Israel on Tuesday issued a new round of evacuation orders for a wide swath of the southern Gaza Strip, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee once again in search of relative safety.
Israeli officials have talked in recent weeks of moving toward more targeted and concrete attacks, but the exodus taking place in the city of Khan Younis made clear Tuesday that for Gazans, a return to normal life is far from near.
Gazans, who had already been forced to flee time and again, were on the move again, carrying loads of their belongings in cars, trucks and donkey carts. Hospital patients were pushed in wheelchairs along with others fleeing on foot.
“How long can we continue to be ordered to leave and come back, leave and come back?” asked Suzan Abu Daqqa, a 59-year-old Gaza resident, after fleeing her home southeast of Khan Younis.
The trigger for the evacuation orders appears to have been a volley of some 20 rockets that the Israeli military said had been fired from Khan Younis by Palestinian militants the day before. Israeli forces responded overnight after “allowing civilians to evacuate the area,” the military said.
The United Nations has estimated that some 250,000 people will have to flee large parts of southern Gaza to comply with the new orders. Scott Anderson, a senior U.N. official, said the estimate was based on pre-war population data and anecdotal observations about how many people had returned to the area.
Military analysts say the pattern of repeated civilian displacement is likely to continue, even as the Israeli military talks of a “lower intensity” war. As militants regroup, Israeli forces have been returning to areas from which they had retreated to carry out crackdowns lasting several days.
For many Gazans, these new operations are far from low-intensity.
Fighting has been concentrated, for example, in northern towns such as Shajaiye, Jabaliya and Zeitoun. In Jabaliya, more than 60,000 people have fled their homes, according to the United Nations, only to return to widespread devastation.
On Tuesday, the United Nations’ chief humanitarian coordinator in Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, said the vast majority of Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million people had been displaced during the war, many of them multiple times. She put the figure at 1.9 million people.
Israeli forces largely withdrew from Khan Younis in April after months of fighting, as they prepared to invade Rafah further south. In the relative calm of that withdrawal, Abu Daqqa returned.
When she arrived home on the southern outskirts of the city last month, she found it relatively intact after the intense Israeli bombardment that had destroyed large parts of Khan Younis. It even had running water.
But on Monday afternoon, Abu Daqqa and her family learned that the Israeli army had once again ordered the evacuation of the town. The all-too-familiar sound of artillery fire began to be heard, prompting her to flee to the northwest with her relatives.
His family joined thousands of people who filled the streets of the demolished city on Monday night as they headed toward the Mawasi area near the coast, which Israel has designated as a “safer zone.”
On Tuesday, residents of Khan Younis said most of the explosions they heard seemed to be coming further south in Rafah, but they were concerned that the large-scale evacuation order could also herald a new military operation in their own town.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the military will continue to operate in Gaza after the Rafah offensive ends to prevent Hamas from regaining control. The invasion began in October after Hamas led a bloody cross-border attack on Israel that the government says left some 1,200 people dead and 250 hostages.
Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said Israeli troops would try to reduce the number of fighters left in Hamas, a process he said could take years. Over time, Israel hopes to erode Hamas forces so completely that fewer and fewer forces will be needed to control Gaza, he said.
“Every time the terrorists manage to organize themselves, there will be a raid to wipe them out,” said Gen. Avivi, who heads the hawkish Israel Defense and Security Forum. “These raids can last a few days or a week at a time – usually no more than a few days – and then you have to withdraw.”
Hundreds of thousands of people have arrived in Khan Younis and central Gaza since Israel launched its operation in Rafah, creating camps where finding sufficient food and drinking water is often a daily struggle. The humanitarian crisis has increased international pressure on Israel.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had laid a power line to a desalination plant in Khan Younis to boost its output. A senior Israeli military official said the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority would pay for the electricity and the United Nations agency UNICEF would run the plant.
Amid panic over the new evacuation order in Khan Younis, the city’s European Hospital moved most of its medical staff and some 600 patients by ambulance to hospitals further in the city. Many of the doctors and patients, frightened by what they had seen in Israeli strikes on other hospitals, were unwilling to risk staying, said Dr. Saleh al-Homs.
He left the facility overnight, only to learn on Tuesday morning that the Israeli military had said there had been “no intention to evacuate the European Hospital.”
“Why did they wait until the hospital was evacuated to issue this statement telling us not to evacuate?” Dr. al-Homs asked. “People were terrified and desperate to get out.”
Jamal Azzam, a nurse at the hospital, said he had received phone calls from the Israeli military ordering staff to evacuate.
Four premature babies were taken by ambulance to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Azzam said. Many families who had taken shelter in tents around the hospital had also fled, he added.
“This is torture,” Azzam said.
