Gaza City offensive and mass forced displacement orders

After nearly two years of ongoing hostilities in Gaza, starvation, and repeated forced displacement, there is simply nowhere safe to go. Panic is spreading. Orders to move south toward Al-Mawasi - an area falsely described as a "humanitarian zone" - means putting lives at further risk: the area is already overwhelmed, lacking food, water, shelter and the most basic conditions for human survival. Civilians in Al-Mawasi have been killed in strikes in recent months. 

Mass evacuation orders under bombardment amount to forced displacement of civilians and a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

DRC’s latest protection monitoring report from Gaza shows that people have already been displaced an average of nine times since October 2023.

A woman told our teams, “We even received a displacement order, but I cannot leave. We have no money, no transportation, and no empty space to relocate to.” Another man said simply, “There is no such thing as security anywhere in the Gaza Strip. We are dead and still breathing.” 

Gaza’s families are desperate, hungry and too exhausted to flee again. “We were confused and scared. We did not know what to do or where to go.” Another respondent told our teams, “My tattered tent stands on medical waste. We wish for death every moment because our lives are over.”  

Our colleagues and partners in Gaza are witnessing the same reality at the reception and counting points. Families are arriving with almost nothing.

One woman said, “the past two weeks were hell. We prayed not to move again, but when the bombs fell and the orders came, we had to run with only the children.”

Another man said, “this is the 11th time I flee. Each time I hope it’s the last, but it never ends.” In Khan Younis, a father said, “Since the morning I’ve been looking for a place in the sites. There’s nothing… I’m exhausted.” 

Principled humanitarian aid is being directly prevented from operating at the scale required. As a result, we continue to witness mass displacement in multiple forms; thousands of families moving internally within Gaza City, tens of thousands fleeing south to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, and some returning north after finding no space or money for shelter in so-called “humanitarian zones”.

The humanitarian situation is extremely complex. Our teams on the ground describe continuous bombardment with only minutes between strikes, families without safe drinking water, food, or medicine, and women and elderly lacking even basic clothes or hygiene items. 

Families are being pushed into an impossible choice; flee under fire into areas already overcrowded and stripped of food, or remain where they face the same hunger, relentless bombardment and despair. Either way, civilians are condemned to famine, terror and death. 

An urgent international response is needed to ensure a halt on this assault. Gaza City could be completely levelled in the coming days, and the mounting death toll could rise even more astronomically.