🔗 Share this article

This relentless airstrikes in Gaza City has become ever more deafening and lethal over the past many days. Early hours on Tuesday seemed reminiscent of an earthquake that would never cease.

“Although the bombings do not occur immediately close to us, we can plainly perceive them, and the ground shakes below us with the power of the explosions,” stated Fatima, in her forties.

She, working as a communications analyst, indicated that the dead and injured from the recent assault had been transported to an overwhelmed health facility, where she heard “catastrophic”.

Fatima had been unable to keep up with the current news, however, as she attempted to make the extremely difficult choice of what to do to optimally shield her four children.

A key designated “evacuation” path to the south was congested with the weary and distraught. Additionally, the price of transportation was unaffordable.

“Additionally, I don’t own a makeshift home to give us cover, and they are costly to purchase,” she said. “I would not be able to carry all of the possessions and provisions I have previously purchased several times. There's also the suffering we would experience in finding water and the lack of available spaces to stay in. So if I leave, I would essentially be going into the uncertain.”

“Human nature seeks consistency, where you can rely on a solid wall and have at home,” Fatima reflected. “A temporary shelter is not a dwelling: it does not give you security, nor the sense of a true home.”

Similar to over 90% of individuals in the region, the family has been displaced by the conflict. An significant large number have been compelled to relocate countless occasions. Fatima and her family have previously been displaced nearly twenty times.

At present, with the commencement of a ground offensive, officials are calling on the estimated 1 a million people staying in the city to head southward an additional time. But she and her family, along with numerous individuals, have been to the southern part before and are well aware it is not a refuge from violence.

“It didn’t feel like life whatsoever,” she recalled of her experience in the south of Gaza earlier in the war. “Living in a makeshift accommodation with bugs, rats, sand, the blazing sun of summer, the chill of winter, and the rain, it was an extremely difficult time.

“There's hardly a one day free from bombings and fatalities in the southern areas, even inside the so-called safe areas that the military announced. So, should I just be rushing from death to death? What improvement would that accomplish?”

This is not feasible to calculate the chances of remaining alive with countless details uncertain. Her gut feeling is to not move.

Shared Situation

Yousef, a 32-year-old visual artist and video producer with 2 girls and a son, is experiencing the same predicament. Staying with family in an area of the city, the dangers of not leaving are obviously rising steeply, but it is hard to tell exactly when staying turned into more risky than going into the uncertain.

“Military aircraft and choppers do not stop firing. Recently was frightening,” Yousef said. “The shelling has persisted for the previous several days. Every 45 minutes to an hour, there is a hit in the vicinity, by aircraft or jets or at times from cannons.”

“I can't say I've ‘decided’ to remain, but the truth is, I have no other place to relocate,” he noted. The household was forced to move to the south of Gaza during the initial phase of the conflict and he has no intention to head back.

“Forces stated it was a ‘safe area’, but that was totally inaccurate. It was the opposite. There were constantly attacks taking place there, and they continue to going on,” he stated.

“Displacement also takes a psychological impact. Not anyone prefers to be forced out. I think there is no completely secure zone in the strip, whether in the north or the south, so we choose to stay in the northern area. The end only arrives one time.”