Overcrowded camps force Palestinians back to Gaza City danger
Despite Israel's call for the population to leave, the Hamas-run Gaza government estimates that 1.3 million of Gaza's roughly 2 million total population remain in Gaza City and the north
Conditions in overcrowded coastal encampments for displaced Palestinians in Gaza are so desperate that some people who fled Israel's new offensive on famine-struck Gaza City in recent days are heading back towards the falling bombs, they told Reuters.
Those fleeing are mainly seeking shelter either in the area by the sea immediately west of Gaza City or in Mawasi, a sprawling tent camp along beaches and farmland in the south that Israel has designated a humanitarian zone, aid agencies said.
Many of them are arriving to find no space for shelter, few tents, inadequate water supply and restricted health care, according to over a dozen Palestinians who had made the difficult trip with their families and who, along with UNICEF and the Hamas-run Gaza government, spoke to Reuters for this story.
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"I have been in the sun for two days looking for a place and could not find any. Now I had to take my belongings and go back to Gaza City," said Mohammed al-Sherif, 35, who left the Sabra district of Gaza City along with his family and those of his two brothers on Monday after Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on the area warning all civilians to get out.
With many motor vehicles destroyed and little petrol, travel inside Gaza is slow and expensive. Sherif's family loaded all their belongings on a donkey cart and went to Mawasi, where Reuters video showed them trudging through densely packed camps, but they have no tent and could find nowhere to stay, he said.
"This is not our situation only, but everyone's. People come, don't find a shelter or a place, then leave and go back to danger. We don't know what to do," he said.
Satellite images reviewed by Reuters showed large areas of Mawasi jammed with tents even before the current arrivals, though some apparent fields remained.
Barely any agricultural land is still available in Gaza where aid agencies have cited the lack of space to grow food as a significant contributor to widespread malnutrition.
Other images showed increases in tent cover from August 20-September 10 along the coast in Mawasi and at al-Shati camp near Gaza City.
Israel began ramping up its attack on Gaza City late last month, saying it aimed to free remaining hostages held by Hamas from its October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war, the bloodiest bout of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It has said all civilians should leave the city and go to Mawasi, which it has designated a humanitarian zone.
Israeli forces killed 11 people in strikes on various parts of Gaza City on Thursday and five in a strike on the al-Shati camp, according to medics and local health authorities. In August, a global hunger monitor said Gaza City was in famine.
Despite Israel's call for the population to leave, the Hamas-run Gaza government estimates that 1.3 million of Gaza's roughly 2 million total population remain in Gaza City and the north.
Displacement is accelerating. The CCCM, an inter-agency working group that includes UN bodies and other aid organisations, recorded 20,000 people fleeing Gaza City from August 31 to September 7. From September 7 to September 10 it recorded another 25,000 leaving the city, mostly for the south.
The UN humanitarian country team, a grouping of UN agencies working in Gaza, rejected Israel's description of Mawasi as a humanitarian zone.
"It has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals," the team said in a statement on Wednesday.
Military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani told Reuters there was space in the zone for people to shelter, tents, food, clean water and medical supplies.
Asked by Reuters how Israel planned to fit a million people into already overcrowded areas and provide for them, Shoshani said: "That's what we're working on. More tents, more food, more water and more medical centres in this area to make sure that people can come."
Israel has conducted strikes inside areas it has designated safe or humanitarian zones throughout the war. Shoshani said it struck Hamas fighters wherever they emerge, including Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Mawasi last year, and that militants hide among civilians. Hamas denies using the civilian population andproperty for military purposes.
NO LAND, NO TENT
People already in Mawasi say the crowding is so intense already that as more people arrive they fear conflict with those already established. "There is no place for them to live. People are fighting with each other," said Abu Fadi Abu Ouda, sitting in a tent in Mawasi.
At Wadi Gaza, in the centre of the tiny enclave, Reuters saw displaced Palestinians heading north towards Gaza City.
"We are returning back on foot. Some people go to their relatives or someone else who booked a spot for them. We don't have any land, any tent, even the basic life necessities. I don't even have water," Ahmed Abu Deya, pushing a cart loaded with the family's belongings.
Back in Gaza City, Aya Mohammad, 31, has a family of eight and lives in the Sabra neighbourhood in a house damaged by an airstrike early in the war. She and her family fled in 2023 but returned along with hundreds of thousands of others in January during a truce.
They plan to stay in the city as long as they can because they do not know where they can find shelter in the south and the family has members who are old or sick and would struggle to travel.
"I have been searching for a place to put a tent and I can't find one. I asked people in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah and they told me they can't find a space for me and my family," she said.
Adding to the difficult decisions Gaza City families have to make is the high cost of moving south with all their belongings.
One displaced person, Abu Ahmed, put the cost of travelling at $600 and the price of a new tent at $1,200. The Norwegian Refugee Council northern Gaza office manager Salma Altaweel estimated the cost of travel at $700 and a tent at $1,000.
Those sums are beyond most people, leaving them with a choice between staying or taking with them only what they can carry, abandoning shelter tarpaulins, mattresses, cooking pots and clothes.
The United Nations and aid agencies say Israel in practice blocked deliveries of materials for shelter for nearly six months and despite the lifting of the restriction last month only a trickle of tents is coming in.
Israel's military issued a media statement on Wednesday including pictures and maps of what it said were empty areas in Mawasi where people could pitch tents.
The maps, showing different areas to those in the satellite images reviewed by Reuters, were of land on the inland edges of the designated humanitarian zone, close to places where fighting may continue. The pictures it shared showed what appeared to be sandy ground with no sign of nearby infrastructure.
UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingrams, who was in Gaza this week, said there was very little space in Mawasi, where she had seen tents set up along the shoulder of roads. She said the inland areas there were where conditions were worst.
"A lot of the families who are coming down in this latest displacement, the available space is in that area where, for example, there might not be a water tank," she said.
Raeda el-Far, making bread over an open fire while her small children sat nearby, said she had been displaced five times. Now, after a recent Israeli evacuation order, she and her family are in a tent in central Gaza, next to a rubbish dump covered in flies, where street dogs prowl at night, she said.
"End the war. It's enough. We're really exhausted," said el-Far, the dump rising behind her. "There is no safety at all wherever you go."
