Rafah now: The last displacement?

Over nearly seven months in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation has repeatedly ordered the strip’s residents to evacuate their homes and places of refuge and to travel south. Rafah, in southernmost Gaza, has in recent months become the most densely populated area of the strip, full of internally displaced Palestinians. On May 6, Israeli planes dropped evacuation orders on the neighborhoods of eastern Rafah, directing residents to an “expanded humanitarian area” in Mawasi, a coastal area between Rafah and Khan Younis.

On the following day, Israeli armored vehicles stormed the Rafah border crossing, while planes bombed eastern Rafah and tanks “hurried” displaced people along with continuous shelling. Thousands of Palestinians have since fled from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to its central and western quarters and to the cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah.

Eastern Rafah’s mass displacement saw its population transporting what they could in an array vehicles, including horse and donkey-drawn carts, and others making their way on foot. As the chaos of the hurried evacuation gradually thinned out, east Rafah’s streets were left bare and devoid of life, while its administrative area continued to remain a target for incessant Israeli bombing.

Text and images: Zuheir Dola, Abdallah Alsayed