Expanding evacuation zone, Israeli-backed militia forcibly displaces hundreds of families from Deir al-Balah

Hundreds of families were forced to flee Aboul Ajin, an area in east Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, after an Israeli-backed militia stormed the area and ordered residents to evacuate at gunpoint on Wednesday last week. Aboul Ajin straddles the yellow line that marks the eastern zone of Gaza which has remained under Israeli occupation since the October ceasefire agreement. The ongoing occupation already left many of the area’s residents unable to return to their homes since the ceasefire, with some expressing fear that the new forced evacuations would prevent even more people from returning home. On May 13, fighters affiliated with Shawky Abu Nasira’s militia crossed into the neighborhood, forcing families westward, threatening to shoot residents who refused to leave and firing indiscriminately toward homes, one resident said. Militia fighters told residents that the Israeli military would comb the area in operations for the coming 10 days, the resident added. Residents said Israeli drones hovered heavily overhead as families fled toward shelters in Deir al-Balah and the Mawasi area of Qarara. “We were forced to leave our homes and everything we own. We could only carry a few basic necessities in haste,” a second resident said, describing a journey “filled with fear.” Abdallah Aboul Ajin, another resident who fled the area, said Israeli forces later took control of the neighborhood, opening fire on anyone attempting to return. The evacuation zone extended nearly 500 meters west of the yellow line, they added. One of the residents who spoke to Mada Masr said that later, Israeli military officers called them directly, warning them that they should have left by 10 pm. A day later, Abu Nasira, whose militia is active in central Gaza and northern Khan Younis, appeared in a video surrounded by armed men, saying the group were relaying Israeli evacuation orders to residents. “Our goal is the safety and security of the people,” Abu Nasira said. “We do not want people to leave their homes or their land, but we are conveying this evacuation message from the Israeli side to the people.” The yellow line had already prevented nearly half of Aboul Ajin’s residents from returning to the occupied eastern section of the neighborhood after the ceasefire took effect, a third resident told Mada Masr. People now fear “losing the homes we managed to return to after a long displacement journey” during the genocidal war, the third resident added. They added that circulating reports say that Israeli forces plan to place orange-colored blocks some 300 meters beyond the current yellow line markers. The possibility that Aboul Ajin’s families may never be allowed to return, they said, is now their greatest fear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the Israeli military now controls 60 percent of the Gaza Strip — a larger area than what had been agreed upon under the ceasefire deal, where the yellow line covered around 52 percent of Gaza. That expansion appears to have been formalized in maps circulated by the Israeli military to humanitarian aid agencies in mid-March, according to two relief workers who spoke to Reuters. The maps introduced what they described as an orange zone, extending Israeli-controlled territory by an additional 11 percent of Gaza’s land area. Aid groups were also instructed to coordinate operations with the military inside the zone, the sources said. As Israeli control has expanded deeper into Gaza, so too has the role of militias collaborating with its military. Operating from behind the yellow line, these groups have increasingly carried out deadly armed operations inside neighborhoods and displacement camps. During negotiations in Cairo last month, Hamas and other Palestinian factions demanded the dismantling of the militias. Israel rejected the proposal, arguing that the issue constituted an internal Palestinian matter. On Sunday, Gaza clan leaders publicly disavowed anyone cooperating “with gangs allied with the Israeli occupation,” targeting civilians or extorting Palestinians. The statement was issued during the first national conference organized by the National Gathering of Palestinian Tribes, Clans and Families. Abdel Jawad Hamail, a philosophy and cultural studies professor at Birzeit University, said he did not believe Israel’s backing of such armed groups was aimed at replacing Gaza’s existing order. Rather, he argued, the militias were being used to carry out sabotage operations and provide operational support to the Israeli military. Hamail told Mada Masr that the groups would remain incapable of penetrating Gaza’s social fabric, pointing to the presence of organized political forces confronting them, as well as what he described as a social and moral environment inherently resistant to such projects. He added that many of the figures leading the groups are socially ostracized. The post Expanding evacuation zone, Israeli-backed militia forcibly displaces hundreds of families from Deir al-Balah first appeared on Mada Masr .