Palestinian Haitham Radi takes shelter in a small tent for himself and his family of six people in the city of Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, at a time when the future seems very unknown to them in light of the deteriorating humanitarian situation and fears of displacement.

Radi, who is in his late thirties, told Xinhua News Agency that he was displaced from his home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza a week after the start of the war in the Strip on October 7th.

He continues that since that date he moved four times between the house of one of his relatives in Gaza and the city of Deir al-Balah, and from there to the house of a friend of his in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, before his situation stabilized two weeks ago in Rafah.

He adds in desperate tones, "Now there is no place to go, and what lies ahead for us is unknown and foggy."

Radi is currently residing in a tent in the Shaboura neighborhood in Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, and expresses his fears that the Israeli army will expand its ground operations into the city, which is crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

He points out, "People talk all the time about the possibility of us being displaced to the Egyptian Sinai or another place outside the Gaza Strip. We do not want that, but Israel does not seem to leave us a choice."

The man says that his family's three-story house was completely destroyed in an Israeli bombing, and he does not know where to take his family even if they were saved and the war stopped today.

Fears are increasing in the Gaza Strip about the risk of displacement as Israel continues its war and forces about 90% of the population to displace without giving them any indication of the possibility of allowing them to return to their homes in the future.

These fears increase given the fact that more than 60% of the Gaza Strip was destroyed, especially residential buildings and various infrastructure facilities, such as schools, universities, hospitals, and others, according to Palestinian and UN officials.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the Israeli army allocated a new area covering about 20% of the center and south of the city of Khan Yunis for immediate evacuation.

According to the UN office, the area was identified on an electronic map published by the Israeli army on social media.

Before the start of the Israeli war, this area was home to more than 110,000 people, and it also included 32 shelter centers that accommodated more than 140,000 displaced people, the vast majority of whom were previously displaced from the north.

The instructions accompanying the map call on residents to immediately move to shelters south of Khan Yunis, specifically in the already overcrowded neighborhoods of Al-Shaboura, Tal Al-Sultan and Al-Zuhur in Rafah Governorate.

The UN office said that the shelters in the city of Rafah had greatly exceeded their capacity, and most of the newly arrived displaced persons had settled in the streets and empty places throughout the city.

Rafah Governorate has become the most densely populated area in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people are forced to live in extremely crowded places and in miserable living conditions.

It is estimated that population density now exceeds 12,000 people per square kilometre, a four-fold increase before the escalation.

Therefore, the tents of the displaced are crowded together in Rafah in light of humanitarian deterioration and the risk of famine.

Media advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Adnan Abu Hasna, told Xinhua that the entire population of the Gaza Strip faces an imminent risk of famine in a shocking and unprecedented manner.

Abu Hasna adds that the bombing, ground operations, and siege of the entire population, along with restricting humanitarian access, have led to catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, increasing the risk of famine every day.

He points out that the humanitarian needs are enormous, given the huge numbers of displaced people in light of the war and continued targeting.

Palestinian Jamal Al-Khudary faces severe difficulties every day to secure food for his family of seven members.

Al-Khudari, who is in his thirties, says that he and his family live on one meal provided by UNRWA and other relief institutions, and their lives have become dependent on this meal.

He adds that in light of the bombing and the constant threat of death, they will rush to seize any travel opportunity they will have to escape the reality of starvation.

Egypt has stressed since the beginning of the war in Gaza that it will not accept the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza towards its lands, and it considers it a threat to its national security and an attempt to liquidate the Palestinian cause.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also repeatedly stressed his rejection of any form of forced displacement of the Palestinian people and the necessity of preventing it, whether in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian factions stressed the rejection of any plan to displace the population of Gaza and the need to thwart it. Despite this, fears of displacement are increasing at a time when indications are mounting that large parts of the Gaza Strip, crowded with more than 2.3 million people, have become uninhabitable for life.

The director of the government media office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, told Xinhua that the humanitarian situation in the Strip is “increasingly disastrous and has become very bad and heading towards the abyss.”

Al-Thawabta points out that more than 1.9 million people in the Gaza Strip have become displaced and live outside their homes, and are suffering greatly in providing food, medicine, and drinking water.

He adds that Gazans "are clearly threatened by food, water and medicine security, and suffer from poor living conditions and poor shelter."

According to the writer and political analyst from Gaza, Tawfiq Abu Shomer, Israel is waging a “comprehensive war of destruction” in the Strip with the explicit aim of forcibly displacing its residents.

Abu Shomer says that more than one Israeli official has previously stated that the strategic goal of the war is to force the residents of Gaza to leave, gather them, and concentrate them at the Egyptian border to penetrate the border fence.

He believes that Israel "planned for many years a deportation strategy by displacing the Gaza Strip towards the Egyptian Sinai, and has taken the current war as a means to achieve this strategic goal."

According to Abu Shomer, who resides in a shelter center in Rafah, attention must be paid to the dangers of Israel forcing hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people into Rafah on the border with Egypt, and launching fire belts in the border areas between the Gaza Strip and Egypt under the claim of destroying the tunnels.

The United Nations estimates that approximately 1.9 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, including people who have been displaced multiple times.

Nearly 1.4 million of these displaced people were registered in 155 UNRWA facilities across Gaza, including more than 1.2 million in 98 shelters in the central and southern Strip.

Political analyst Abdel Majeed Sweilem agrees with the opinion that displacing the population of the Gaza Strip, or at least the bulk of them, is the essence of Israel's hidden goals in the ongoing war, whether forced or voluntary.

Sweilem told Xinhua that the displacement issue goes back to plans that preceded the outbreak of the current war and is translated into eliminating life opportunities in the Gaza Strip and destroying everything related to it.

He believes that Israel aims to turn the Gaza Strip into a heavy burden that no one can carry and an economic and social burden that has no solution except through immigration or fleeing the Strip after the end of the war.