For Palestinians in Gaza, there’s nowhere left to go.
They were already packed tightly before the war, hemmed in by a years-long Israeli and Egyptian blockade. During the current conflict, few parts of the enclave have been spared bombardment, and Israel’s often haphazard and confusing evacuation orders have pushed the displaced into ever-shrinking “safe” areas.
Map showing evacuation area in north Gaza
Map showing the IDF’s division of Gaza into small districts
Map showing evacuation zone in southeast Gaza
Six days after the war began, Israel ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million Palestinians living in the populous area north of the Wadi Gaza wetlands. Hundreds of thousands took off in a desperate scramble.
In early December, the Israel Defense Forces published an online map dividing the 141-square-mile enclave into a patchwork of zones to facilitate evacuation orders. But with limited internet and power, many civilians couldn’t access the grid and when they did, they found it hard to follow.
Israel on Dec. 2 directed civilians in southeastern Gaza to move farther south to Rafah.
A day later, civilians in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, were also told to evacuate. Tens of thousands had been taking refuge in the city after having fled there from the north.
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Almost 1.9 million people, 85 percent of Gaza’s population, have now been forced from their homes, the largest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948.
“They keep saying, ‘Go south. Go to a safer place,’” said Aseel, a resident of northern Gaza who gave only her middle name for security reasons. But then she hears that new strikes have hit those areas too. She added: “We are going in circles here in Gaza. That’s the problem.”
Displaced Gazans flee south on foot and horse-drawn carts along the Gaza Strip’s main Salah al-Din roadway.
(Motaz Azaiza/Instagram)
Israel says it is “seeking constantly to minimize harm to the Palestinian civilian population,” pointing to its evacuation-announcement system of texts, phone calls, airdropped leaflets and warning strikes.
Nearly 20,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry — including many who had evacuated to elsewhere in the Strip in search of safety.
The IDF used to call areas supposedly free from bombardment “safe zones”; it now refers to them as “safer zones.” According to a damage analysis of satellite data by remote-sensing experts Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, at least 20 percent of buildings in the south have been damaged, including in Khan Younis and Rafah.
Map showing damage in the south of Gaza
Damage since Dec. evacuation calls
Damage since Dec. evacuation calls
Damage since Dec. evacuation calls
Damage since Dec. evacuation calls
Overcrowding
Rafah, which makes up just 17 percent of Gaza’s area, has become the epicenter for displacement. Before the war, Rafah was home to 280,000 people. But population density has increased fourfold as more than 1 million people — about half of Gaza’s population — have poured into Rafah, according to the United Nations. The forced displacement has pushed civilians into shelters that are “dangerously overcrowded,” said Arvind Das, Gaza team lead for the International Rescue Committee.
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For food and water, four people are sharing what one person would normally receive in U.N.-run shelters, said Juliette Touma, the Director of Communications for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Crowds of displaced people wait for a meal of lentil soup in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)
“My 2-year-old daughter wants milk every day. She continues to cry for several hours, but I have no help to offer,” said Anwaar al-Khatib, 28, who fled from her battered home in Beit Hanoun to the Tal al-Zaatar area — which was then bombed — to the Indonesian Hospital — which was then besieged — and finally to a school serving as a shelter in Rafah. “Two cans of beans are distributed every two days. Or three.”
Rafah’s al-Quds School is overwhelmed with families, said Muhammad Issa, who is in charge of the shelter. The school, which normally accommodates 1,000 students, is now hosting three times as many people.
Diagram of school crowding
Al-Quds School – shelter center
Total area approximately
33,300 square feet
Approximate density of
1,000 people in courtyard
Approximate density of
3,000 people in courtyard
Al-Quds School – shelter center
Total area approximately
33,300 square feet
Approximate density of
1,000 people in courtyard
Approximate density of
3,000 people in courtyard
Al-Quds School – shelter center
Total area approximately
33,300 square feet
Approximate density of
1,000 people in courtyard
Approximate density of
3,000 people in courtyard
Al-Quds School – shelter center
Approximate density of
1,000 people in courtyard
Approximate density of
3,000 people in courtyard
Total area approximately
33,300 square feet
Al-Quds School – shelter center
Approximate density of
1,000 people in courtyard
Approximate density of
3,000 people in courtyard
Total area approximately
33,300 square feet
Conditions are desperate. About 70 women and children sleep in each of the school’s 27 classrooms, Issa said. Men sleep in the outdoor courtyard.
Diagram of 20 people and 70 people in a single classroom.
20 people in classroom
20 people in classroom
20 people in classroom
70 people in classroom
Touma called it a “super crisis moment.” The agency planned to host 150,000 people in 56 shelters in a worst-case conflict scenario; now, it’s supporting 1.4 million in 155 shelters, according to UNRWA media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna.
Diagram of 1,000 people per toilet
Approximately 1,000 people
Approximately 1,000 people
Approximately 1,000 people
At some shelters, 1,000 people share one toilet, he said. The wait is hours.
For a shower, which 5,000 people share, “you have to wait days,” Abu Hasna said.
There are lines for water “everywhere” in the Strip, he added. And days-long lines for flour too.
Satellite view of UNRWA logistics base in Rafah
This is the UNRWA’s Rafah logistics base in May 2022.
Since the start of the war, at least 30,000 people have sought shelter in and around the complex, with tents extending around it in three directions.
The supply base was completed in 2019 as a place to store and distribute flour and other basic goods. It was never intended as a location to house people.
Displaced Palestinians have crowded into the 26 warehouses and set up tents in the empty lots around the complex’s buildings.
Omar Omar, who was displaced from Beit Lahia, said the warehouses are so packed that “you feel that there is no oxygen in any of them.” Hygiene, he said, is “difficult to control.”
Ahmed Ismail, 38, said that under the pressures of overuse, sewage from the bathrooms flows into the tent he shares with his wife, two daughters and two sons. Rather than waiting hours for the toilet, they relieve themselves in buckets and plastic bags. They shower every week or so. The Ismail family walked to Rafah from Jabalya — a 23-mile journey — after their neighborhood was bombed.
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A displaced population
Severe overcrowding is leading to outbreaks of disease and infection — hepatitis, skin and respiratory illnesses — as people share tight spaces and resources. It’s made all the worse by the collapsed medical system incapable of treating them.
Saif al-Din Muhammad Qadouha, 45, is living in a tent with 11 family members in Rafah. Their home north of Gaza City was destroyed. His son and others in the family now have hepatitis C. Qadouha is worried that his family will pass on the infection to others crammed in their shelter.
“I didn’t lose my children to missiles, but now I’m watching them die of disease,” he said.
A Palestinian family rests in their makeshift tent on Dec. 13 at a camp set up in a schoolyard in Rafah. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
Then there is the psychological effect and the stress of displacement. “The story of becoming a refugee and the trauma that comes with leaving one’s home and not being allowed to return is something that haunts the Palestinian communities.” said UNRWA’s Touma.
Ramez Muhammad, 46, and 14 family members have heeded Israel’s evacuation orders three times, until they reached an area near the southern Rafah crossing.
“Our dignity has been lost in this displacement,” Muhammad said. “I want to return to my home, even if we have to live on top of the rubble.”
About this story
Ayyoub reported from Rafah. Cate Brown contributed to this report.
Editing by Reem Akkad, Samuel Granados and Olivier Laurent. Copy editing by Vanessa Larson. Video editing by Joe Snell.
Al-Quds school and classroom density diagrams were made with 3D software that reconstructed the approximately scaled virtual space, and the number of people for each scenario, based on map analysis and interviews with people in the school.
Satellite imagery from Maxar and Airbus. Boundaries for evacuation areas are based on posts on announcements made by the Israeli Defense Forces. Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. Damage data as of Dec. 16. Data after evacuation calls is for the period of Dec. 4 through Dec. 16. Older damage refers to data from Oct. 5 through Dec. 4. Building footprint data is computer generated by Microsoft Maps using computer vision algorithms.