GAZA, (PIC)
In Gaza, forced evacuation does not seem to be an emergency event read within a limited military context, but rather turns with each new wave into a moment of complete collapse of daily life, and a forced resetting of people’s lives to the rhythm of fear and permanent displacement.
With the repetition of evacuation orders issued by the Israeli occupation forces in more than one area within the Strip, scenes of displacement that have become a permanent part of the Palestinian landscape are renewed, not as an exception, but as a continuous state that recurs whenever the circle of bombardment and escalation expands.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) pointed out that its researchers monitored the occupation’s return in recent days to the policy of bombing homes or places of displacement, after contacting a number of residents of the targeted locations to evacuate them.
The Center emphasized that the phone calls or evacuation orders issued by the occupation forces before carrying out attacks do not exempt them from legal responsibility, nor do they confer any legitimacy on the targeting of civilian objects, warning that these measures confirm that the occupation forces possess prior knowledge of the presence of civilians, the nature of the targeted areas, and the expected effects of their attacks, which makes using them as a tool to pave the way for operations of destruction and collective terror a grave violation of the rules of international humanitarian law.
Crucial moments
In the Al-Katiba area in central Khan Yunis, residents described the first moments of the arrival of warnings from the occupation forces several days ago as crucial moments between two forms of life: life before the evacuation, and life after it. A few minutes were enough to turn streets into heavy traffic routes, homes into quick transit points, and neighborhoods into areas of mass departure.
Mahmoud Al-Khatib, a resident of Al-Katiba neighborhood, said, “We are not just leaving, we are being uprooted every time. The problem is not in leaving, but in its repetition without a clear end.”
He added that the most difficult thing accompanying the moment of evacuation is not only the fear of bombardment, but the permanent feeling that everything people try to restore can collapse again within minutes, to begin a new journey of displacement over what remains of the fatigue of war.
The specific evacuation order for a house or limited areas usually takes place by contacting one or a number of residents by the occupation forces and asking them to evacuate the area, usually within limited minutes that do not enable them to take anything from their possessions.
Repeated displacement until the sense of place erodes
With the repetition of displacement, the talk is no longer about moving from one place to another, but about a gradual loss of the idea of a “stable place”.
Many families have been displaced more than once during the war, from one neighborhood to another, and from a city to a camp, until the home became a postponed idea more than a tangible reality.
Maysa Al-Farra said, “Every time we leave, we say maybe this is the last, but nothing ends. We start anew in conditions worse than the ones before.”
This continuous repetition does not only create direct humanitarian pressure, but leads to a state of collective psychological exhaustion, where stability becomes a rare exception, while forced travel turns into the daily rule for the residents of the Strip.
The moment of evacuation: Time shrinks into minutes
At the moment evacuation orders or warnings are issued, the rhythm of life changes completely. Time shrinks, decisions become immediate, and there is no room for long thinking or planning.
Everything is decided within minutes: what can be carried? Where can we go? Who will stay? And what can be left behind closed doors?
Mahmoud Maghari, from Bureij camp, describes that moment by saying, “Everything stops suddenly. You do not think where you will go, you just try to get out of the place before it turns into danger.”
He added, “The hardest part is not leaving, but the feeling that you do not know if there is a return at all.”
Based on the experiences of repeated evacuation and displacement since the beginning of the war of genocide and in previous aggressions, every individual in Gaza now has their own bag that carries documents and light-weight items for the moment of evacuation that may come suddenly.
Between tents and roads: A temporary life without a horizon
After the evacuation, another stage begins that is no less harsh: overcrowding inside shelter centers, or setting up tents in open areas that lack the minimum necessities of life.
In these narrow spaces, the details of daily life change completely. Water becomes a daily challenge, food is limited, and privacy is almost absent, while children turn into the group most affected by this reality, as their memory is shaped by the sounds of warnings and explosions instead of the sounds of schools and normal life.
With the passage of time, displacement is no longer a temporary state associated with surviving the bombardment, but turns into an open lifestyle with more ambiguity and uncertainty.
Over 31 months of its continuous military attack on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces destroyed more than 80% of the homes in the Strip, forcing hundreds of thousands of citizens to displace to shelter centers or reside in worn-out tents, or next to the rubble of their homes, or inside damaged homes that are on the verge of collapse, in light of the absence of any safe housing alternatives.
Continuous pressure and multiple messages
The writer and political analyst Emad Zaqout believes that the policy of “evacuating residential blocks” in the Gaza Strip has gone beyond being a military measure linked to the field, to turn into a complex pressure tool targeting both humans and place together.
Zaqout said in special statements to the PIC that the occupation uses this policy with the aim of “tightening the grip on the residents and disrupting their lives”, pointing out that evacuation orders are often linked to widespread and violent bombardment operations leading to the destruction of entire residential blocks, and the subsequent new waves of displacement and homelessness experienced by the residents of Gaza repeatedly.
He added that the repetition of evacuations does not only reflect a military escalation, but an attempt to impose a new reality based on the “continuous biting of Gaza” and expanding dangerous areas or what has become known as the “yellow zone”, losing the residents’ ability to settle or rebuild their normal lives.
According to Zaqout, the most dangerous aspect of this policy does not lie in direct material losses only, but in the deep psychological and social impact resulting from repeated displacement, where the emergency situation turns into a permanent reality, and stability becomes a rare exception in the lives of Palestinian families.
He pointed out that the occupation also employs these evacuations as a political pressure card on the Hamas Movement, in an attempt to push it towards “succumbing to the occupation’s demands”, along with using them as multidirectional messages directed to mediators and the United States, carrying indications of Israel’s readiness to go towards a wider and more violent war.
He also pointed to the presence of Israeli internal dimensions to these policies, in light of the escalating talk about political and electoral calculations inside Israel, considering that “Gaza will be part of the political bickering during the coming phase.”
Zaqout concluded by saying that the continuation of this pattern of evacuations does not only reshape geography, but reformulates the Palestinian human being psychologically and socially, through a repeated uprooting that dissipates the sense of place and belonging, and makes the life of displacement an open reality without a clear horizon.
According to PCHR, the intensive return of the occupation forces to targeting partially damaged homes or those whose residents were forced to restore parts of them with primitive means reflects a clear intention to complete the destruction of the residential environment in the Gaza Strip, and impose a catastrophic living reality that drives residents towards more displacement and suffering.
These attacks also reflect an approach based on collective terror, expanding the circle of deprivation, and deepening the harsh living conditions experienced by civilians in the Strip.
The center confirmed that since the ceasefire on 10 October and until today, Israel continues to impose field realities and policies that push towards turning the Gaza Strip into an environment that expels the population, and unsustainable living conditions, through widespread destruction, tight restrictions, and military control over large areas of the Strip, along with the continuation of daily bombardment and killing.