There is a geography to suffering, and Gaza has become its most terrifying map. Every inch of its territory, once home to markets and mosques, schools and song, is now under siege—not only from bombs but from a policy that seeks to scatter a people with surgical cruelty. As Israeli evacuation orders reach deeper into the strip, the available space for Palestinians to exist—let alone live—diminishes with harrowing efficiency. And with it, the hope of ever returning to normalcy is not just deferred but crushed underfoot. The United Nations, with uncharacteristic bluntness, has declared what many on the ground already know: there is no safe place left in Gaza. The words may be diplomatic, but the meaning is raw. This isn’t just a war anymore. It’s a removal. A slow, ruthless eviction carried out under the gaze of the world, where lines on a map are drawn and redrawn to suit the strategic calculus of those with tanks, drones, and the audacity to claim moral superiority.
Gaza is being dissected. Western media reports, quoting Israeli security officials, describe a plan to split the already suffocating strip into militarised zones. Each zone will be fenced in, watched, and controlled. What remains will not be Gaza but a collection of disconnected holding pens, each drained of autonomy and brimming with trauma. These are not measures taken to secure peace—they are measures meant to make permanence out of displacement. And in Rafah, this design has already taken shape. Rafah was once seen as the last refuge. In the south of Gaza, bordering Egypt, it became the reluctant destination for hundreds of thousands fleeing northern assaults. Now, even this crowded sanctuary is being emptied. Israeli orders for evacuation have sent families running once again—this time toward so-called “humanitarian zones” along the coast. These zones are neither humane nor zones in any true sense of safety.
They are tents in sand, packed tightly under sun and shrapnel, where water is scarce, and children sleep on plastic sheets. It is not refuge. It is containment. And it is not temporary. Israeli officials, both on and off the record, have confirmed the obvious: Rafah will be cleared, not for days or weeks, but for good. The military operation in the north has already shown the model. Whole neighbourhoods have vanished. Bulldozed. Burnt. Replaced with dust and checkpoints. It is a message in rubble: do not return. The evacuation of Rafah, comprising nearly 20% of Gaza’s entire landmass, is no different in its aim. This is not a humanitarian corridor. It is a funnel. A forced migration strategy cloaked in military language. The objective is not merely to uproot Hamas—though that remains the publicly stated goal—but to make Gaza uninhabitable, to corral more than two million Palestinians into ever-narrower stretches of land until exile becomes the only option left. This is not security policy. It is demographic engineering.
In the meantime, Israel’s military has adopted what can only be described as a scorched-earth doctrine. Humanitarian aid has not just slowed—it has been cut off entirely. The only remaining water pipeline to Gaza City was severed deliberately. The message again is chilling in its clarity: leave or die. Dehydration is not an act of war. It is an act of siege. And siege, when directed at civilians, is an act of collective punishment. Emerging reports from Arab and Israeli media suggest an even more sinister development: the construction of tent cities in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, purportedly to receive displaced Gazans. The idea that the people of Gaza—already refugees once removed—are being considered for forced relocation to a war-torn zone in another country speaks to the utter collapse of international norms. These are not humanitarian plans. These are blueprints for ethnic cleansing, made surreal by the fact that they are unfolding in real time with little more than hand-wringing from the global community.
Even as this relocation project is whispered about in diplomatic circles, Israeli civilians are reportedly being taken on guided tours through newly occupied parts of Syria’s Golan Heights. These areas, already seized in violation of international law, are now being paraded as symbols of conquest and control. The contrast is nauseating: one group takes selfies in land taken by force, while another group—exhausted, barefoot, stateless—is herded toward tents. What is being engineered in Gaza is not a momentary lapse in judgement or an unfortunate by-product of conflict. It is a sustained assault on the idea of Palestinian presence. Every bomb dropped, every child displaced, every family forced out of their home serves the same vision: a Gaza without Gazans. And all the while, the language of war—“targets,” “operations,” “neutralising threats”—masks the human reality on the ground.
Gaza is not a battlefield. It is a community. A place of homes, of weddings and markets, of grandparents and lullabies. Its people are not combatants by default. They are, above all, people. Yet their very identity is now being rendered incompatible with the land they inhabit. This is not just a tragedy. It is a crime—one that grows more deliberate by the day. And what of the international community? Western capitals continue to issue statements expressing “concern” while rearming the very hands that pull the trigger. Arab states call for restraint, yet their borders remain closed. The UN, shackled by vetoes and diluted resolutions, watches with increasing impotence. Silence, at this point, is not neutrality. It is participation.
The dream of peace is mocked by every airstrike. The two-state solution is buried beneath the ruins of Rafah and Khan Younis. What remains is not diplomacy but the cold mechanics of removal. And unless the world calls it what it is—ethnic cleansing in slow motion—there will be nothing left to save. Gaza is not going quietly. Even under fire, its people mourn, resist, remember. But remembrance is not enough. The world must act—not just in sympathy, but in solidarity. Because when a people are cornered, starved, and driven from their land, history is not watching. It is judging. And one day, it will ask: when Gaza wept, who listened? And when the last home fell, who stood up and said no more?
