As Israel bombards Gaza, Palestinians attempt to flee, only to discover nowhere is safe
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/as- ... re-is-safe
On Saturday after the massive Hamas attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gaza civilians of the horrors to come, promising to unleash the full force of the Israeli military on the strip.
“Get out now,” he said, addressing Palestinians in Gaza. “Because we will operate everywhere.”
Khoudary was listening to him as the airstrikes intensified, trapped in her home with nowhere to run.
“Why didn’t he tell us where to flee?” she asked. “Because we’d really like to know.”
Gazans bombarded by Israel have no hope and no escape
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 023-10-11/
GAZA, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Most of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have no electricity and no water. And, with hundreds of Israeli strikes raining down on their tiny enclave, they have nowhere to run.
Hamas tells Gaza residents to stay put as Israel ground offensive looms
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 023-10-13/
Oct 13 (Reuters) - Mosques broadcast messages telling Gaza Strip residents to stay put on Friday, in defiance of an Israeli military call for more than a million civilians to move south within 24 hours in the build-up to its expected ground offensive.
Leaders of the enclave's governing militant group Hamas also urged Palestinians to ignore the call, and by Friday afternoon there were no signs of any mass exodus from the north of the enclave.
The Israeli military told the civilians of Gaza City to "evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman that he "rejects the forced displacement" of Palestinians in Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
“We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places. By carrying out massacres against the civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land,” he told a news conference.
No, Palestinians Can’t Just Leave Gaza
Despite the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation, they have nowhere to go.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ckout=true
Palestinians living there have essentially been penned into what human-rights groups call the “world’s largest open-air prison.”
The Egyptian authorities have closed their side of the crossing to prevent the Palestinians from breaking out. Although the Biden administration is pressing for it to be reopened, the regime of General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is loath to take on the responsibility of hosting thousands of refugees.
If this sounds cruel, it is consistent with longstanding policy: Egypt is solicitous about the problems of Palestinians but doesn’t want them on its soil. Cairo is already trotting out its usual excuses of poverty and security: Egypt can’t afford to host refugees, and they might cause trouble.
Other Arab nations offer variations of those lines. Jordan already has too many Palestinians (they make up more than half the population of the kingdom) and too many refugees from other places, such as Syria. Turkey, which is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, likewise has its hands full of refugees from other parts.
The Gulf Arab states have plenty of land and no shortage of money; Saudi Arabia is currently spending hundreds of billions of dollars building a city it doesn’t really need. Their traditional excuse for not taking in Palestinians is that it would let Israel off the hook.
There are questions to be asked about why Iran, Hamas’s sponsor and self-proclaimed champion of the Palestinians, doesn’t offer to host them. And why the European nations, which wring their hands when Gaza is bombed, can find no place for at least a few of the victims.
But by now, you get my point: The civilians in Gaza can’t leave, and it’s a tragedy twice over that nobody wants them anyway.