Eyewitnesses describe mass arrests as Israel forces Palestinians out of Jabalia camp, Beit Lahia

Amid heavy bombardment, Israeli forces forcibly displaced civilians in the north of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, driving them into areas in the northwest, including Sheikh Radwan, Al-Nasr and Al-Shati, passing through Israeli checkpoints, where some were arrested, according to several eyewitnesses in the area who spoke to Mada Masr. 

The ground operations launched by Occupation forces in northern Gaza 18 days ago have continued to expand into the strip’s northeast, with heavy fire laying waste to homes and shelters and pushing people out of Jabalia and its camp in recent days.

Fatema Hamad, an eyewitness who was displaced from Beit Lahia on Tuesday morning, told Mada Masr that those who attempted to flee areas in the north were targeted and shot at by the Israeli military, adding that many were arrested by Israeli forces in Israeli-designated evacuation routes.

Hamad added that most of the displaced from areas in the north headed to areas west of Gaza City, such as Sheikh Radwan, Al-Nasr and Al-Shati.

Niveen al-Dawawsa, a medical volunteer with the Gaza Health Ministry, described a similar incident on Monday. 

In Jabalia, the Israeli military conducted an airstrike on School A for Boys, which is affiliated with the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), she said. Dawawsa, who was taking shelter in the school, told Mada Masr that the area was bombed by Israeli forces in an airstrike that killed 10 people and injured around 30 more. 

Medical volunteers were unable to rescue many of the injured, she said, explaining that she was the only worker present at the time of the school’s targeting. 

Those sheltering at the school were forced to evacuate to areas further west in Jabalia, with many getting arrested on the evacuation roads designated by Israeli forces, according to Dawawsa. 

In another incident on Monday, an eyewitness in the vicinity of the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, also in northern Gaza, told Mada Masr that Israeli forces stormed shelters around the hospital and conducted arrest campaigns over the past three days in the hospital’s vicinity. 

Those arrested were separated by sex, she said, and investigations were conducted with the men while the women were forced to evacuate to western areas in northern Gaza. 

She added that the Israeli military dug large holes in the hospital’s vicinity where it placed the arrested men, gathering and abusing them before taking them into custody.  

The eyewitness told Mada Masr that she was forced to evacuate with the other women to western areas, leaving her husband, who was arrested, behind. She said she has heard nothing of him since then. 

Israeli forces took pictures of the displaced passing through Israeli checkpoints, said Riham Abu Ouda, an eyewitness who was forcibly displaced from Beit Hanoun to the Jabalia camp before finally reaching Gaza City in the northwest. 

Footage taken by Israeli forces and circulated on X in the past few days showed crowds of women and children on evacuation roads, with many of the buildings around them completely destroyed. 

Journalist Hossam Shabat reported via X that Occupation forces had placed displaced women in a hole dug in the ground in order to interrogate and humiliate them. 

The Israeli military, meanwhile, has claimed that civilians in Jabalia have been allowed to evacuate the area safely through organized paths, and that it has arrested dozens of "saboteurs" who were hiding among civilians.

UNRWA said last Sunday that Israel had forced about 20,000 Jabalia residents and displaced persons to flee again as a result of the military operations and Israeli shelling in the area.

Israeli forces have used various methods to force the displacement of civilians in northern Gaza, bombing shelter centers, dropping flyers and flying drones which broadcast voice commands ordering the displaced to comply with the Israeli instructions and leave the designated areas, Yehia al-Madhoun, a journalist from northern Gaza told Mada Masr.  

“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” said the UNRWA’s commissioner general on Tuesday morning, adding that amid the non-stop Israeli bombardment civilians in northern Gaza cannot find food, water or medical care with the “smell of death” everywhere.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, 42,718 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli onslaught on the strip on October 7, 2023, while 100,282were injured, with thousands more still under the rubble.