The Common Dreams website published a report prepared by the human rights organization Al-Haq (published last Wednesday), which explains how Israel is forcibly expelling Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in order to facilitate - and conceal - genocidal attacks in the evacuated areas, while forcing refugees to move to so-called humanitarian "safe zones" "deliberately designed to ensure the destruction of all forms of life that shelter there."

Al-Haq's report, "How to Hide Genocide," examines the role of evacuation orders and safe zones in Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza.

According to the report: “Since the first week of the genocide, Israel has systematically cleansed large areas of the Gaza Strip of its population by issuing illegal evacuation orders. Israel presents these evacuation orders to the public as evidence of its efforts to minimize civilian casualties and to support its alleged compliance with the basic principles of international humanitarian law.”

However, it is achieving the exact opposite, as more than 90% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced from their homes and temporary shelters, (most of them multiple times), to so-called safe areas.

Contrary to their name, the report says, these areas are anything but safe. “With inadequate space, shelter, sanitation, food, water, and medical care, these safe zones are deliberately designed to ensure the destruction of all forms of life that seek refuge there. Moreover, the safe zones—despite being unilaterally established by Israel—are routinely targeted by the Israeli occupation forces from air, land, and sea.”

In the face of severe overcrowding and with no place to escape, Palestinians in Gaza are either killed by Israeli strikes, severely physically and psychologically injured by the physical and psychological warfare waged by the Israeli occupation forces, or die slowly from starvation, dehydration, and a complete lack of basic medical care, or the rampant spread of infectious diseases in the densely populated and unsanitary areas.

“As demonstrated throughout the report, Israel, by applying humanitarian terms to its practice of forcibly transferring Palestinians, without any legal basis and in violation of international law, and describing areas as safe zones despite being under constant attack and lacking all necessities for survival, claims to be acting in accordance with its legal obligations while in fact providing further evidence of its genocidal intent by using these measures to commit and contribute to genocidal killings, causing serious physical and psychological harm, and creating conditions designed to destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” the report states.

Al-Haq’s report comes shortly after the death of three-week-old Sila Mahmoud al-Fasih from hypothermia in the “safe” area of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. She is one of at least eight people – seven of them infants or children – who reportedly froze to death in Gaza in recent weeks.

The report was also published a day before Israeli forces bombed a camp in Al-Mawasi, killing at least 12 Palestinians, including three children, and wounding at least 15 others.

This was one of several Israeli strikes on the Mawasi safe zone, which killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians. In the deadliest of these strikes, at least 90 Palestinians, including many women and children—some burned alive in their tents—were killed and hundreds more wounded when eight 2,000-pound bombs, at least one of them supplied by the United States, were dropped on the humanitarian zone on July 13, 2024, with the aim of assassinating Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. Israeli forces then attacked and killed rescue workers who arrived at the site of the strike.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the strike’s death toll as “unacceptably high.” Yet just weeks later, the Biden administration approved nearly $20 billion worth of new US weapons for Israel.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, is currently considering whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.