Wael Muhaisen (51 years old), a resident of the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, who was forced to forcibly migrate with the beginning of the ground battle in the north of the Gaza Strip, to the south, cannot believe that he will be forced again to repeat the tragedy, after the Israeli occupation forces attacked Khan Yunis, where he took refuge. It called on its residents to go to the Rafah border.

Muhaisen, who spent the night in the street, said: “Where do we go?” Don't know where to go? What do they want from us?

Muhaisen is one of about 1,700,000 Palestinians in the central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, including hundreds of thousands who were displaced from the north of the Strip, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). They are now in limbo, facing an unknown fate.

The Israeli army unexpectedly bombed the areas of the south intensively after the end of 7 days of the humanitarian truce, causing hundreds of deaths and injuries, destroying residential areas, distributing maps and leaflets, and telephoned tens of thousands of residents of Khan Yunis and other areas of the central and southern Gaza Strip, demanding that they leave to Rafah.

Muhaisen told Asharq Al-Awsat: “They bombed our homes at first, and asked us to move from our homes in the north to the south. Now they are doing it again, bombing and asking us to go to Rafah (the southernmost area of the Strip). Where to after Rafah? to Egypt?".

The Israeli warnings include all those who were also displaced to the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis, an area that the Israeli army maintained throughout 50 days of the war in its first phase that it was the safe area to which residents were asked to go, to the point that UNRWA set up tents there to contain thousands of displaced people.

Muhaisen does not know where to go today, and thousands like him are in the streets after a bombing the likes of which they had not experienced in the past. He said: “There is no room for us, and we do not understand what they want. Anyway, there was nowhere to go. "We will die here."

Israel is now focusing on displacing the residents of the eastern central region (mostly camps) and the entire city of Khan Yunis (east and west) towards Rafah. This threatens to lead to a new, unprecedented wave of displacement, and to exacerbate the catastrophic health and environmental conditions.

Nihal Al-Masry, a resident of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, said that on Saturday morning, she and 7 of her children were forced to go to her sister’s house in the Tal Al-Sultan area, west of the city of Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip.

Al-Masry had received a call from a person who identified himself as an Israeli officer who asked her to evacuate her house, on the grounds that it was located in a military combat zone.

Al-Masry asked him how the area could be a combat zone, where there were no armed men, and where there were no fighting or battles taking place, but rather calm, so he ordered her to leave or suffer the consequences.

Al-Masry told Asharq Al-Awsat: “It has become clear what they want. They want us to leave for Egypt. When they said they wanted to take Gaza back 50 years, this is what they are doing today. Complete destruction. They want to destroy everything in the sector. A clear policy of revenge.

The Palestinians say that work to displace the population of the south is continuing, along with work to displace the population of the north, something that began 50 days ago.

The occupation army published a detailed map with numbers of the areas whose residents were asked to go from their areas of residence (such as Al-Shuja’iya and Jabalia), to other areas from which it had withdrawn (Al-Rimal neighborhood and the vicinity of Al-Shifa Medical Complex).

Before that, Israel had asked them all to go to the south, but now the plans have changed for an inexplicable reason.

Anwar Samour, a resident of the Daraj neighborhood, said that they were surprised this morning by leaflets dropped by Israeli reconnaissance planes, asking them to leave their residential areas east and west of Gaza City.

Sammour told Asharq Al-Awsat: “After they destroyed half of the neighborhood and displaced the people to the south, they are now pursuing those remaining in it in order to displace them to the west of the city near the Al-Shifa Medical Complex.” He added: “Our suffering is severe, and our conditions are getting worse from day to day, and we can no longer bear what is happening.”

The Israeli authorities claim that the second phase of the war comes in light of drawing lessons from the first phase, and that asking residents to leave their homes is aimed at preserving their lives and preventing a recurrence of what happened in some areas of the north.

The administration of US President Joe Biden had asked Israel to try to avoid harming civilians, not to allow their displacement, and had asked the Israelis to clearly define the locations of their military operations. But it seems that all of this was not part of Israel's plans, which within two days of the return of the war killed more than 350 Palestinians, and is still expelling residents from region to region to region... towards the closest point to Egypt.

Source: Alsharq Alawsat