, land and sea, and Israel’s deliberate destruction of entire residential areas, hospitals, shelter centers, and public and private civilian facilities. Now, the military evacuation orders are asking residents of Deir al-Balah to move south and targeting Deir al-Balah and the southern town of al-Mawasi with illegal evacuation orders and bombing,” Euro-Med said.
“The Israeli army’s targeting of large areas within what it refers to as the ‘humanitarian zone’ with illegal evictions, as has occurred in Mawasi al-Qarara and Deir al-Balah, suggests that Israel is trying to squeeze nearly two million people into an increasingly smaller area until the population density reaches globally unprecedented levels, and displaced people are unable to even find a place to pitch their tents,” Euro-Med elaborated.
“Given that Deir al-Balah is home to numerous national and international humanitarian organizations, the intensifying attack on the city raises the possibility that some humanitarian efforts may cease, putting Gaza Strip residents at further existential risk,” Euro-Med further warned.
“The expansion of operations towards Deir al-Balah and the increasing systematic destruction of Rafah’s residential areas as well as Khan Yunis’ Hamad City and Qarara areas are evidence of Israel’s ongoing quest to completely eradicate any Palestinian life there, whether now or in the future,” Euro-Med said.
