Egyptian Red Crescent source: New camp for Palestine’s displaced abandoned as Israel escalates aggression in Gaza’s south

A camp being constructed for displaced Palestinians under coordination with Egyptian bodies near the coast of south Gaza’s Khan Younis has been abandoned, a source in the Egyptian Red Crescent Society (ERCS) told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity on Sunday.

The team suspended construction at the camp due to precarious security conditions, the source said.

Occupation shelling has drawn nearer to the camp’s surroundings in the Mawasi area on the southern coast of Gaza — once an Israeli-designated “safe humanitarian zone” — as the aggression has heightened in pitch, with intensive airstrikes bombarding neighborhoods and ground troops besieging facilities increasingly further south in the strip. As a result, the 1.3 million displaced residents of Gaza are now being forced ever closer to Rafah, on the border with Egypt.

Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent teams had set up around 370 tents out of an intended 1,000 at the site in Mawasi, said the source.

But the team wasn’t able to finish the project announced by Egypt’s Red Crescent in December. In fact, with Israeli operations in the area heightened, Egypt’s Red Crescent team hasn’t been able to enter Khan Younis for over a week since its last visit on January 21. “The shelling was all around us,” the source said.

At the time of the project’s announcement, logistical team leader for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Mohamed Abul Atta, said that the camp’s initial phase had already been implemented, with 300 tents set up to accommodate up to 1,500 people from the families of the agency’s medical, ambulance and relief teams.

But some of the displaced individuals started relocating their tents in mid-January, potentially owing to strong winds due to the camp’s proximity to the sea, an Egyptian Red Crescent source told Mada Masr at the time. The agency’s team relocated the camp accordingly, and the families were promptly resettled.

On January 29, Occupation military spokesman Avichay Adraee called on residents of the Nasr and Amal neighborhoods and the shelter camp in Khan Younis to evacuate "immediately" through Rashid Street to the humanitarian zone in Mawasi.

Since Israel’s aggression on Gaza began on October 7 and ground troops invaded later in the same month, Israel had designated the Mawasi area along the strip’s Mediterranean coast, extending from Deir al-Balah to Rafah, a humanitarian safe zone. However, according to a London-based agency for spatial analysis, Forensic Architecture, Occupation shelling has struck Mawasi on more than one occasion.

Forensic Architecture refuted Israel’s claims that it had protected Palestinian civilians by issuing evacuation orders to designated safe zones, part of the argument mounted by Israel’s legal team to state that it is not in violation of the Genocide Convention at the ongoing trial at the International Court of Justice. FA stated that Occupation forces have repeatedly targeted shelters and hospitals in declared safe zones, including on one occasion just a day prior to the ICJ’s January 26 ruling that it is plausible that Israel is in violation of the convention.