what does al-Mawasi, this “humanitarian zone” proposed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, look like?

With the end of the truce, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip worries certain NGOs and international bodies. The fighting and bombings are increasingly targeting the south of the enclave, where the population has taken refuge.

The resumption of fighting in the Gaza Strip, after the end of the truce between Hamas and Israel, and the intensification of bombings are endangering the survival of the inhabitants who are massively refugees in the southern two thirds of the Palestinian enclave. “Hell on Earth has returned to Gaza”declared Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva.

After demanding to leave the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army asked residents of the eastern areas of Khan Younes to evacuate to the South. For several weeks, she has notably proposed to the Palestinians to settle on a strip of land which would be secure and which she declared “humanitarian zone”.

This enclave is called al-Mawasi and is located in the south of the Gaza Strip, a few kilometers from the Egyptian border. It is a rectangle one kilometer wide and 14 kilometers long, pressed against the sea. It is located next to the area in which the former Israeli colonies were located before the evacuation of Gaza in 2005.

“This area is not secure”

In all, 1,400 Bedouins live on this flat land, cut up by the walls of large properties. Khaled, a Gazan refugee in Rafah, went there on Friday to try to find a house to rent. According to him, there is nothing there to accommodate hundreds of thousands of displaced people: “This area is not 100% secure because there is no sign of civilization, that is to say, there are no clinics, no hospitals, no pharmacies, no no store, no bakery. It’s just an empty land.”

In its presentation, the Israeli army claimed that humanitarian aid would be provided to this area. But for now, NGOs and humanitarian agencies have distanced themselves from this idea of ​​concentrating the population in a tiny part of the enclave.