The Israeli Prime Minister has called on residents of the Gaza Strip to evacuate their territory, but many Palestinians stress that they have nowhere to go to protect themselves from the strikes.
“Leave now for we are going to operate mightily everywhere.” A few hours after the Hamas attack on Israel, Gazans were warned on Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: they must leave the Gaza Strip immediately or risk being hit by bombings. The deluge of fire since unleashed by the Israeli counter-offensive has left at least 900 dead on the Palestinian side, according to local authorities. The latest salvo of nighttime strikes carried out by Israel left around thirty dead and hundreds injured in Gaza on the night of Tuesday October 10 to Wednesday October 11.
>> Follow the latest information on the war between Israel and Hamas in our live stream
But no evacuation solution is emerging for the more than 2 million Palestinians currently cut off from the world in this enclave of Gaza, besieged by the Israeli army. Warned neighborhood by neighborhood of upcoming bombings, some residents say they do not know where to take refuge.
Nearly 264,000 Palestinians displaced in the Gaza Strip
The United Nations (UN) said on Wednesday that nearly 264,000 people had been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip. The territory has been shelled by the Israeli army since Hamas carried out a surprise attack on Saturday, leaving more than 1,200 dead on the Israeli side. Using figures from the Palestinian authorities, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) reported more than 1,000 homes destroyed in Gaza and 560 made uninhabitable by strikes. Furthermore, with the “seat” established by the Israeli army, no food or medicine enters this Palestinian territory, where water and electricity cuts are frequent.
“The reality is that no one is safe in Gaza right now,” explain Louis Baudoin-Laarman, spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders. “HASIth the bombings, movements are complicated.” The latest Israeli strikes, overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, hit dozens of apartment buildings, factories, mosques and shops, said Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas government’s media office..
In fact, Gazans do not seem to know where to take shelter. “We see people carrying bags and walking, not knowing where to go. If you ask them, they’ll tell you they don’t know where they’re going.”, testifies Sami*, journalist in Gaza, to franceinfo. The Palestinians “receive a text message in the middle of the night asking them to evacuate their homes”, confides Léo Cans, head of mission of Doctors Without Borders for Palestine. “In five minutes (…) They find themselves on the street, in the middle of the night, under a rain of bombs, they don’t know where to go and that’s a real problem.”
Thousands of Gazans confined in schools, churches, hospitals
Pushed from their homes by these strikes, most often in the middle of the night, displaced Palestinians found refuge where they could in this dense territory of 365 km2. The 88 schools managed by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, were very quickly identified as places of shelter, reports The Times of Israel. In its latest report, the UN says that nearly 175,500 displaced Gazans have taken refuge there. “The numbers are rising as airstrikes continue. People are now sheltering in our health centers as schools reach full capacity,” UNRWA further clarified.
“Living conditions there are difficult, All of our [88] “Not all schools are designated emergency shelters and are therefore not prepared to accommodate displaced people.”, alerted the agency, some buildings of which were bombed. UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told franceinfo on Tuesday that these schools were already “saturated”.
More than 14,500 displaced Palestinians have also found refuge in 12 public schools, according to OCHA. This UN office also estimates that nearly 74,000 people took shelter with relatives, neighbors or even in churches. “On the seaside in Gaza, private hotels are empty. Many people went there asking if they could stay here”, testifies Sami. This Gazan journalist assures that these hotels were then targeted by Israeli raids and that these displaced people had to flee again. “Guardians [leur] opened the gardens around the hospitals”describe Sami again.
Displaced people hope for a reopening of the border with Egypt, in vain for the moment
Cornered on one side by the Israeli army, Gazans face the Mediterranean Sea on the other. To leave the Gaza Strip, the only exit that is not controlled by Israel remains the Rafah border crossing, which separates this territory controlled by Hamas from Egypt.
However, according to the Egyptian organization Sinai for Human Rights and an AFP journalist present on site, this border crossing was bombed three times on Monday and Tuesday, stopping the passage of Palestinian families from Gaza to Egypt. “Palestinian teams at the Rafah border crossing were warned by the Egyptian side of a risk of bombing”the Gaza Interior Ministry reported on Tuesday, without the Israeli army being able to confirm these raids.
The NGO also claims on the social network “caused a new closure of the crossing point” and the return of Palestinians to Gaza, without confirmation yet from the Egyptian authorities. LThe Israeli ambassador to Cairo writes, on “has no intentions regarding Sinai and has not asked the Palestinians to settle there”. “Israel is attached to the peace treaty with Egyptin which the borders between the two countries were clearly defined”, insists Amira Oron. For the moment, the Palestinians do not seem to be able to take refuge in Egypt.
WHO and EU call for creation of humanitarian corridor to evacuate Gazans
While the UN expects a growing number of displaced people, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday called for the opening of a humanitarian corridor to the Gaza Strip. This corridor is “necessary to deliver essential medical supplies to populations”declared a WHO spokesperson from Geneva. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was in Cairo on Monday, discussed this subject with the Egyptian head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
A humanitarian corridor is a solution allowing the evacuation of civilians. The European Union (EU) met on Tuesday evening on the subject and opposed the total blockade of Gaza. At the end of this meeting, the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, announced that the 27 member states had voted in favor of the opening of a humanitarian corridor to allow evacuation to the Egypt, Palestinians fleeing strikes.
*The first name has been changed.