Palestinian Territory – Israel's escalation of mass displacement in Gaza reflects Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated condition for a ceasefire: the implementation of US President Donald Trump's plan to deport Palestinians from the Strip. This amounts to an explicit admission that the US-Israeli aggression is not targeting a specific military faction, but the entire Palestinian population.
This escalation confirms that Israel's actions in the enclave since 7 October 2023, including killing, starvation, and destruction, are not isolated incidents but part of a systematic policy of genocide. These actions, paired with large-scale forced displacement, reflect a deliberate and coordinated political and military plan to depopulate the Strip.
Israeli forces have issued at least 35 evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip since January of this year, affecting over one million people. These orders compound the harm caused by those issued prior to January, which had already resulted in much of the population being displaced. Israel is now intensifying efforts to confine residents to a narrow area along the southern coast—an apparent prelude to expulsion from the Strip, in line with the "Trump Plan" recently adopted by Netanyahu as a condition for ending military operations in the enclave.
Israel's current displacement campaign is the most severe since the genocide in the Gaza Strip began, particularly given the degree of destruction and trauma that has accumulated over the past 19 months
The latest order, issued Thursday afternoon, instructs all residents of Ghabin, Al-Shimaa, Fadous, Al-Manshiyya, Sheikh Zayed, Al-Salateen, al-Karama, the Beit Lahia Project, Al-Zohour, Tel al-Zaatar, Al-Nour, Abdel Rahman, Al-Nahda, and the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to evacuate and move south. This follows a broad evacuation order affecting most neighbourhoods in the Khan Yunis Governorate, directing residents west to the Al-Mawasi area. Additional orders were also issued for towns and neighbourhoods in northern Gaza and Gaza City, instructing residents to move south.
Each of these orders has been issued without any military necessity or even the usual pretexts, such as rocket fire from the area. This indicates that Israel no longer seeks to justify its actions to the international community, and that displacement itself has become an open objective—one that is part of a deliberate policy of systematic uprooting and that constitutes a fully-fledged act of genocide.
Israel's current displacement campaign is the most severe since the genocide in the Gaza Strip began, particularly given the degree of destruction and trauma that has accumulated over the past 19 months. The campaign coincides with an intensified starvation policy, the widespread destruction of remaining homes and infrastructure, and explicit Israeli declarations of intent to depopulate entire areas. Euro-Med Monitor notes that Israel is using starvation as a tool to force civilians into designated zones for conditional aid distribution.
Netanyahu's statement outlining conditions for ending the "war", which explicitly endorses the displacement of Palestinians, in line with Trump's plan, publicly reveals an intent to exterminate an entire people and expel survivors. All of this is unfolding amid near-total international silence, creating a safe environment for Israel's ongoing crimes to continue and enabling shocking impunity.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee their homes under Israeli shelling and fire belts, walking for kilometres on foot with whatever belongings they can carry. These civilians have sought shelter in areas like Al-Mawasi in the Khan Yunis and Rafah Governorates, which were already overcrowded and have also come under intensified attacks in recent months. Recent raids in these two areas have killed and injured hundreds, many of whom were sheltering in tents.
Under dire humanitarian conditions, thousands of families have been forced to flee their homes or shelters without food, water, transportation, or a safe destination. With no humanitarian corridors or adequate shelter, many have sought refuge in overcrowded, highly exposed areas repeatedly targeted by Israeli shelling. Displacement itself has become a constant existential threat and a relentless assault on Palestinians' dignity, as no place in the Gaza Strip offers any true safety.
While Israel recently directed civilians to flee to Al-Mawasi, claiming it to be "safe", Israeli aircraft continued to bomb the area. on Thursday morning (22 May), a direct strike on a tent killed an entire Palestinian family: husband and wife Ashraf Khreish and Sahar Muhammad Khreish and their two children, Basil and Ahmed. This atrocity reveals that the so-called safety zones are, in reality, premeditated killing grounds.
The pattern of evacuation orders, deliberate starvation, and tightly restricted aid distribution is all part of an Israeli plan clearly advancing toward its ultimate goal: the mass killing and expulsion of remaining Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The past 19 months and two weeks of genocide has included the killing or wounding of a minimum of 175,000 civilians, the destruction of entire towns, the near-complete collapse of infrastructure, and systematic internal displacement—efforts aimed at erasing the existence of the Palestinian people as a whole.
The forced displacement of Palestinians is a direct extension of Israel's decades-long settler-colonial project, rooted in the erasure of Palestinian existence and the seizure of their land. What sets this phase apart is its unprecedented scale and severity, demonstrated by the comprehensive targeting of all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 through genocide and the denial of people's most basic human rights. The conditions of extreme coercion and deprivation forced upon the Palestinian people represent a deliberate effort to push them out of their homeland, not by choice but as a condition for their very survival. This stands as one of the most blatant cases of planned mass displacement in modern history.
All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel's compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.
The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies' access to the SWIFT system; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.
Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings, even with the accused in absentia, to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.
