Gaza’s safe zones, a mirage under Israel’s bombs | International

Boredom and frustration dominate Palestinians like Mohammed Abu Rajila, 27, who at the start of the war promoted a Gaza youth initiative to help those displaced by the conflict. These days he is in the area of ​​Al Mawasi and Khan Younis, where Israel killed at least 90 people on Saturday in a humanitarian camp area that its own army describes as a safe zone for displaced people from other points…

Boredom and frustration dominate Palestinians like Mohammed Abu Rajila, 27, who at the start of the war promoted a Gaza youth initiative to help those displaced by the conflict. These days he is in the area of ​​al Mawasi and Khan Younis, where Israel killed at least 90 people on Saturday in a humanitarian camp area that its own military describes as a safe zone for displaced people from other parts of the Palestinian enclave. The main target of multiple bombings with fighter jets and drones was a senior Hamas official, Mohammed Deif, whose death two days later the radical group denies and Israel has not confirmed.

When asked what happened over the weekend, Rajila appeared pessimistic and angry. “What do we think? Why is our opinion important? Who will listen to us? Will anything change after listening to our opinion? It has been 10 months since the genocide, what has the world done in the face of this destruction? Nothing, really nothing, so our opinion has lost importance in this world that follows double standards to judge events,” he replies over the phone via text message.

The UN and humanitarian organizations have been insisting for months that there is not a single plot of land in the Strip’s 365 square kilometer area that is safe for residents. “Not in the north, not in the center, not in the south, not anywhere,” Louise Wateridge, a UN spokesman in Gaza, concluded in a telephone conversation. According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) or Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Saturday’s bombing is a reminder of that evidence.

“It was a horror. With hundreds of injuries and deaths. “But, in reality, this happens almost every day. For example, today (Monday) there was an airstrike even inside the humanitarian zone, although very small, but yes, it is almost daily bread,” Pascale Coisard, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, said by phone, referring to the bombings on Saturday. In the Palestinian Mediterranean region, more than 38,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war began on October 7, most of them women and children, according to figures from Hamas government health officials.

Wateridge remembers Jamal, a member of his team and a UN employee of 14 years. “He moved to Rafah with his family as he was ordered to do. He moved to Deir al Balah and died in an Israeli airstrike the first night along with some of his relatives,” he laments. “But this is everyone’s story. Everyone has lost someone. Everyone has lost their home. “They have all been displaced, some several times,” he explains.

On the night of Friday to Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu monitored the bombing of Al Mawasi. According to the newspaper, the president Yediot Ahronotwas interested in three issues: the type of ammunition used, the possible presence of hostages in the compound where Hamas members were located, and the expected collateral damage. These concerns did not work to prevent the attack.

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Over these nine months of fighting, Israel’s security forces have been informing the population of the areas they have had to move to in the forced movement of hundreds of thousands of people. Some families, as reported by humanitarian organizations on the ground, have been pushed from one place to another dozens of times, almost always with nothing on their clothes. These orders violate international humanitarian law. Likewise, it is illegal to bomb civilian areas, even if the target, as Israel always claims, is Hamas “terrorists.”

“Is the price paid by Gaza’s displaced people on Saturday justified? How many children, health workers, women, the elderly and ordinary residents will Israel kill for a certain Mohammed Deif? How much blood must be shed so that the hunger of the military and political leadership is satisfied?” asks Israeli analyst Gideon Levy in the newspaper, going against the sentiments of the local press. Haaretz,

A “more chaotic” phase

“We are in a completely different phase of the war, which is more chaotic. People have fewer belongings, they are moving from one place to another frequently, there are attacks after attacks, and people no longer have anything,” describes the UN spokesperson. “You see someone walking forward with a child under their arm and that’s it. That’s it,” says Wateridge, who describes Jan Eunice as a ghost town where already very malnourished people are living among the rubble and skeletons of buildings that could collapse at any moment.

Khan Yunis, Nasir’s main hospital, was overwhelmed on Saturday. The pediatric ward and maternity ward, where the MSF team serves, were converted into emergency areas for victims of the bombing. “The staff felt overwhelmed, stressed and worried by all the patients we had. There was a little boy with his father. His father had a wound on his back and the boy was sitting there looking a bit shocked. We felt very bad, because I’m not sure the boy knew that his father was the only surviving member of the family,” explains Amy Kit-Mei Lo, MSF medical officer at Nasir hospital, in testimony provided by that humanitarian organization.

Her account details the screams of patients, the lack of painkillers and blood on the floor in an area as ill-prepared to care for the wounded as those who came in. One man died for lack of something as simple as a machine to suck out the blood that had collected in his mouth. “Dead; they killed him,” the health worker explained.

The attack on Al Mawasi and the dozens of deaths are “a stark reminder that no one is safe in Gaza, no matter where they are,” UNRWA High Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said in a publication on the social network X (formerly Twitter). He believes that these zones declared by the Israeli authorities will ultimately prove to be a sham, because in reality they do not exist. “It is time to reclaim our common humanity. The people of Gaza are children, women and men who, just like you and me, have a right to live and hope for a better future,” Lazzarini said.

Pascale Coisard also warns that successive movements of civilians have increased the population density even higher in some areas of Gaza, which at the start of the war was 5,500 people per square kilometer across the entire strip, one of the highest on the planet. Now they live even more crowded and it is increasingly difficult to find a place where to put up a tent or take shelter, to which we must add temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius under those tarpaulins, says Coisard.

All this, with little access to basic supplies such as electricity, water, food or shelter. Continuous attacks in areas declared safe are undermining the morale of Gazans, which is why “more and more people decide to stay where they are because, even if they change location, they feel equally unsafe.” “Most of the population is exhausted. In my last visit, in November and December, they were already tired and in shock. Now I find them resigned as well. If then they welcomed the ceasefire talks with optimism, now no one talks about them anymore,” says the MSF emergency coordinator in the Strip.

The occupation troops had already attacked other areas where they had gathered thousands of civilians. This happened, for example, on May 27 in Rafah, the southern end of the Strip. There, a bombing of a camping area in the Tel al Sultan neighborhood killed at least 45 people, 23 of them minors. This happened just two days after the International Court of Justice in The Hague demanded the Jewish state to “immediately” stop its military operations in the border area with Egypt.

“The impact of war is very noticeable on children,” explains Coisard. “A colleague told me that her five-year-old son is able to distinguish between the sound of a drone, an airstrike or a tank,” she says.

“There has to be a ceasefire and everything depends on political will. That is the only hope. It is the only option. A ceasefire with the return of the remaining hostages. That is what everybody wants,” claims Wateridge, who also describes Gazans exhausted by so many futile attempts at a settlement. “Other steps will come later, but until the fighting stops, there will be no tomorrow,” says the UN spokesman in Gaza.

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