Displaced people forced to pitch tents in school yards after overcrowded classrooms (Al Jazeera)

GAZA – Abu Zakaria's mission to find a place to shelter him and his family in the city of Rafah, the far south of the Gaza Strip, seems impossible after he was first displaced from his home in Gaza City to the city of Khan Yunis, which in turn is subjected to an Israeli threat campaign no less violent than the air, land and sea bombardment, stationed on this city for the third consecutive day, since the collapse of talks to extend the interim truce agreement.

Abu Zakaria wonders in his speech to Al Jazeera Net, in the tone of exhausted all his options, "Where do we want to go?" Like the majority of Gazans, who have become displaced from their homes, whether inside the same city, or those who were pushed by the occupation army by shelling and intimidation to flee Gaza City and its north towards the south of the Gaza Strip.

A month ago, Abu Zakaria and his family of seven were displaced from his apartment in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City, and took refuge with them in a friend's house in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.

Abu Zakaria regrets being displaced from his home in Gaza City and wishes to return and live there, even under bombardment and without food and drink (Al Jazeera)

Frequent displacement

Abu Zakaria was forced to flee again from the city of Khan Yunis to the neighboring city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, and after looking for "a house, an apartment, a harvest (spaces under buildings used as shops) or any corner," as he described it, he temporarily sought refuge in a small house for his friend, whose walls are almost applied to those inside because of the severe congestion.

The city of Rafah is crowded with more than double its original population, due to waves of displacement to it, and according to the mayor of Rafah, Dr. Ahmed Al-Sufi, in a previous interview with Al Jazeera Net, more than 700 thousand people currently inhabit this city, which is estimated to be numbered before the outbreak of war on the seventh of last October about 300 thousand people.

As soon as the interim truce agreement expired, last Friday morning, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets warning the residents of large areas east of Khan Yunis, and pushing them towards displacement to what they referred to as safe shelters in the city of Rafah.

The occupation army prevents the displaced from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip from returning to their homes, and the displaced paid with their lives for trying to return during the truce, and Abu Zakaria says, "If I had the opportunity, I would return and live in my house under bombardment, even without eating and drinking, all of which are a death and loneliness, better than the humiliation of displacement from place to place."

Abu Zakaria's fears for himself and his family increase following the map of residential blocks published by the occupation army for all areas of the Gaza Strip, limiting the options of more than two million people in the small coastal strip, and pushing them little by little towards areas without access towards the city of Rafah, which is crammed between the sea in the west, the Israeli security fence in the east and the border with Egypt in the south.

Intensive airstrikes on Rafah and cities in the southern Gaza Strip expose the lie of Israel's claims to safe zones (Al Jazeera)

"What block?"

A map published by the occupation army, according to which the Gaza Strip was divided into hundreds of small and adjacent residential blocks, caused confusion among the people of Gaza, who were dominated by the question "What is your block?"

The occupation army claimed that this map aims to enable Palestinians to know the places of evacuation under the division, and to give the residential blocks numbers and plan their boundaries accurately, in order to facilitate their movement to safe places according to the military instructions that will be issued in the coming days.

According to media sources, this map comes in response to an Israeli request to provide safe zones in the southern Gaza Strip and to take measures to protect civilians during its military operations, which seem to be expanding in the south, especially in the city of Khan Yunis.

Samah Abdullah says to Al Jazeera Net "He told us (occupation) displaced from north to south, and we were displaced and did not see security, and now they ask that we displace again on Rafah, and then where we go?!".

About four weeks ago, Samah fled with her husband and their three children to the city of Khan Yunis, after surviving an Israeli air strike on her family home in the town of Beit Lahiya, where she took refuge with her family, believing it was safer than her neighboring home in the same town.

Samah and her family emerged from the rubble and lost her brother Sa'ed, his wife and three children, along with displaced members of his wife's family and her brother Saleh, and her parents and sister were injured in the total collapse of the second and third floors, and partial destruction on the first floor, where she was living with her husband and children.

In the early hours of the end of the truce agreement last Friday morning, Samah says, "We were going to die," as she and her family survived a second time from an Israeli airstrike that destroyed a house adjacent to that of her husband's friend to which they had been displaced, destroying all its wooden doors and glass windows.

Samah Abdullah did not find room for her and her family at an UNRWA school in the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt (Al Jazeera)

"Where do we go?"

While shelters in UNRWA schools and public and government facilities are not an option for Abu Zakaria, Samah drowned in tears and sat with her children collapsed in the yard of an UNRWA school in Rafah, where she did not find room to shelter them.

Like Abu Zakaria, Samah asked, "Where do we want to go?" "I don't want to eat or drink, I want security for my children," she said, "Had it not been for the fact that a displaced person at the school hosted her in a room housing his wife and children, she would have found herself in the street homeless.

UNRWA estimates that more than one million people are displaced in its schools and facilities, while thousands more have sought refuge in schools, hospitals, government facilities, relatives and friends' homes, and displaced people from Khan Younis city and the northern Gaza Strip broke the doors of a government school and stayed there.

And believes Issam fixed like the majority of Gazans that there is no safe place in Gaza, but he took the map of residential squares published by the occupation army seriously, and searched for the location of his home to find out the number of his residential square, and says to the island net "I searched for the number of my residential box taking the reasons, in order to be ready for any emergency."

Essam acknowledges that if this emergency occurs and he has to evacuate his home, he has no specific place to go with his family of four, and his parents and sister with her family of six, who have been displaced in his house since the first week of the war.

Developments on the ground indicate that immediately after the end of the armistice agreement, the occupation army resumed its air raids throughout the Gaza Strip, as if it were starting its war again with full force and violence, targeting homes and residential squares, which, according to the documentation of the local authorities, caused the death of more than 700 Palestinians, and the injury of more than a thousand others.

The director of the government media office, Ismail al-Thawabta, told reporters that 20 Israeli massacres committed by the occupation army during the past 24 hours were monitored in all areas of the Gaza Strip, including the cities of the south, which he claimed were "safe areas."

According to the Ministry of Health, the total death toll of the war on Gaza is about 16,40 martyrs, more than 70,<> wounded, and about <>% of the martyrs and wounded are women and children.

Source : Al Jazeera