Israel designates a safe zone, only to bomb the civilians who flee there – yet again

An Israeli strike killed 12 Palestinian people, including nine members of one family, after they moved to where Israel designated a Gaza ‘safe zone’. This is one of many instances of Israel telling people to flee to specific areas, only to then kill them.

Israel has now ordered 250,000 people to leave the east of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. This is a city Israel has already mostly leveled with bombs after it previously displaced the residents to Rafah, the southern most city bordering Egypt. Then, in April, residents returned to a destroyed Khan Younis after Israel prepared for a ground invasion of Rafah.

Now Israel has told people in Khan Younis to evacuate again. The Hamdan family complied. They fled their home and found refuge inside an Israeli declared ‘safe zone’. But hours after they arrived, on the afternoon of 2 July, an Israeli bombardment killed nine of the family members, including a prominent doctor, and three other people.

Israel’s systematic bombing of ‘safe zones’

Israel’s frequent bombing of civilians in areas where it told them to go for safety has led many Palestinian people evacuating simply to take to the streets to avoid targetted buildings. But even then Israel may strike them.

Sari Bashi, Human Rights Watch’s programme director, has said:

People are fleeing to roads that the government told them to use to places where the Israeli government told them to go. And when they go there, they get killed

In late May, Israel designated another safe zone, this time in Rafah, and then bombed it, killing at least 45 Palestinians who were mostly women and children. The bombardment caused a fire that swept through the camp of displaced people. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said many of those Israel killed were “burned alive” inside their tents. The IDF used US-made bombs in the attack.

Soon after, Israel bombed al-Mawasi in western Rafah, which it called a ‘humanitarian safe zone’, killing another 21 people it had already displaced.

Medical Aid for Palestinians’ Mohammed Al Khatib fled Rafah for central Gaza’s Deir-al-Balah in May. He said:

We were told this was a safe humanitarian area, but we hear bombing and shooting happening all around us.

On 18 December, the IDF declared Tal Al Sutan neighbourhood, also in Rafah, a safe zone in leaflets dropped to Palestinian people. Then, on 9 January, it bombed the Nofal family home in the neighbourhood, killing 15 people.

Tip of the iceberg

An NBC investigation found another six instances of deadly Israeli air strikes on areas Israel had declared safe, between January and April.

CNN also found three more instances of Israel bombing zones that it designated as safe, from before January. Two of these strikes happened on the same night of 3 December, killing at least 35 people in family homes. In one such strikes, Israel bombed the Al-Jazzar family in the Al-Tanour neighborhood of Rafah, killing journalist Shaima Al-Jazzar and her family.

Israel telling Palestinian people areas are safe and then bombing them to death in those places is another facet of its genocide in Gaza. We must halt it.

Featured image via CBC News: The National – YouTube