Gaza City’s Long Walk South: A Portrait of Displacement
At first light the city looked like a photograph that had been scorched at the edges. Smoke rose in thick black columns, and the horizon — once a patchwork of apartment blocks and orange trees — was obscured by a haze that carried the bitter tang of burning. Along the narrow coastal roads and the cracked alleyways, people moved like a slow, somber river: families on foot, battered cars groaning under the weight of mattresses, women balancing bundles on their heads, a few holding tired children, and donkey carts packed with the last things they could lift.
“You cannot imagine how it sounds,” said Aya Ahmed, 32, who was sheltering with thirteen relatives in a crowded house in Gaza City. “Artillery, planes, drones — the noise is constant. We were told to evacuate south, but there is nowhere to go where life still exists.”
This is not a momentary displacement. It is part of a campaign that has pushed whole neighborhoods into motion. Israeli tanks and warplanes stepped up strikes on Gaza City this week, and residents describe the assault as relentless — a grinding pressure that forces families to decide between staying under bombardment and risking a dangerous trek to the south.
The Numbers That Haunt the Streets
Statistics do not capture the smell of smoke or the way a child clings to a father who can only hold him with one arm. But they do underscore the scale of human suffering. In the last 24 hours alone, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported at least 79 Palestinians killed by strikes or gunfire across the Strip. A separate, devastating tally shows that at least four more died in that same window from malnutrition and starvation — bringing the total deaths from hunger-related causes since the war began to at least 435 people, including 147 children.
On a broader scale, the ministry’s figures place the Gaza death toll from the offensive at more than 65,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians — a number the United Nations considers reliable and that resounds through corridors of humanitarian aid offices and diplomatic briefings.
According to UN estimates at the end of August, about one million people were living in and around Gaza City. Israeli authorities say roughly 350,000 of them have fled. But “fleeing” is not a neat statistic here: it is a chaotic, dangerous act that can cost a family everything and still offer no safety.
When the Internet Goes Quiet
In the middle of the displacement, phone and internet lines went dead across much of Gaza. For many residents this was not only an administrative inconvenience; it was a bad omen. “When the networks go, you know something very brutal is about to happen,” said Ismail, who preferred to give only one name. He was using an e-SIM to get a signal from higher ground, a precarious method that carries its own risks.
The Palestinian Telecommunications Company blamed the outages on “ongoing aggression and the targeting of the main network routes.” The blackout severed lifelines: families could no longer call for help, hospitals could not coordinate transfers, and the sparse reporting that remains risked being flattened under the fog of war.
Hospitals Under Siege
Hospitals are filling and fraying at the edges. Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest medical center, said it had received the bodies of 20 people killed since midnight in recent strikes. Aid groups and the World Health Organization warn that hospitals are on the brink of collapse — supplies blocked, power intermittent, and staff exhausted.
“The military incursion and evacuation orders in northern Gaza are driving new waves of displacement, forcing traumatised families into an ever-shrinking area unfit for human dignity,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, wrote in a message that captured the international alarm. “Hospitals, already overwhelmed, are on the brink of collapse as escalating violence blocks access and prevents WHO from delivering lifesaving supplies.”
Voices from the Road
Walking alongside convoys and clusters of people reveals intimate, wrenching details. Shadi Jawad, 47, described the day his family fled: “There were crowds everywhere, the sound of explosions, people crying. Our truck had a flat tyre and everything spilled on the road. I wanted to scream, but instead I looked up and prayed.” The prayer was not for deliverance from danger alone, but for an end to the exhaustion that has become daily life.
Transport to purportedly safer southern areas has become a grim market. People report that the cost of a lift south has surged — in some cases topping $1,000. Imagine a family paying the equivalent of a year’s wages for a single passage where shelter is no longer certain. “There are no tents, no money, no transport,” Aya said. “What are we supposed to do?”
Politics, Protests and the Global Response
The offensive has been met with outrage and condemnation internationally. A United Nations inquiry earlier accused Israeli officials of incitement and possible “genocide” — language that Israel has vehemently rejected as “distorted and false.” The probe’s head, Navi Pillay, likened aspects of the campaign to methods seen in Rwanda in 1994, and said she hoped responsible leaders would be held accountable.
Back home, the politics are raw and personal. Families of Israeli hostages who were taken in the October 2023 attack have protested against the pace and direction of operations, gathered outside the prime minister’s residence to demand action and answers. “My boy is dying over there. Instead of bringing him back, you have done the exact opposite — you have done everything to prevent his return,” Ofir Braslavski told the prime minister during one demonstration.
On the battlefield, Israeli forces say they are targeting what they call “Hamas terror infrastructure,” and report combat losses of their own, including four soldiers killed during operations in southern Gaza.
Why This Feels Like More Than a Local Tragedy
What is unfolding in Gaza taps into global anxieties about war, displacement, and the limits of international law. We live in a world where images travel fast but solutions move slowly. Supply convoys are delayed by security checks, aid workers face mounting risks, and political parries play out in international courts and social media feeds.
When I stood near a UN school converted into a shelter, a child held a stuffed animal that had lost its eye. “It doesn’t sleep,” his mother told me. “We keep it for luck.” Luck, in these circumstances, is fragile. The refugee crisis in Gaza is not an isolated episode; it is part of a pattern we see elsewhere — families pushed into protracted displacement, health systems collapsing, and the most vulnerable paying the heaviest price.
Questions to Hold Open
As you read this, ask yourself: what does solidarity mean when the channels of communication are cut off? How do we hold leaders and armed groups accountable when facts are contested and access limited? And finally, how do we measure responsibility in a conflict that has left entire neighborhoods emptied and thousands dead?
There are no easy answers. But the faces on the roads — the mothers cradling babies, the old men leading donkeys, the teenagers carrying what remains of their lives — are a constant reminder that beyond statistics lie human stories that demand more than indifference. They demand urgent attention and, if possible, a durable end to the violence that makes displacement and hunger routine.
For now, as the smoke continues to rise over Gaza City, the question that echoes from street to street is elemental and heartbreaking: where can people go to be safe, and who will make that safety possible?
