The endless nightmare of forced displacement in Gaza

In a metal basin, with a trickle of water and a dash of soap, Rowan Radwan, a 22-year-old Palestinian mother, washes her daughters’ clothes, hoping to remove the smell of urine and the filth after days of moving from one shelter to another across Gaza. Her daughters, two-year-old Wateen and five-month-old Tulin, have yet to have a home in their lives, and the latest place they have been displaced to — an overcrowded room inside the abandoned Khan Younis central prison in the southwest of the Strip — will not be their last.

As they traveled from a school-turned-shelter in the city of Abasan al-Kabira in eastern Gaza, the girls writhed uncomfortably in their dirty clothes. But Radwan couldn’t stop to tend to their needs, as their safety — or their search for protection — took priority. Once they arrived at the prison, Radwan busily washed their tattered clothes and then hung them to dry on the cell’s windowsill, which overlooked a sunless, overcast sky and the prospect of a grim reality with no hope of an end to their misery.

Here, in what was once a cell for convicted criminals, Radwan tries to create a semblance of home. But life in Gaza’s shelters for displaced people is anything but normal.

The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began to unravel on March 1, when the parties failed to advance talks on a second phase of the truce. Israel insists that Hamas hand over the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds (half of whom are presumed dead), while the militia ruling the devastated enclave refuses to do so without guarantees of an end to the war.

Humanitarian aid has not reached the besieged Gazan population since March 1, and last Monday, Israel resumed its bombardment of the Strip, killing more than 600 people in just a few days. Last Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened permanent annexation of parts of Gaza, perpetual population displacement to the south of the enclave, and the implementation of the White House plan for the “voluntary transfer” of Gaza residents out of the Strip.

But Rowan Radwan’s endless journey as an internally displaced person began long before that. An Israeli airstrike in October 2023 reduced her home to rubble during the first days of the war (following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7), which has since displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people multiple times at the behest of the Israeli military. During the January ceasefire, the family returned to Abasan but found their neighborhood uninhabitable. The school-turned-shelter offered them safety for a time, until Israeli forces issued urgent evacuation orders, forcing the woman to gather what little she had left and flee again. Her husband, a day laborer, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in July 2024 while passing through Khan Younis, leaving Radwan alone to raise her daughters. Unable to set up and take down tents on her own with her young children in tow, she sought refuge in the prison cell.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve fled,” the woman says, her voice hoarse with exhaustion. “More than 20 times, maybe 30. Sometimes we’ve run from one airstrike to another, twice in the same day. We went from schools to relatives’ homes, to tents, to the streets... and now we’re here, living in a cell.”

Each place brings its own nightmares. One day, after setting up a tent near the ruins of Rafah in the south, Israeli bombs began falling nearby, and the family had to flee after just three hours. In Khan Younis, they have sought refuge in mosques, alleyways, and makeshift shelters, each time forced to pack up and move as the violence followed them from one place to another.

The abandoned prison where Radwan now lives offers little solace. She has borrowed warm clothing for her daughters from other displaced families, and while her youngest cries from hunger and cold, she mixes powdered milk to feed her, gently rocking her until she calms down. “It’s like living in hell,” she says, tears in her eyes. “At least at the school we had walls and windows. Here it’s very cold, and we’re still under fire.”

The endless exodus

The cycle of displacement worsens as Israeli forces continue to order evacuations in areas across Gaza, warning of upcoming military operations. Entire neighborhoods have been designated “dangerous combat zones,” forcing families to flee without a clear destination. New displacement instructions were issued on social media Thursday an hour before sunset, when most Muslims break their Ramadan fast. Instead of searching for food, panicked families began preparing to flee and seeking shelter.

The latest offensive has split Gaza in half, with Israeli troops encircling central areas and advancing on northern towns like Beit Lahiya, while continuing to bomb southern cities like Rafah.

In some cases, evacuations occur so suddenly that families leave without food or water, and not everyone is lucky enough to find walls to protect them from the cold, or a roof over their heads.

Farah Saqr, 17, who fled with her siblings on Thursday after an attack devastated their neighborhood near Khan Younis, describes how she spent Friday night sleeping on the ground, huddled under a thin tarp they borrowed to protect themselves from the rain. “We had nothing, no blankets or food,” she says. Sitting outside her aunt’s tent, she watches over her younger siblings, Bakr, 11, Louay, 9, and Amira, a year younger. “We haven’t eaten properly for days.”

Her mother, Samar, and her older brother, Omar, 21, have gone out in search of tents, either to buy them or delivered as humanitarian aid, although they are already in short supply. According to Hamas, Israel has only allowed the entry of 130,000 of the 200,000 tents it said it would permit during the first phase of the ceasefire.

“We’ve been displaced so many times — 10 so far — that we don’t even know where our home is anymore,” Samar says.

The latest wave of displacement comes as Gaza faces a crippling siege, with all crossings sealed and basic supplies depleted. Even before the resumption of fighting, many families relied on stored food and their meager savings to survive. Now, with food and fuel reserves nearly depleted, survival is becoming more precarious by the day.

On the road between Khan Younis and the coastal enclave of Al Mawasi, donkey carts and bicycles laden with mattresses, pots, and children move through the rubble-strewn streets. Mohammed Al-Daghmeh, 40, is among them, balancing a small pile of blankets on his bicycle. He has been displaced within Gaza 11 times since the war began, and each transfer has stripped his family of more belongings.

“Every time we flee, we lose something,” he says. “A mattress, a stove, a piece of our lives.” This time, he managed to scrape together $200 to rent a truck and transport his family to Al Mawasi, hoping they could escape further evacuation orders. “But nothing is safe,” he says. “This is Gaza: even the safest place can become a target overnight.”

As the Gaza displacement crisis worsens, humanitarian aid organizations warn that the situation could spiral into catastrophe without urgent intervention. Many families, like Rowan Radwan's, are surviving with little more than canned food and bread. Water is scarce, access to sanitation is deteriorating, and with fuel supplies cut off, many are braving the cold with only thin blankets.

“This isn’t life,” Radwan says, rocking her baby to sleep. “It’s death in slow motion. But we have no choice: we’re alive and we have to move on.”

As airstrikes continue and evacuees continue to move to the remaining enclaves in Gaza, this woman’s fear is shared by many: that this war will never end, and that for displaced families, the nightmare of endless flight will become a permanent reality.

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