“There is not a single day without bombings and deaths in the south, even in the so-called humanitarian zones that the army declared. So, would I just be running from death to death? What difference would that make?”

‘Running from death to death’: Gaza City residents face impossible choice

IDF has launched its Gaza City ground offensive, displacing people south – but many will stay despite the risks

Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south. But most people have already been forced to move numerous times. Photograph: Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters

The bombardment of Gaza City has been growing louder and more deadly for weeks, but in the early hours of Tuesday it felt like an earthquake that would never stop.

“Even when the bombings are not right next to us, we can clearly hear them, and the ground shakes beneath us with the intensity of the explosions,” said Fatima al-Zahra Sahweil, 40.

Sahweil, a media researcher, said the dead and wounded from the night’s barrage had been taken to al-Shifa medical complex, where she heard the situation was “catastrophic”.

She had lost track of the latest news, however, as she tried to make the near-impossible decision of what to do to best protect her four children.

The Rashid coast road, the Israeli-designated “escape” route to the south, was jammed with the exhausted and desperate. Anyway, the cost of a ride was too high.

“On top of that, I don’t own a tent to give us shelter, and they are too expensive to buy. I would not be able to take all of the belongings and supplies I have already bought several times before,” Sahweil said. “Then there is the suffering we would face in searching for water and the lack of empty spaces to stay in. So if I leave, I would simply be going into the unknown.”

Like more than 90% of people in Gaza, the family has been displaced by the war. An overwhelming majority have been forced to move numerous times. Sahweil and her family have already been displaced 19 times.

Now, with the launch of a ground offensive, the Israeli army is calling on the estimated 1 million people sheltering in Gaza City to move south once more. But Sahweil and her family, and many others, have been to the south before and are aware it is no haven from violence.

“It didn’t feel like life at all,” she said of her time in southern Gaza earlier in the war. “Living in a tent with insects, rats, sand, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the rain, it was an unbearable period.

“There is not a single day without bombings and deaths in the south, even in the so-called humanitarian zones that the army declared. So, would I just be running from death to death? What difference would that make?”  ... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/16/running-from-death-to-death-gaza-city-residents-face-impossible-choice

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