LONDON: Palestinian aid worker Salma Altaweel was midway through answering a question about how the war in Gaza has affected her four children when she was interrupted by two deafening explosions.
Barely flinching, she paused briefly before uttering, matter of factly: “That’s a bomb very close to me,” and continuing where she left off. She later apologized for the interruption.
Altaweel, the northern Gaza office manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, was speaking during an online press briefing by humanitarians working in the territory.
The blasts outside her window in Gaza City provided a clear illustration of the warnings delivered by the aid workers of the devastation expected from the latest phase of Israel’s military campaign on the territory.
On Tuesday, Israel ordered the 1 million people living in Gaza City — the territory’s largest urban center — to leave for the south ahead of an anticipated vast ground offensive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the airstrikes destroying highrise buildings throughout the city in recent days were “only the beginning of the main intensive operation.”
The campaign, which Israel claims is to remove Hamas from its last urban stronghold, has sparked an angry international response.
For Gaza’s beleaguered population, which has already been displaced multiple times, the military assault will lead to a further deterioration of the already desperate humanitarian situation.
“Since the military operation was announced in Gaza City, people have been living in fear and confusion, including us as aid workers,” Altaweel told the briefing.
“The displacement order made this even worse as so many families do not want to leave because there is no safe place all over the Gaza Strip.”
She said that the Israeli bombing of buildings in the city had “intensified significantly” in recent days, forcing people from their homes and on to the streets, often leaving them with no shelter at all.
“Conditions are extremely overcrowded and unsafe,” she said.
Mahmoud Alsaqqa, who works for Oxfam in Gaza City, said that he believes that less than 10 percent of the city’s population had fled to what Israel claims is a “safe zone” in the south of the territory.
People were unwilling to leave as they are already exhausted from 23 months of war and many are too weak to make the journey, he said.
He added that the cost of relocating could reach thousands of dollars and that some who had tried to relocate had returned to Gaza City because they could not find space.
“What we are witnessing here is not just an inhuman act from the Israelis in committing this genocide, but also … it’s unfeasible and illogical,” Alsaqqa said.
Israel’s orders for Gaza City’s residents to leave come amid what aid workers describe as one of the world’s most catastrophic humanitarian crises.
A UN-backed panel declared last month that famine was underway in Gaza City and is expect to spread to the entire Gaza Strip.
Dozens of Palestinians are killed each day from air strikes or being shot as they attempt to reach aid supplies, with nearly 65,000 people killed in the territory since the conflict began in October 2023.
Gaza’s health system has also collapsed with many hospitals forced to shut down and facilities and health workers targeted by Israel’s military.
Dr. Rami Al-Shaya, said that Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza City, where he works as head of the emergency department, had been threatened with evacuation.
“This is madness,” he said. “Hospitals that have been fully equipped for decades are being asked to completely empty and be evacuated.”
He added: “Those people who will remain in the north, will be left without any type of health services.”
Save the Children’s Gaza humanitarian director, Rachael Cummings, said that the scale of Israel’s attempted forced displacement from Gaza City was on a scale not seen before.
“There is nowhere safe for people to go across the whole of Gaza,” she said. “What we are seeing is people being forcibly displaced from Gaza City, who are on the brink of famine, or in famine.”
She said there may be up to 500,000, to 600,000 children forced to leave the city who are already exhausted from living in extreme fear for the past 23 months.
Cummings said that she had driven on Wednesday from where she is based in Deir Al-Balal to Khan Younis, near to where Israel’s “so-called” humanitarian zone of Al-Mawasi is located. She said the area was already “extremely overcrowded.”
All of those speaking during the briefing organized by the Crisis Action group pleaded with the international community to pressure Israel to halt its campaign and implement a ceasefire.
For Altaweel, displacement from Gaza City is the latest fear that she has to help her children through.
“They feel very afraid and they are scared to sleep at night,” she said. “They lie next to me just to feel a little safer.
“Even though I know I can not protect them from these heavy weapons and airstrikes, I try to emotionally support them all the time.”
Altaweel said that they ask her why children are being targeted in Gaza.
“I’m sure that no one can also this question,” she said.
Seconds later, the explosions hit outside.
