Gaza City struggles to absorb hundreds of thousands forced to flee as new Israeli operation sweeps through northern towns

Israel’s latest military advance into northern Gaza reached the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia earlier this week, after killing hundreds of civilians and crushing their homes in its wake.

The hospital wards were not spared the advance. Patients and medical staff witnessed scenes recurring in recent days for people across the north: a state of panic and confusion amid fire from all sides, leaving no choice but to flee along a route equally exposed to the advancing Israeli military's bombardment.

“I could hear the cries of the patients and the wounded from inside the hospital all along, but no one was able to enter or evacuate the facility,” an eyewitness told Mada Masr on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It is highly dangerous to step outside at this time as the Occupation forces target anyone in the vicinity of the hospital or just outside it.”

With Israel killing nearly 500 people since Thursday and hundreds more estimated to be dead under rubble or left behind amid the confusion, hundreds of thousands of civilians who were living in and around the towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia in northern Gaza were forced to flee to Gaza City.

Israel's deadly maneuvers in the north began on Thursday evening with intensive aerial bombardment and tank build-up observed in Beit Lahia, before the Israeli military announced on Sunday the launch of its new military operation, “Gideon's Chariots.”

Israel’s escalation on Beit Lahia included attacks on the facility, which was attempting to triage a deluge of people who had sustained injuries from attacks in the surrounding neighborhoods, the director of the Indonesian Hospital, Marwan Sultan, told Mada Masr on Sunday. Hundreds of the wounded were transferred to the hospital and medical teams were completely unable to handle the volume of need, he said.

Amid the crisis, tankfire struck the Indonesian Hospital’s intensive care unit, Sultan noted. The eyewitness, who was near the hospital, told Mada Masr on Monday that Israel demolished the hospital’s northern wall with artillery shelling on Sunday evening. Quadcopters were still circling over the hospital courtyard the following morning, he added, unleashing heavy fire periodically. The attacks injured a patient present in the hospital’s vicinity and targeted those adjacent to the hospital’s windows, Sultan said.

On Monday evening, Israeli fire targeting the hospital’s generators caused a complete power outage and rendered the facility inoperable, the Gaza Health Ministry reported.

Patients and medical personnel were left in a state of panic and confusion, according to Sultan. Footage from Gaza showed people pushing hospital beds or carrying sick, wounded or elderly relatives through the streets as they fled south from the facility.

Many in Beit Lahia and Jabalia have taken the same route since Thursday. Ibrahim Labad, who was living in Beit Lahia, said the Israeli military dropped leaflets on northern Gaza over the weekend, ordering people to evacuate and warning that those who remain in the north will be targeted.

“I had no other option but to flee from death to the unknown in Gaza City,” Labad said.

Ahmed al-Samoudy, also from Beit Lahia, told Mada Masr that he took the difficult decision to leave his home with no prospect of return due to the quickening pace of airstrikes on his neighborhood. “The Occupation targeted our neighbour’s house, as well as many of those surrounding us. There was no option but displacement,” he said, noting that hundreds of other families were also fleeing the north at the same time.

Ettab Assaleya, meanwhile, was displaced from nearby Jabalia. The Israeli military had struck her family home at the start of the war. This time, she said, it destroyed it entirely. Two weeks ago, her eldest son was injured. It was this, she said, and her desire to prevent her grandchildren from being exposed to the violence, that ultimately made her decide to leave.

“I carried my young grandchildren and we began yet another displacement journey,” Assaleya said. “It was exhausting, especially given the lack of food, to the point where I almost fainted on the route.”

No food or other aid supplies have been delivered to Gaza since the first week of March. Israel was due to break the siege on Monday with a small delivery, though the goods had not yet reached civilians as of Monday evening.

The thousands of people fleeing danger in their neighborhoods in Beit Lahia and Jabalia were also exposed to Israeli fire on the road south. All eyewitnesses described seeing dead bodies along their route, and one said they saw people being killed.

“We went out at night, " Samoudy recalled. "We ran while airstrikes and quadcopters surrounded us from all areas.”

“People were running for their lives,” he continued. “I saw people fall while escaping from the artillery shelling and airstrikes, but I was running, along with my family, without looking back.”

He described the two-hour journey that brought them to Gaza City as the most difficult they have gone through since Israel began its war on Gaza in 2023.

Mohamed al-Rass, who was also forcibly displaced, echoed Samoudy’s testimony. While he was fleeing, he saw the bodies of many people killed by Israeli forces as they tried to flee south.

“Airstrikes were being launched from all over,” Assaleya said. “I saw many dead bodies on the floor, but people were fleeing for their lives and no one had time to carry the dead.”

“The scene was terribly horrific. Children and women were screaming from terror and the sounds of airstrikes did not stop. Thank God we managed to survive and reach Gaza City,” she continued.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the head of the Government Media Office in Gaza, also confirmed to Mada Masr that “the Occupation has left no resort for residents but to flee to Gaza City.” His office released a statement on Saturday estimating that around 300,000 people had been forcibly displaced from areas in northern Gaza in the first 48 hours of Israel’s escalated bombing since Thursday night.

The same statement estimated that around 140 dead bodies were still under the rubble, with ambulance and civil defense teams unable to reach the targeted areas in the north due to the danger of injury from Israeli fire.

Meanwhile, civilians and an official in Gaza City described to Mada Masr the situation in the city receiving those displaced from the deadly attacks in the north.

Yehia al-Serag, Gaza City’s mayor, told Mada Masr on Sunday that the strip’s capital is unequipped for the large number of displaced people that have arrived since the weekend. The city was already heavily crowded with people forcibly displaced from eastern Gaza City weeks earlier.

Serag estimated that there are now over one million civilians crammed into a small part of Gaza City, a number that he said is expected to rise as Israel continues its operation over the coming days. 

The crowding has left the city’s newest arrivals with almost nothing. “We spent the night in the street with thousands of others," Samoudy said. “People slept on sidewalks as no tents were provided for them. Given that most left without blankets, most of them were completely exposed throughout the night.”

Labad and his family also spent the night on the sidewalk. “I found a small spot to pitch my tent, but the area lacked the most basic necessities of life — no water, no bathrooms, nothing at all," he said.

Serag confirmed that the municipality is completely unable to provide civilians with basic necessities, describing the situation as a full-scale humanitarian disaster by any standard.

The government media office has likewise stated that the available tents and shelters are completely insufficient, and that even the most basic necessities — food, water and medicine — are absent “amid a suffocating siege and relentless bombardment.”

With the exception of only 20 trucks that entered the strip on Monday, no food, fuel or vital supplies have entered Gaza since March, when Israel abandoned the prisoner-release framework established under the January ceasefire deal and imposed a total blockade with the express intent to pressure Hamas into releasing the prisoners it still holds. Shortly afterward, it resumed wholescale war on the strip.

Thawabta said the military operations over recent days and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands southward to Gaza City indicates that Israel plans to completely empty the north to seize full control of the area.

Israel’s military announced on Sunday the launch of Operation Gideon’s Chariots. In its statement, the military claimed that its troops, deployed in “key positions” within Gaza,  have “eliminated dozens of terrorists” and “dismantled terrorist infrastructure sites above and below the ground.”

The Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, has detailed the strategy behind Gideon’s Chariots as intended to close in on civilians via troop advances along several axes from the north and east, pinioning them in to ultimately transfer the population into an enclosure in the strip’s south.

Thawabta compared the current set of maneuvers to Israel’s invasion of Rafah in March. Israel’s military occupied Rafah’s Miraj Street earlier this year, dubbed by the Occupation as the Morag Corridor, effectively separating Rafah from the rest of the coastal enclave and placing the entire governorate under its control.

Thawabta said that, along with its advance on northern Gaza, the Israeli military is also conducting rapid demolitions that have partially or completely destroyed at least 1,000 residential buildings so far.

His media office’s statement was concise. With individuals, vehicles and rescue teams all in the firing line, the statement said, Israel is turning northern Gaza “into an open and systematic killing ground.”