Smoke rises as Palestinians take part in a protest following Israeli attacks on Gaza in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, October 13, 2023. Photo by Raneen Sawafta/Portal
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — As Naji Jamal watched the pulverized, deserted alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, he froze in indecision.
Should he heed the Israeli army’s demand to evacuate all Palestinians and make the risky journey to southern Gaza, where his only certainty was homelessness? Or should he remain in his multi-story building – within what the Israeli army has now designated as a target zone – ahead of a likely Israeli ground invasion?
“It’s an existential question, but there is no answer,” said Jamal, a 34-year-old health clinic worker. “There is no safe haven, there is no place that is not being shot at and besieged, there is no place to go.”
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In an unprecedented order to civilians in the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City, the Israeli military gave Jamal – and 1.1 million other Palestinians – 24 hours to decide. It was the sixth day of Israeli bombings sparked by Hamas’ brutal attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and stunned the country.
As the ultimatum expired, hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists gathered near Gaza’s northern border. Israeli warplanes roared overhead, diving low and hurling bombs at houses and high-rise apartment buildings. Aid groups appealed to the international community to stop what they denounced as a possible war crime of forcible population relocation.
In understaffed and poorly equipped hospitals, Palestinian doctors said they had no choice but to stay there. There is no way to evacuate Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, said its director general Mohammad Abu Selim. Even though the hospital was in chaos – electricity was running low under the Israeli siege, beds were overwhelmed, the morgue was overcrowded – Abu Selim said there was simply no other safe place in Gaza to accommodate 600 patients many of whom were in serious condition as a result of the attacks.
“It is ridiculous to ask us to evacuate, it is impossible,” Abu Selim said.
But hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians across the territory disputed the agonizing decision as Israeli retaliation increased. The Israeli army says its airstrikes target militant infrastructure and not civilians – a claim the Palestinians reject.
Many fled south for their lives, cramming into relatives’ cars and rolling through streets blocked by rubble as thunderous bombardments fell around them. A jumble of tractors, horse-drawn carts and donkeys stretched about 30 kilometers (18 miles) across the strip, turning a normally windy 45-minute drive into a harrowing – and, for dozens of people, deadly – two-hour journey.
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At least 70 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on evacuating vehicles, the Hamas press office said.
“I don’t trust them,” Ali Abdul Bari, a 37-year-old Gaza City resident, said of the Israeli army. “But I will always do everything I can to protect my family.”
Bari’s home on the northwestern edge of Gaza City was leveled in a heavy airstrike late Thursday. Dazed and tired from the nights he was awake, he arrived in Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, after the evacuation order, but was unable to get all of his family members into the car. He promised his aunt and uncle that he would pick them up on Saturday. Bari said the decision was easy for him.
“I have responsibility for my parents, my brothers and my sisters,” he said.
Asked how civilians could get to safety amid ongoing heavy bombardment, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters: “We will try to ensure that this happens.”
Despite the danger, some stubbornly refused to leave their homes. They watched the convoys go by and remembered previous floods of Palestinian refugees who had fled other wars, only to never be able to return home. Some Palestinians point to the so-called Nakba, or “catastrophe,” at Israel’s founding in 1948, when around 700,000 people fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel. Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip also urged people not to flee, describing Israel’s order as “psychological warfare” to break their solidarity.
“This is the Nakba, all our traumas all over again,” said activist Yasser Hasouneh in Gaza City. “We will not be intimidated.”
Others had neither the means nor the foresight to pack up and leave.
Jamal in the Jabaliya camp simply didn’t have a car. The thought of packing his young son, his sick mother and 30 other family members onto a horse-drawn wagon and sending them through a war zone made him shudder. He said he had come to terms with whatever God had in store for him.
“This way we will be able to be together and read the Quran and pray,” he said.
For many, news of evacuations spread slowly due to the collapse of cell phone networks and the internet across much of the Gaza Strip.
In the heart of Gaza City – a once-vibrant neighborhood hollowed out by heavy bombing – 27-year-old engineer Saeb al-Jarz waited for word from his father, who was injured in an airstrike on their tower block late Thursday. Three of his neighbors were killed and his family home was destroyed.
Still shocked by the scenes he witnessed, Al-Jarz first learned of the Israeli army’s evacuation ultimatum from an Associated Press reporter. He panicked and tried to discuss next steps with his 25 relatives.
“Maybe we’ll stay because if we die, we die together,” he said.
His voice was shaking. He changed his mind.
“I just really, really want to live,” he said.
DeBre reported from Jerusalem.