How the Israeli military is bombing ‘safe’ areas in southern Gaza

Since December 1, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been dropping leaflets on the town of Khan Younis, considered a fallback zone for hundreds of Gazans fleeing from the north.

The leaflets include a QR code that links to a page in Arabic on the official IDF website. A map on the page divides the Gaza Strip into 623 numbered zones or “blocks”.

The page explains in part: “Anyone who sees the number of the block in which they live or are located must watch for and follow the army’s instructions [posted] through various media and obey them.”

Some residents have also reported receiving telephone calls and text messages ordering them to evacuate certain areas in the east of the Khan Younis governorate. These messages are sent from a dedicated call centre, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 

In a post on X dated December 4, Israeli army spokesman for Arabic-language media Avichay Adraee told the residents of Khan Younis to evacuate to three areas: Tall as-Sultan, al-Shabura and Azzuhur in the Rafah governorate, and al-Fukhari in the Khan Younis governorate.

On the evening of December 13, he issued new instructions. A new map with certain areas coloured and highlighted indicated that residents of certain blocks of Khan Younis should also evacuate to Tall as-Sultan, al-Shabura and Azzuhur in the Rafah governorate.

But those who evacuated did not end up in safety.

In al-Shabura, repeated targeting of civilian areas

Al-Shabura is home to a camp for displaced persons, established and managed since the early 1950s by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

On December 18, the centre of the camp was bombed, destroying several homes. Freelance journalist Adel Zorob was killed.

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On December 14, the day after the Israeli spokesperson announced that the area was safe, several more homes were hit by aerial bombardments in the west of al-Shabura.

The day before this announcement, on December 12, another residential area, again in the al-Shabura camp, was bombed. Images posted on the Kuwait Hospital Facebook page show civilians, including children, with serious injuries.

Bombing in Azzuhur kills 22 civilians

On December 12, the Azzuhur neighbourhood, which had been listed as a safe area eight days earlier, was also hit by air raids that dropped projectiles on civilian homes, including that of the Abu Harb family, killing eight people, including six children, according to an Al Jazeera correspondent who went to the hospital. The bombardments also hit neighbouring families who were already displaced from other areas of the Gaza Strip. In all, 22 civilians were killed.

Images of rescue operations in Azzouhour posted on Snapchat show buildings under rubble at night.

The Kuwait Hospital, where victims of the bombing were taken, also posted videos on its Facebook page showing the wounded members of the Abu Harb family being taken away in ambulances, as well as the survivors bidding farewell to the dead.

In Tall as-Sultan, rescues by the light of phones

Finally, Tall as-Sultan has not been spared by the bombs either, despite having been designated a safe area since at least December 4, as indicated in tweets from the Israeli army spokesman.

On the night of December 11, a civilian building was hit by an air raid on Guraiz Boulevard in the centre of the city. 

Images posted the same evening on Snapchat show rescuers and neighbours searching for survivors under the rubble by mobile phone light.

Snapchat stories posted by residents of Tall as-Sultan thereafter show regular air raids on the area.

‘There are no safe areas in Gaza’

Juliette Touma is the director of communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). She visited the Gaza Strip a few weeks ago and made what she described as “appalling” observations.

There are no safe areas in Gaza. The bombardments are intense in the north, centre and south of the Gaza Strip, causing a very high level of casualties among civilians, including workers from our agency. Civilians and civilian infrastructure absolutely must be protected during conflicts. 

This also includes UN structures, such as schools and camps for displaced persons, which are still being hit by bombs today.

When a party unilaterally declares an area to be “safe”, this is illegal under international humanitarian law. These calls for evacuation are in reality forced displacement, over an increasingly narrow territory. 

Gazans were ordered to evacuate from the north to the centre and south, with the army declaring Khan Younis to be secure. Then these same displaced people were literally forced to entrench themselves on the thin strip of land in Rafah [Editor’s note: al-Mawassi, on the Rafah coast]. 

This is the largest forced displacement in the region’s history since 1948.

Our shelters, such as the schools and centres refurbished since the start of the war, are accommodating at least 1.4 million displaced people in southern Gaza. They are overwhelmed, but people are still pouring in. As a result, many are having to build tents or makeshift shacks, which are not safe either, because they are exposed. 

‘If these civilians do not evacuate, they are held responsible for their fate’

Hani al-Madhoun, director of philanthropy at the same UN agency, also believes that the Israeli army’s communication makes no sense at a time when the entire Gaza Strip is suffering from power cuts and food and medical shortages.

Most civilians can’t find anything to eat or drink. How can they have access to the internet or have time to look for and wait for orders to evacuate? There is no water or electricity, so how are they going to charge their phones, for example?

The Israeli army is handing over responsibility for evacuating the combat zones to civilians. Their communication is in fact aimed not at the Palestinians but at the foreign media, in order to cloak themselves in false humanism.

You will notice that there is a lot of media coverage of this information about the evacuation, and the army posts it online under the pretext that “we have warned them”, so if these civilians do not evacuate, they are held responsible for their fate.

The use of mobile phones remains ‘possible in Gaza’ according to the IDF

When contacted, the IDF did not answer our questions about the areas declared “safe”, even though they had been bombed. 

However, they did say that they had been protecting Palestinian civilians since the start of the war. The army emphasises its communication strategy, which they consider to be reliable because “it is still possible to use mobile phones in Gaza”. The IDF says that “hundreds of thousands of people” have accessed its website “from phones in Gaza”.

The army also provided us with these figures of the armed forces’ telephone calls, text messages and voice messages sent to civilians in the north and south of Gaza since October 7. It claims to have dropped 4 million leaflets, made 42,000 calls, sent 15 million text messages and broadcast 12 million recorded messages. 

A study by the Open University of Israel has established that 61% of the deaths caused by the Israeli army since the start of the war have been civilians and not Hamas fighters.

This study confirms the results of an investigation by the Israeli-Palestinian investigative media +972 Magazine, which revealed that the Israeli army had authorised the bombing of non-military areas in Gaza. As of December 20, according to Hamas, almost 20,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the conflict.