RAFAH — Mohamed Abu Radwan and his family have been on the move for three months straight. The 47-year-old farmer, his wife and their six children have been displaced multiple times: the latest in mid-December to Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
Abu Radwan’s family is among hundreds of thousands of displaced who sought shelter in Rafah as Israel continues to attack the besieged strip, forcing more people to flee their homes — and often, flee again from wherever they had taken refuge. But now, the border town has become by far the single largest center for sheltering displaced families.
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“They pushed us to Rafah,” said Abu Radwan, reached by telephone. “There is no empty space, no food, no water. Our conditions are indescribable. We’re starving.”
Abu Radwan’s family lives in a nylon tent close to the border as the town’s houses and apartment buildings are crammed with people. Open spaces are filled with tents and shacks, though thousands haven’t found space or tents and have been forced to sleep in the open amid the cold and often rainy winter weather.
Rafah, which covers 55 square kilometers (21 square miles), had a pre-war population of around 280,000, a figure that has bulged to over 1 million in recent days, according to UN figures.
More than 700,000 people are currently estimated to be sheltered in UNRWA centers and facilities, while around 270,000 displaced live in tents, open areas and with host families, according to officials of Rafah municipality.
85% of the population
The war, which entered its fourth month this week, has displaced 1.9 million people — or 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, according to UN figures.
“These people are starving.”
The war was triggered by the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel which killed about 1,200 people and led to some 250 others being taken hostage. Israel’s ongoing air and ground assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.
Many have been displaced multiple times, like Abu Radwan’s family which was forced to flee their hometown of Beit Lahiyeh in northern Gaza when Israel’s warplanes flattened their home in the first week of the war.
The family first sheltered for three weeks at a relative in Gaza City before moving southward to the city of Khan Younis, and eventually fleeing again farther south when Israeli forces began their ground invasion of Gaza’s second largest city early in December.
Looming famine
The growing number of displaced and the continued bombardments have prompted the World Food Program to warn about famine amid deteriorated humanitarian conditions. “The risk of famine in Gaza increases with each passing day,” the WFP said, adding that more than half a million people live in the most extreme stage of hunger. “These people are starving.”
Shadia Numan, a housewife from the urban Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, was forced to leave her home along with her nine children, and eventually landed in Rafah.
“I didn’t expect to see what I saw here. The numbers are huge and the crowding is severe. Honestly, the scene stunned me,” she told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat daily.
She said that the situation in Rafah can’t continue. “Imagine what would happen if Israel started its carpet bombing here,” she said.
Reham Saad is another displaced woman from Shijaiya neighborhood in Gaza City. She lives with 13 people, including her husband, sons, and daughters, in a tent on the border, after a difficult journey from her home to central Gaza, then to Khan Younis and now Rafah.
Temporary v. permanent exile
The displaced have grown increasingly concerned about another Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in the 1948 war that created modern Israel — and have never been able to return.
The displaced are convinced that they were pushed to Rafah as part of an Israeli scheme to transfer Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and those in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan.
“We feel that everything was planned,” said Saad, who shelters along with her family of 13 members in a tent in Rafah. “The situation there is also very difficult. It’s like a prelude to another journey.”
“If we leave, we won’t be allowed to return.”
But in the immediate, families are also focused on skyrocketing prices of food and other necessities, with many now forced to eat just one meal per day, and to save whatever food they have for their children. “Rafah is fed up with people, and people are fed up with people too,” said Khader al-Barqouni, another displaced person. “Everything here is too tight for us.”
Israeli officials have made no secret that they want to empty Gaza of its inhabitants. They first pushed for Egypt to take Gaza residents, but the Egyptian government has vehemently rejected the idea, and warned that such efforts threaten the peace treaty between the two countries. Egypt also fortified its border with thousands of troops and concrete barriers.
Israeli officials later adjusted their statements. They called for countries across the world to accept what they call “voluntary migration” of Gaza people. That has also been criticized by the international community.
As for the Palestinians themselves, virtually nobody wants leave Gaza. And amid on-again, off-again talks about letting people return back north to their homes, Rafah stands as the ultimate crossroads between people’s land and forced exile.
“If we leave, we won’t be allowed to return,” said Abu Radwan. “We won’t follow the step of our ancestors.”
