Hundreds of Palestinians have fled Gaza City, piling their few remaining possessions onto pick-up trucks and donkey carts as Israel’s deadly bombings and forced displacement campaign intensifies in the area.
Families fleeing the Israeli military’s relentless bombardment have begun setting up makeshift tents amid miserable conditions in an area west of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, to the south of Gaza City near Deir el-Balah.
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Most of them have been forced to leave their homes more than once.
“We are thrown in the streets, like what would I say? Like dogs? We are not like dogs. Dogs are [treated] better than us,” Mohammed Maarouf, 50, told The Associated Press news agency, standing in front of his tent.
Maarouf and his family of nine had already been displaced from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “We have no homes. We are on the streets,” he said.
Ahmad Saadeh, originally from Beit Hanoon, also in Gaza’s north, told AP that Palestinians were suffering from hunger, sickness and a lack of shelter in the coastal enclave, where famine was confirmed earlier this month.
“We suffer from many things,” he said. “We suffer that our children are ill.”
Israeli forces have carried out a sustained bombardment on Gaza City since early August as part of a deepening push to seize the city and displace about one million Palestinians living there.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it had begun the “initial stages” of its offensive, declaring the largest urban centre in the territory a “combat zone”.
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The new operation could forcibly displace one million Palestinians to concentration zones in southern Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned.
At least 71 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza on Saturday, hospital sources told Al Jazeera.
Of that, 41 people were killed in Gaza City alone, including at least 11 Palestinians who were killed while queueing for bread from ovens serving communities of displaced people.
At least seven Palestinians also were killed in a series of Israeli attacks on a residential apartment block in a densely populated area of the city. Rescuers were seen digging through the rubble to retrieve bodies and try to find any survivors.
“The Israeli army has been intensifying its attacks across Gaza City. Homes and community centres have been reduced to rubble, eroding the foundations of civilian life in the area,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported.
“This is happening while people are going through famine, enforced starvation and dehydration. Things are leading to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.”
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday also questioned Israel’s plans for a forced mass expulsion.
“It is impossible that a mass evacuation of Gaza City could ever be done in a way that is safe and dignified under the current conditions,” ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger said in a statement, describing the plan as “not only unfeasible but incomprehensible”.
Yet while Israel’s push to seize Gaza City has drawn international condemnation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has shown no signs of halting the military offensive.
Gideon Levy, a columnist with Israeli news outlet Haaretz, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s overarching plan for Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing.
“The plan is to push all the inhabitants of Gaza out of their houses, then lock them in those concentration camps and then give them two choices, either to live in those camps forever or to leave the Gaza Strip,” Levy said.
Describing the Israeli government’s policy as “outrageous”, Levy added that Israel will only halt its offensive if US President Donald Trump decides that “enough is enough” and applies pressure on the country.
The US has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance since its war on Gaza began in October 2023. Washington has also shielded its top ally from calls for accountability at the UN and other international arenas.
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In February, Trump suggested removing all Palestinians from Gaza – a plan that would amount to ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity.
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