Palestinians Flee to Ever-Shrinking Areas

Desperate Palestinians fleeing Israel's expanding ground offensive crowded into an ever-shrinking area of the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war entered its third month Friday. The United Nations warned that its aid operation is "in tatters" because no place in the besieged enclave is safe. With the entire Gaza Strip under military assault, tens of thousands of people displaced by the fighting have packed into the border city of Rafah, in the far south of the territory, and Muwasi, a nearby patch of barren coastline that Israel has declared a safe zone for those seeking safety from the fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants, the AP reports But the US and relief agencies say it is a poorly planned solution that offers no guarantee of safety in a territory where civilians have faced airstrikes even in other areas the Israeli army has ordered them to evacuate to.

"How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?" said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. "It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe." The area of Muwasi is a makeshift tent camp where thousands of Palestinians live in squalid conditions in scattered farm fields and waterlogged dirt roads. The area has no running water or bathrooms, assistance and international humanitarian groups are nowhere to be found, and the tents provide little protection from the coming winter's cool, rainy weather.

Israel first mentioned Muwasi as a humanitarian zone in late October. It's not clear how many people Israel believes can live there, and it blames the UN for the poor conditions, reports the AP. Some three-quarters of the territory's 2.3 million people have been displaced, in some cases multiple times, since Israel launched its war in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 cross-border attack that left some 1,200 dead. Earlier this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending "humanitarian catastrophe," and Arab and Islamic nations have called for a vote Friday on a draft Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)