Israeli military to displace Gaza City’s population to new ‘humanitarian zone’ in strip’s south

Ahead of a military advance to fully occupy Gaza City, Israeli officials said they were finalizing steps on Sunday to evacuate the city’s residents to areas in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Israel officials have previously said they intend to construct a “humanitarian city” to confine displaced Palestinians in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where the government has held concerns since the outset of Israel’s genocidal war that such a plan could push tens of thousands of Palestinians toward Egypt’s eastern border to seek refuge in Sinai.

“Starting from Sunday,” Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X on Saturday evening, “Gaza residents will be provided with tents and other shelter equipment.” He said the step came ahead of the relocation of the city’s population, “from combat zones to the south of the enclave to ensure their safety.” 

The Israeli military is accelerating plans recently approved at the political level to invade and establish complete security control over Gaza City — Gaza’s largest urban center, currently home to around 1 million people. Intense ground and aerial bombardment has already killed dozens, and forced residents of east Gaza City to evacuate, especially residents of the southeastern Zeitoun neighborhood.

The Israeli Army Radio reported on Sunday that the chief of staff had convened an expanded meeting with the Southern Command to finalize plans for the city’s “capture.” It would be impossible to accommodate all the expelled residents of Gaza City in the “humanitarian zones in central Gaza and Mawasi camps that exist today,” its correspondent said.

The camps of Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat in central Gaza, as well as the tented coastal area of Mawasi, are already packed with residents displaced from across the strip by nearly two years of war.

Instead, “the IDF will be required to withdraw from a certain area that it currently controls in the southern Gaza Strip, in order to turn it into a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Gaza City,” according to the army radio.

The schedule of operations has been advanced, pushing planned maneuvers forward in schedule to the coming weeks, with the target of evacuating the city’s population as well as establishing full operational control inside the city by October 7, the military broadcaster stated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also said on August 10 that civilians would be evacuated before the offensive to what he called “safe zones” outside Gaza City, describing the area as Hamas’s last stronghold. He claimed that Hamas is also active in the central camps and Mawasi, articulating plans for Israel to assume full security control over the entirety of Gaza.

Plans for a so-called “humanitarian city” to be established in Rafah to house hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians were floated in July by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who also said that Palestinians would not be allowed to leave the zone.  

Israeli academics and former officials decried the plan as a blueprint for crimes against humanity, saying it would be a “concentration camp.”

Palestinian and UN officials have said that no area in the enclave is safe — including the southern zones to which residents are being directed. A spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that Israel’s displacement plan would only deepen civilian suffering, though the body welcomed Israel’s decision to permit the entry of tents and other shelter supplies. “The UN and its partners will seize the opportunity this opens,” the spokesperson said.

A Mada Masr correspondent in Gaza noted, however, that residents were yet to report the provision of further tents or supplies to support living conditions for those fleeing the Israeli forces advancing into Gaza City.

Egypt’s foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday addressing reports of Israeli talks with several countries on hosting Palestinians displaced from Gaza, in which it reiterated its categorical rejection of any Israeli attempt to displace Palestinians, whether within Gaza or abroad, stressing that it will not accept or participate in any measures that undermines the Palestinian cause.