Intensifying Israeli Onslaught Has Displaced 180,000 Palestinians in Just 10 Days

A United Nations group said Tuesday that Israel's renewed ground offensive and continued airstrikes in the Gaza Strip displaced roughly 180,000 Palestinians in just 10 days this month, leaving desperate, starving families with nowhere to turn as Israeli forces target shelters and other civilian infrastructure.

The estimate from the International Organization for Migration's Global Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) Cluster came a day after the Israeli military bombed a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, killing dozens.

CCCM said Tuesday that direct attacks on shelters for displaced people "have become common" in recent weeks as Israeli forces have moved ahead with Operation Gideon's Chariots, an expansion of Israel's devastating assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The official death toll from Israel's assault, which began in the wake of a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, surpassed 54,000 on Tuesday.

"Since the collapse of the cease-fire on 18 March, nearly 616,000 people have been displaced—multiple times, some as many as 10," said the U.N. group. "During the cease-fire, over half a million people went back to their homes, mostly in the north, to try to rebuild their lives. That fragile progress has now been reversed, as intensified military operations are once again displacing families away from the areas they had only recently returned to."

Citing humanitarian partners on the ground, CCCM noted that roughly 80% of the Gaza Strip is either under a displacement order or marked as a "no-go" zone, making most of the enclave's population vulnerable to Israel's ground and aerial onslaught.

"My sibling died in a 'safe' zone after they bombed it," one Palestinian aid worker told CCCM. "They call places safe, then attack them. I'd rather stay home with my family and face whatever comes, at least we all die together, rather than be separated."

CCCM also raised alarm over a newly launched aid scheme led by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organization with ties to the U.S. and Israeli governments.

"These arrangements risk circumventing established humanitarian coordination mechanisms, undermining humanitarian principles, and putting civilians at further risk by promoting displacement without essential protection or adequate access to lifesaving services," the U.N. organization said.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor echoed that warning, saying in a statement that "all available information about the new Israeli mechanism clearly indicates that it is designed as a tool of coercive control over the Gaza Strip's civilian population."

"It limits families to just one aid parcel per week under highly restrictive security conditions, thus violating the principles of non-discrimination, adequacy, and continuity in humanitarian aid," the group said. "Such limited distribution is not a genuine humanitarian response, but a deliberate policy aimed at barely managing hunger, rather than actually alleviating it."