It was five in the morning on October 13, 2023 when Omar, a father who lived on Yarmouk Street, in northern Gaza, woke up to Israeli bombings. “I jumped out of my apartment and tried to get out,” Omar told the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), remembering how he tried to escape after the impact of two bombs that shook his building. Without having received any prior evacuation order, Omar lost four family members, including his six-year-old son.
Omar is one of the many testimonies collected in the report ‘Desperate, hungry and besieged: forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel’ that HRW published this Thursday. The NGO accuses the Israeli Government of committing war crimes due to the massive displacement of 90% of the Gazan population: 1.9 million people were displaced in October 2024, according to the UN. “There is no plausible overriding military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly the entire population of Gaza, often multiple times,” HRW states.
Confusing evacuation orders
Since October 8, 2023, a day after the Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli military has issued at least 184 evacuation orders in Gaza, according to HRW. One of the most sweeping orders was issued on October 13, forcing more than a million people to leave their homes. Despite the bombings in the early hours of that day, HRW verified that the general evacuation order was not sent until 7:15 a.m., when Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee shared it on his Facebook account.
“The evacuation of civilians should be a measure of last resort and must offer security guarantees,” indicates the HRW report, which questions the effectiveness of evacuation protocols, describing them as “confusing and contradictory.” Testimonies highlight that communications were inaccessible to most civilians, who faced deliberate electricity blackouts and internet outages. “We had no way of knowing what to do or where to go,” recalls Ghassan, a resident of Jabalia, whose neighborhood was bombed just hours after Israel airdropped evacuation leaflets.
“Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and has often only served to sow fear and anxiety,” HRW says in its new report. The NGO says that this system has been ineffective, despite the fact that Israel has defended that the evacuation orders seek to protect Palestinian civilians.
Firstly, the system assumed that all Gazans had coverage, signal and phones with sufficient battery to receive the alerts. Just one day before, on October 12, the then Minister of Foreign Affairs and current Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, said: “Not a single electrical switch will be activated, not a single tap will be opened, and not a single truck will enter.” of fuel until the Israeli hostages are returned home.”
The reality is that since October 7, 2023, telephone and internet services in Gaza have suffered major disruptions due to damage to communications infrastructure, power outages, fuel blockades, and apparently deliberate blackouts by the Israeli authorities. Additionally, HRW details that evacuation orders posted on the internet were sometimes inaccurate and changed throughout the day, requiring people to constantly be online and review the information.
The Israeli Army also used the dissemination of maps that had inaccuracies and inconsistencies. The general evacuation order, issued on October 13, 2023, contained one main instruction for residents of northern Gaza: head south. The airdropped leaflets included a rudimentary map of Gaza indicating where civilians should go. But evacuation orders later became more specific. At that time, Israeli authorities “indicated the evacuation of certain neighborhoods, often with maps and arrows pointing in the direction in which they should flee. However, due to the size and scale of the shared maps, it was not always possible for the reader to know if they were in an area planned for evacuation,” HRW highlights.
On December 1, 2023, the Israeli military published a map on its website, accessible via QR code on a mobile phone, that divided Gaza into a grid of 620 numbered blocks. From that moment on, he continued to publish leaflets and messages on social media indicating which blocks needed to be evacuated. However, HRW denounces that nearly 31,000 people in Khan Yunis “did not receive a complete evacuation order due to errors on the maps.” These had inaccuracies, such as “partially or incorrectly highlighting evacuation zones, making it difficult to know who should evacuate.” In some cases, “evacuation orders contained contradictory instructions, for example, asking people to leave certain areas while simultaneously marking those same areas as safe destinations” to which they could go.
Finally, the organization denounces that evacuation orders often lacked precise time indications. Not knowing when the bombing would begin, civilians were forced to flee under extreme pressure with no time to act. “Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and often not communicated to civilians in sufficient time to allow evacuations, or not at all,” HRW notes.
“We had no idea where we were going,” says Ghazal, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy. “That period was the hardest I have ever gone through. They are dark memories that I don’t want to hold on to because I don’t want to continue thinking about them,” explains Ghazal, who had lost his assistive devices in an attack on his home on October 11, 2023 and who tried to follow the evacuation orders of the 13th. October to flee south.
“I was a burden to [mi familia]an extra load along with your belongings. I couldn’t find any means of transportation. Even able-bodied people found it difficult to walk, so you can imagine what it was like for someone with a disability.” Ghazal relates that he tried to make the journey on foot for as long as possible. “At that moment I felt that death was near. I gave up and sat on the ground in the middle of the road, crying. “I told them to continue without me.”
ethnic cleansing
The displacement of Gaza’s population has also led some experts to point to possible acts of ethnic cleansing, which a UN commission defines as “a policy aimed at expelling an ethnic group from a given area through violence or threats.” HRW argues that the displacements in Gaza, motivated by intensified attacks and the blockade, respond to a strategy of evicting Palestinians from certain territories.
Without going any further, in an interview with elDiario.es, Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, assured that what is happening in the Gaza Strip is “ethnic cleansing through genocidal means.” .
HRW maintains that the statements of high-level Israeli officials show an intention to dispossess the population of their land through massive and forced displacements. “Israel cannot justify these displacements by citing the presence of armed groups, if it does not guarantee safe areas for displaced civilians,” the report adds. These areas have been designated by the Army in the south and center of Gaza, in Al Mawasi, but security in them will not be guaranteed since they have been the target of repeated attacks.
The right of return and the obligation of reparation
Faced with this situation, the right of return of displaced Palestinians becomes a demand for justice in the midst of the crisis. HRW highlights this right – enshrined in international law and United Nations Resolution 194 – which guarantees displaced people the possibility of returning to their homes and recovering their property, or receiving compensation if restitution is not possible. “The right of return not only represents a historical demand of the Palestinians, but also a demand for recognition of the damage suffered and for adequate reparation,” the report reads.
“Israel has blatantly violated its obligation to guarantee that Palestinians can return to their homes, destroying practically everything in large areas,” denounces HRW, which in its report also includes the destruction of large areas of the Strip.
However, the organization highlights that the Israeli authorities have not offered conditions or guarantees for the return of the displaced, while the conditions in the temporary shelters, where tens of thousands of people are overcrowded, are unsustainable. “We are in a plastic store; there is no water or food. And this is what Israel calls a safe zone,” explains Omar, who now survives in Khan Yunis.
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