YOUNG girls screamed and elbowed each other in a crush of bodies in southern Gaza, trying desperately to reach the front of the food line. Men doled out rice and chicken as fast as they could, platefuls of the nourishment falling to the ground in the tumult. Nearby, boys waited to fill plastic containers with water, standing for hours among tents packed so tightly they nearly touched. Hunger and desperation were palpable on Friday in the tent camp along the Deir al-Balah beachfront, after a month of successive evacuation orders that have pressed thousands of Palestinians into the area that the Israeli military calls a “humanitarian zone.”

 

The zone has long been crowded by Palestinians seeking refuge from bombardment, but the situation grows more dire by the day, as waves of evacuees arrive and food and water grow scarce. Over the last month, the Israeli military has issued evacuation orders for southern Gaza at an unprecedented pace. At least 84 per cent of Gaza now falls within the evacuation zone, according to the UN, which also estimates that 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents have been displaced over the course of the war. Thirteen evacuation orders have been issued since July 22, according to an Associated Press count, significantly reducing the size of the humanitarian zone declared by Israel at the start of the war while pushing more Palestinians into it than ever before. The increased crowding of evacuees can be seen in satellite photos.