The specter of a new "nakba" haunts the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as the most violent round of fighting in years continues with Israel, which is preparing to launch a ground attack aimed at destroying the capabilities of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian factions.
In the cities of Gaza and Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, two camps containing hundreds of tents were inaugurated to shelter thousands of displaced Palestinians as a result of the outbreak of fighting between Hamas and Israel after an unprecedented attack launched by gunmen from the Islamic Resistance Movement on October 7 on towns in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,400. person.
Employees wearing a blue jacket at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) arrange and organize work in the two camps for displaced people.
A week ago, the Israeli army warned more than a million people, or half the population of the Gaza Strip, to leave the Gaza and northern Gaza governorates within 24 hours.
The two camps were established in light of the failure of thousands of Palestinians to flee to the center and south of the Gaza Strip, in addition to accommodating the large numbers of displaced people crowded in Khan Yunis.
UNRWA did not issue any comment regarding the two camps.
However, an employee of the international agency, who requested that his identity not be revealed because he was not authorized to make a statement to the media, told Xinhua News Agency, “Dozens of families who refuse to leave Gaza and the northern Gaza Strip have taken refuge in the place with their entire family to stay here in the Gaza camp.”
He added that UNRWA "had to bring them tents and is now working to care for them."
This step came one day after an appeal by the Hamas movement's media office in which it demanded that the international agency resume its activities in the northern Gaza Strip, including Gaza City.
Palestinian Faryal Abdel Hadi, who was housed in one of the tents with her family of seven, told Xinhua, “The Israeli aircraft destroyed our house in Beit Lahia, killed our relatives and neighbors, and destroyed everything...”
Abdul Hadi added, "There is no electricity, no water, and no food. We have turned into displaced people, sleeping on the ground and covering the sky without any of the necessities of life."
In a repetition of what their ancestors suffered decades ago, the displaced sleep inside tents, rooms and spacious courtyards at night, and in the morning they spread their clothes and blankets on top and sit under the sun’s rays.
This atmosphere brings to mind echoes of the "Nakba", which is the name given by the Palestinians to the expulsion and displacement of about 957 thousand Palestinians, or 66 percent of the total Palestinians who were residing in historic Palestine from the lands that Israel controlled during the 1948 war.
After seven and a half decades, more than a million Palestinians were displaced in the Gaza Strip, including 600,000 displaced people in the Gaza and northern Gaza Strip regions, according to the United Nations.
Half of those who fled are now living in school tents and facilities run by UNRWA, while others are staying in hospital courtyards, near mosques, or with their relatives or friends in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Muhammad Abu Rizq, who lives in the Rafah camp in a house crowded with dozens of displaced people and inside which there is no foothold for a new displaced person, told Xinhua, “They (want) to kill us, destroy our homes and starve us, but we will not respond to them,” referring to Israel.
Abu Rizq (47 years old) added, “My family was displaced from Beit Darras (32 kilometers from Gaza) and they told them that they would return for a few days, but no one returned...”
Abu Rizq's father was displaced when he was a child to the Gaza Strip, which has become the most densely populated place in the world.
A week has passed since the Israeli army asked all Palestinian civilians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, and head to the south of the Gaza Strip, but tens of thousands of Palestinians and the administrations of major hospitals affiliated with Hamas in Gaza and the northern Gaza Strip refuse to obey.
The Israeli bombing led to the killing of about 4,000 Palestinians, amid a record escalation in the number of victims around the clock.
The United Nations estimated that Israel's raids destroyed 30% of the housing units in the Gaza Strip, including wiping out entire residential squares.
There is a growing feeling among Palestinians that the unprecedented Israeli attacks aim to force the population of the Gaza Strip, which is home to 2.3 million people, to head south to Sinai.
In response, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II warned during their meeting yesterday in Cairo of the extreme danger that calls for the displacement of Palestinians pose to regional security.
Egypt has a land border with the Gaza Strip that extends about 13 kilometers.
For many Palestinians, the current atmosphere is similar to that which prevailed in previous times of immigration, whether in terms of the psychological or ideological aspect, or even in terms of spirit and resistance, and everyone has fears about the future and unknown fate.
Displaced people said during open discussions in shelter centers and while queuing in long lines to obtain water and bread, "America and Europe are the cause of our tragedy and crises... but we will not be displaced again no matter what they do."
A man who identified himself as Abu Suleiman Mahani, who is from the Shujaiya neighborhood in eastern Gaza and lives in a shelter center in central Khan Yunis, accused the American president, Britain, and the Europeans of standing behind Israel in its large-scale attack on the Strip.
Mahani's son, a lawyer, said, "People now feel lost and alienated under the weight of the continuous Israeli bombing, the lack of bread and drinking water, and the power outages."
He added, "The idea of leaving or being expelled from the land hurts the conscience of everyone here..."
