Gazans evacuate Khan Yunis as Israel begins yet another operation

KHAN YUNIS: Crowds fleeing Khan Yunis after an Israeli evacuation order gave way to empty streets on Friday as Palestinian residents tried to escape a new Israeli military operation in Gaza’s main southern area.
“They threw leaflets at us, ordering us to evacuate”, Reem Abu Hayya said, referring to the flyers that Israeli forces drop from planes to order the evacuation of areas ahead of a military operation.
The Khan Yunis area had already seen evacuation orders in late July, and heavy fighting that devastated the area earlier this year.
“We don’t know where we’re going, and we have sick and disabled people with us. Where can we go?” Abu Hayya wondered as she stood on the street in front of a building reduced to a pile of rebar and broken concrete.
In a besieged territory that has been consistently bombed over the past 10 months and where supplies enter with great difficulty, people carried all they could as they fled on Thursday.
One man carried planks of wood loosely tied in bundles, to be used as shelter structure or fuel in the near future.
With petrol scarce, only the most fortunate drove, often with mattresses piled high on the car roof. The vast majority walked. They carried their belongings in plastic and garbage bags, on donkey-pulled carts, bikes, strollers or wheelchairs.
By dusk, streets of Khan Yunis stood completely deserted and eerily quiet. Only the ruins of buildings damaged in earlier strikes still stood.
The flyers dropped on Thursday ordered residents to leave eastern towns of Khan Yunis governorate including Al-Salqa, Al-Qarara, Bani Suheila, and neighbourhoods in the city of Khan Yunis.
“Hamas and terrorist organisations continue to launch rockets from your areas”, read the flyers which echoed past orders and warned that the Israeli army “will act forcefully against these elements”.
By Friday the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that “at least 60,000 Palestinians may have moved towards western Khan Yunis in the past 72 hours”, said UN spokeswoman Florencia Soto Nino.
‘We are exhausted’
On Friday, the military said it launched a new operation in Khan Yunis following “intelligence indicating the presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure” there.
The Israeli military has often returned in Gaza to areas where it had previously completed major operations against Palestinians, only to find them resurfacing or to act on intelligence about the location of prisoners.
“Enough! For both, the Jews and Hamas! Both of them should look at the people of Gaza, have mercy on us for God’s sake,” Ahmed Al Najjar, angry at the prospect of yet another displacement, said.
Mohammad al-Farra, from Sheikh Nasser in the east of Khan Yunis, also expressed frustration at the several displacements his family has lived through.
“We were the first to return to our home… as soon as the military operation in our area ended, to escape the heat, the displacement, and the hardship”, the 46-year-old said.
“Then the occupation returned to drive us out again, making us suffer the tragedy multiple times over”, he said, referring to Israel.
“We are exhausted. The war must end immediately so that we can feel human again, even just a little”.
Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2024