how the city of Rafah is “compressed from all sides” as Israel prepares to launch an offensive there

Tents as far as the eye can see. This is the landscape that gradually settled in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, over the course of bombings and evacuations. Before the deadly October 7 attacks and Israel’s crushing military response, nearly 250,000 people lived in the city. It now hosts around 1.2 million people, according to the UN. Tuesday May 7, twenty-four hours after ordering some of the residents to leave the area, the Israeli army bombed several neighborhoods and took control of a border post.

Without the possibility of fleeing further south, the border with Egypt being closed, civilians are crowding into makeshift shelters,Around the squares of Rafah and even into the fields and wastelands that border the city. From the sky, this overpopulation is clearly visible, which testifies to the extent of the population displacement in the Palestinian enclave. Supporting satellite images, franceinfo traces the transformation of Rafah into a precarious refuge, finally overtaken by the war.

Civilians piling up

If Rafah is overflowing, it is because the Israeli army has long designated the city as a safe place to which residents of the north of the Gaza Strip, then the center and the south, were forced to go. “The population density there was already one of the highest in the world, but it doubled in Rafah with the arrival of refugees”relates Mariam Chfiri, president of the French NGO Platform for Palestine.

Fleeing the fighting and incessant bombings in Gaza or Khan Younes, many Gazans have pitched their tents near a site of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), in the northwest of Rafah. The proximity to the warehouses, where the rare humanitarian aid trucks arrive, mainly explains this concentration of shelters.

“All these people were crowded together in very degraded physical and psychological conditions”deplores Mariam Chfiri. “Rafah is compressed on all sides, both by the blockade of food aid, the isolation in precarious tents and the despair of the many injured and their loved ones.” According to Unicef, around 600,000 children are in the area and have little access to water, food or even medical care. Number of them “are extremely vulnerable and are already fighting for their survival”specifies the UN agency.

After bombing the city on the night of Monday to Tuesday, the Israeli army deployed ground troops there and seems to be preparing for the offensive long planned by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, who describes Rafah as “last bastion of Hamas”. Mostly opposed to this plan, the international community warns of the very high risk of “massacre of civilians”to use the words of the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

Thousands of tarpaulins visible

From the sky, the metamorphosis of Rafah is easily observed. Thousands of white or gray dots, most of them corresponding to tents, appeared over the months. North of Tal as Sultan, one of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, the wastelands bordering agricultural greenhouses were stormed. The same goes for the surroundings of the Gush Katif road axis, which runs along Rafah from west to east. In the car parks, the esplanades of the Taiba or Bilal mosques in particular, almost every square meter is covered with white or blue tarpaulins under which “more than 10 people often live”explains an UNRWA executive, contacted by franceinfo.

“Every day, it is a difficult quest to find food, something to light a fire, obtain water that will be used to drink or wash”, continues this UN official. To survive, families often rely on children. “It’s up to them to queue and be ready if distributions take place”, he explains. For the majority of refugees, carts are preferred, “lack of available fuel”.

Under these conditions, the order given by the Israeli army to evacuate the eastern neighborhoods of the city scandalizes humanitarian NGOs. “We are displacing people who have already been displaced several times”, lamented Jean-François Corty, vice-president of Médecins du Monde, on franceinfo. According to him, this forced displacement is “in breach of international humanitarian law”.

After sending tanks to the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing, the Israeli army barred access, including to UN agencies. “We were told that there would be no movement of personnel or goods in either direction for the moment… For how long? I don’t know”, declared Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs, Tuesday during a press briefing. Under these conditions, the fuel reserves of “all” humanitarian operations in Gaza are expected to dry up by Wednesday morning, he warned.

Deserted areas to evacuate

For Palestinians who have fled their homes since October 2023, Rafah served as a last refuge. Faced with the impossibility of going further south, thousands of families have settled along the black barrier bristling with barbed wire which runs for 12 km along the border with Egypt. Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi has repeated that he does not wish to open this border, calling it “time bomb” the settlement of displaced Palestinians – to whom Israel could refuse to return to Gaza.

On the Egyptian side, surveillance of this border has gradually been strengthened. Fortifications were erected at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, where the barrier ends. As CNN spotted in mid-February on other satellite images, a “buffer zone” a little over a kilometer wide is being created by the Egyptian authorities, who fear that a land operation by the The Israeli army in Rafah causes a massive flight of refugees into their territory.

In leaflets dropped on Rafah on Monday, the Israeli army ordered residents and refugees from the east of the city to leave for a “humanitarian services zone” located along the sea, between the village of Al-Mawasi and the city of Deir el-Balah. In December, Gazans had already been directed towards this 14 km2 rectangle then described as “an empty land”.

“Our partners tell us about completely desert land, without any necessary infrastructure”reports Mariam Chfiri, who emphasizes the deprivation of refugees. “We have populations who have enormous needs for humanitarian, health and psychological aidshe recalls. Designating empty areas in no way constitutes a way out.”

Above all, “the past has shown us that the risk of attacks on the route [d’une évacuation] is real”, notes Mariam Chfiri. In this context, displaced Gazans could be less inclined to return to the road. “I have already fled three times since the start of the war. And each time, the areas where we were ordered to go were bombed”one of them told Franceinfo. “There have been a lot of hopes around a possible trucerelates Mariam Chfiri. But worry and terror eventually returned to Gazans.”