900,000 Palestinians in Gaza refuse displacement despite relentless Israeli bombardment

In its statement, the GMO reported an escalation in forced displacement from Gaza City toward the south since the beginning of the IOF mass eviction campaign. Around 270,000 people have been forced to leave their homes under relentless bombardment.

However, the GMO also recorded reverse displacement, noting that more than 22,000 residents had returned to their original neighborhoods in Gaza City by Saturday noon after temporarily moving their belongings south for safekeeping, only to return due to the lack of basic living conditions in the south.

The statement highlighted that the Mawasi area in Khan Yunis and Rafah, currently home to around one million people and falsely promoted by Israeli occupation authorities as “safe humanitarian zones”, has been targeted by over 110 airstrikes, leaving more than 2,000 martyrs in successive massacres carried out by the IOF.

It stressed that these areas are entirely devoid of basic necessities: no hospitals, no infrastructure, no essential services such as water, food, shelter, electricity, or education, making life there virtually impossible.

According to the GMO, the so-called “shelter zones” designated by Israel on its evacuation maps constitute no more than 12 percent of the Gaza Strip, into which the IOF is attempting to force over 1.7 million people.

This, the GMO said, reflects a plan to create “concentration camps” as part of a systematic policy of forced transfer aimed at depopulating Gaza City and northern Gaza, a full-fledged war crime and crime against humanity under international law.

The GMO strongly condemned the continued genocide and forced displacement carried out by Israel against Palestinian civilians and denounced what it called the disgraceful silence of the international community and its failure to uphold its legal and moral responsibilities.

It held Israel and its strategic ally, the US administration, along with other states complicit in the genocide, fully responsible for the ongoing crimes and their international legal repercussions.

The GMO urged the international community, the United Nations, and international courts and legal institutions to take urgent and concrete action to stop these crimes, prosecute Israeli leaders before competent tribunals, and ensure the protection of civilians and their right to remain on their land in safety and dignity.