Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing their homes in Khan Younis, Gaza, as Israeli forces shell the area and fire artillery shells after issuing a new evacuation order for the southern city embroiled in fighting.
The latest strikes on Tuesday left at least eight dead and more than 30 injured in several neighborhoods of Khan Younis.
The wave of attacks, just weeks after Israeli tanks withdrew from the area, caused panic among residents, many of whom had already been displaced several times and had no clear way to reach safety.
The Israeli military’s newly declared evacuation zone in Khan Younis encompasses an area where 250,000 people live, said Sam Rose, director of planning at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The order “means another day, another week, another chapter of misery for these hundreds of thousands of people – we expect 250,000 people in the areas under the evacuation order,” Rose told Tel Aviv Tribune from Nuseirat in central Gaza.
Some had just returned from Rafah, also in the south of the enclave, where they had been displaced a few weeks ago.
“And now they’ve just been given this evacuation order to leave immediately… It’s just heartbreaking, horrible and incredibly difficult to understand,” Rose said.
It also includes the European Hospital in Gaza, which serves both Khan Younis and Rafah.
The evacuation order shows Israel’s failure to achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas and its intention to exhaust the population, said Luciano Zaccara, professor of Gulf politics at the Center for Gulf Studies at Qatar University.
“This also proves that Israel wants to win this war by exhausting the people,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune, referring to several previous similar orders from different locations over the past nine months of war.
“In this way, it creates much more problems and harm for the Palestinians who cannot stay more than a month or 15 days in one place,” he added.
Some residents fled west to the al-Mawasi area near the beach, which Israel has designated as a “humanitarian security zone” but has attacked. But it is already overcrowded with displaced families.
The idea that there are safe places to move people, Zaccara said, “is not true because every time there has been displacement, there have also been attacks.”
There is no space in al-Mawasi to pitch a tent, there is no water, no infrastructure, no sanitation, Rose said, and many people are forced to spend the night in vehicles or on their donkey carts.
Hani Mahmoud, an Tel Aviv Tribune journalist in Deir el-Balah, said that “people have lost hope and the feeling of responding to these evacuation orders.”
These orders, he said, are more like a “death sentence for people” as they are “herded from one place to another and eventually killed.”
“Move forward to the end”
The intensive offensive against Khan Younis could herald the end of Israel’s intensive military operations to drive Hamas out of southern Gaza, including Rafah, which the Israeli military estimates will take four weeks to complete, according to Israeli television Channel 12.
In the next phase of the war, the military plans to shift to less intense, smaller-scale strikes to keep Hamas at bay, its officials say.
“We are moving toward the end of the phase of eliminating the Hamas terrorist army, and we will continue to strike its remnants,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
On Tuesday, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 37,925 people have been killed and 87,141 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.