Palestinians flee their homes on Friday Photo: Hatem Moussa/Hatem Moussa
Israel ordered just over a million residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes on Friday — while Hamas ordered them to stay.
Caught, as is often the case with ordinary Palestinians, between a rock and a hard place, tens of thousands began to exodus south.
It is unclear how many of them chose to remain in the area, which now faces an inevitable bloody fate.
Videos and photographs show cars, trucks and even carts loaded with property and people, pulled by donkeys , fleeing from half of the Gaza Strip, which is no more than 12 miles long and three miles wide, which may or may not be the case. safer haven in the south.
Many others walked.
Others continued to resist, ignoring Israel's decree. “Death is better than leaving,” said 20-year-old Mohammed, standing outside the razed building. “I was born here and I will die here, leaving is a stigma.”
Those who took part in the exodus described “apocalyptic scenes” as they drove past buildings destroyed by airstrikes, avoiding craters in the roads. Burnt out cars lined the highway.
«We saw a Gaza we had never seen before,» The Telegraph's reporter in Gaza said in a message sent to colleagues.
On Friday evening, Hamas said 70 people were fleeing Gaza City was destroyed in an airstrike Israel. According to the terrorist organization that runs the enclave, most of them were women and children.
The main highway, the Saladin Road, which runs the entire length of Gaza, was clogged with vehicles moving in one direction.
But many Palestinians were truly unsure where they would end up; where they will sleep in the coming nights.
The United Nations first publicly announced the evacuation order at 6 a.m. Friday, and the IDF, the Israeli army, confirmed it about two hours later.
'Everyone is packing their bags'
But early Friday morning, Palestinians in northern Gaza knew they had to leave.
SMS messages began circulating among the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza region.
Text messages began circulating among the 1.1 million people living in the northern Gaza region.
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The Telegraph's reporter in the Gaza Strip (the newspaper chose not to name her) received a message from a UN official early in the morning in a WhatsApp message written in Arabic.
< p>“URGENT: Dear everyone, please prepare you and your families to move to the south of Gaza early tomorrow morning!!! Urgent call for the resettlement of ALL CIVILIAN RESIDENTS south of the Wadi Gaza area as soon as possible!!!» read the message.
She sent a voice note to colleagues working in Israel explaining the need to leave her home.
“Everyone here is packing their bags,” she said in a voice message clear to the sound of artillery booming in the distance. “We don't know if it's a rumor or true,” she added, an uncertainty that is obvious to all Palestinians.
Rumors and reports suggested a lull in airstrikes between 6:00 am and 1:00 pm, a small window of opportunity that would have given civilians the opportunity to flee. But it wasn't that easy.
At 11 a.m. she texted that there were no cars available to go south. “There are no taxis in Gaza,” she wrote.
To make sure residents got the message, Israeli warplanes dropped thousands of leaflets on the Gaza Strip urging Palestinians to move south. The timing of the evacuation remained unclear after the IDF admitted that the process could «take a long time.»
At a hotel in Gaza City, which is mainly used by aid workers, Palestinians are camped out in the lobby for security reasons, with children sleeping on the marble floor.
'Devastating Humanitarian Impact'
With the explosions heard in the distance, it was unclear whether it was wiser to stay put or rush south.
“We were wondering how we were going to get out of the hotel after all the big explosions and airstrikes,” the reporter wrote in a text message to The Telegraph. “Everyone was worried, confused and angry.”
The area of territory that Israel ordered to evacuate is small, but it is densely populated.
All of Gaza is no larger than the Isle of Wight, but it is home to about 2.4 million Palestinians.
In other words, Israel ordered half to simply move to an area no larger and just as densely populated.
The Palestinians protested that they had nowhere to go. The UN called on Israel to abandon its call for the evacuation of Gaza residents.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths wrote on social media: “ The noose around the civilian population in Gaza is tightening. How can 1.1 million people cross a densely populated war zone in less than 24 hours?
Not everyone escaped. «This is a brutal enemy and they want to intimidate people and force them to leave their homes,» resident Abu Azzam told AFP news agency. “But, God willing, we will remain steadfast in the face of any displacement.”
Mohamed Khaled, 43, also said he would stay. “What does the world want from us? I'm a refugee in Gaza and they want to evict me again? What are we going to do in Rafah? he asked, referring to the town 24 miles south of Gaza City.
“Sleeping on the street with our children? We won't do this. I don’t want this humiliating life.”
A Palestinian family in a car loaded with belongings on Friday Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Shutterstock “Nowhere is safe”
Elsewhere In Gaza City, a father of three, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said citizens were in despair at the prospect of escape.
“The situation is dire,” the man told The Telegraph in a text message. “Great confusion. We are very torn and cannot decide: will we stay at home or go south? If we go south, where will we go? Nowhere is safe. Not knowing what to do is more difficult than the explosion itself.”
The uncertainty and the difficulty of choice were obvious.
Umm Hossam, 29, her face streaked with tears, told AFP: “How long will the strikes and death last? We have no houses left, every area of Gaza is under threat. We call on Arab countries to protect us. Where are the Arabs?
An unnamed employee of Al-Haqa, one of Palestine's most respected human rights groups, shared the agony of the evacuation in an audio message on the NGO's Twitter page.
“It was like reliving the Nakba everywhere. again,” the woman said, referring to the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” which was used to describe the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, which led to the permanent displacement of most Palestinian Arabs.
“Same scenes , the same crowds, walking and not knowing where to go. We are already refugees.”
A woman told how she struggled to convince her elderly father-in-law, who survived the 1948 displacement, to leave. She said: “He was about 14 when it happened. He still remembers it. He would rather die than go through this again.»
Desperate situation
In a video posted on social media, the mother-in-law of Humza Yousaf, Scotland's first minister, asked: «Where is the humanity of people?»
Speaking from Deir el-Balah, an area south of Gaza City, Elizabeth El-Nakla said: “All Gazans are moving towards where we are. A million people, no food, no water — and still they are bombed when they leave. Where will you put them?”
She traveled to Gaza with her husband Maged before the terrorist attack on Israel over the weekend and has been trapped ever since.
The Telegraph reporter arrived safely in Khan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza. She now shares an apartment with three families, each of whom occupies one room. Distant relatives provided them with mattresses to sleep on. Since the building has no electricity or generator, the family uses a battery-powered flashlight for lighting.
She fled Gaza City with her husband and two sons. We packed everything into one medium bag and handbag. «I'm praying for good things to come,» she said when asked if she ever hoped to return home.
Nardine Fares, who is nine months pregnant, told CNN by phone that she went to Khan Yunis. from Gaza City three days earlier.
“As a woman in the last month of pregnancy, God knows when it will happen and what the situation will be then,” Ms. Fares said.
“Bombing, not bombing, you don’t know what will happen next. There are almost no hospitals, almost no medical services, almost no fuel in hospitals, almost no intensive care units, and almost no operating theaters. So even in hospitals the situation is bad.”
On Friday, she watched as more people fled. The situation is desperate. Most likely it will be much worse.
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