Gaza, forced into the largest displacement in its history: almost 1 million flee

After more than 300 deaths in 24 hours and in the midst of extreme devastation, Loop is experiencing the largest internal displacement in its recent history: almost a million people fled between yesterday and today from their homes in the northern half of the enclave due to the alerts and bombings of Israeland take refuge in the south in the midst of collapse.

In a few hours, the coastal route of Loop and Salahedin Avenue, the great arteries that run through the Strip from north to south, were filled with hundreds of thousands of thousands of people who went to the southern area after leaving everything and taking a few belongings, with great confusion and without knowing exactly where to go. go or where to find a roof.

It reminded many of the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, when the creation of Israel meant their expulsion or flight from their homeland, in the so-called Nakba (catastrophe, in Arabic), an event embedded in Palestinian memory and very present. in a Stripe where more than 70% of its 2.3 million inhabitants are refugees and feel faced with the abyss of suffering a new ethnic cleansing.

This is how Rana sees it, a 25-year-old businesswoman who, from her Shujaia neighborhood in the city of Loop He arrived with his family in the southern city of Khan Yunis. There are many displaced people like her, who sleep on the floor and feel that she has once again become a refugee like her grandparents were, she laments in conversation with EFE.

Like Rana, many others – like the EFE journalist who signs this piece – went south by car, others loaded into trucks, and many on foot, following the order to Israel that civilians evacuate all northern towns, including the city of Loopthe city with the most population in the enclave, with more than 600,000 inhabitants.

Among the displaced are the elderly, people with disabilities, children and other vulnerable people, as EFE was able to verify.

Israel has wanted to leave the central-northern area empty of civilians Loop to continue with air attacks against the militias of the Islamist group Hamasin the tough war that has confronted them since the Palestinian movement carried out a surprise offensive a week ago against the Jewish State, which caused more than 1,300 deaths, most of them civilians, and at least 120 hostages captured.

Yesterday, despite the fact that Israel urged them to evacuate, claiming that they would be safe to the south, its fighter planes killed 70 people traveling in three convoys, another massacre among the many in recent days, where images of dead people collected among the rubble of their destroyed houses.

Today alone, twenty people died in the attack on a residential building in the northern city of Jabalia, and two dozen more died in another similar bombing in the south-central city of Deir al Balah.

There were also dozens of victims in Beit Lahia and several in Nuseira, while the deaths numbered in the hundreds and in just 24 hours there were at least 324, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Since the war broke out a week ago, at least 2,215 deaths have been recorded in the Gaza Strip. Loopamong them 724 minors and 458 women, in addition to 8,714 wounded, to which is added a humanitarian crisis caused by the ferocious indiscriminate attacks by Israel.

The Israeli Government imposed a total siege on Loop, which vetoes access to food, fuel, electricity or any provision. Hospitals do not have medicines or basic health products, and many centers welcome displaced people hoping not to be attacked.

Among others, the Shifa hospital in the city of Loop It houses some 35,000 people who fear an imminent Israeli ground operation.

Israel does not allow the entry of medical supplies or humanitarian materials, not even across the border with Egyptwhere there are queues of trucks with supplies waiting to be given access, in a siege practice labeled as collective punishment and possible war crime by human rights groups.

Drinking water is also becoming scarce because the desalination plants and the water network stopped working.

This means that “people are forced to use dirty water from wells” and the entry of fuel is requested so that the water supply is active again, because “otherwise, people will begin to die of dehydration,” he warned. today the agency UN for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

“The situation is beyond horrifying,” lamented Mukhaimar Abusada to EFE, a political science professor who left his home yesterday with his family to head south.

Also Adam, an 18-year-old Palestinian, staying in classrooms full of people with his family in a UNRWA school in the southern Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people are crowded together, once again scared and helpless.

(With information from EFE)