Oxfam Warns Israel's 'Annihilation Campaign' Is 'Entirely Erasing Gaza'

Israel's U.S.-backed mass displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip "is entirely erasing Gaza," a leading international charity said Thursday as the United Nations' Middle East peace envoy warned that ongoing airstrikes, forced starvation, and general despair have plunged the embattled coastal enclave into "an abyss."

Since unilaterally breaking a cease-fire on March 2, "Israel issued nearly one displacement order every two days, strangling people into isolated areas covering less than 20% of the Gaza Strip," Nairobi, bKenya-based Oxfam International noted.

"Combined with deliberate deprivation, this reveals a strategy not of targeting militants, but of dismantling and erasing Gaza itself," Oxfam added. Some Israeli leaders have explicitly called for Gaza's "erasure" to avenge the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

"People are so exhausted, many would rather face death than flee again."

"For over 600 days, Israel has been saying it's targeting Hamas, but it is civilians who have been corralled, bombed, and killed en masse every day," said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

"The displacement orders follow a clear and calculated pattern: using the threat of violence to herd civilians into ever-shrinking zones of confinement," Khalidi added. "This isn't counterterrorism, as Israel alleges—it's the systematic clearing of Gaza through militarized force into enclaves of internment."

Oxfam analyzed Israel's more than 30 displacement orders, which, combined with Israel Defense Forces (IDF)-designated "no-go zones," cover more than 80% of the 141-square mile Gaza Strip.

"The sheer scale and relentless frequency of these orders have made it virtually impossible for people to find refuge," the charity said. "The pattern suggests not an effort to neutralize a threat, but a deliberate campaign to dismantle and depopulate Gaza—a process of forced displacement which is a war crime."

As Oxfam noted:

In just the last week (15–20 May), over 160,000 people were displaced—part of a broader total of nearly 600,000 people displaced since March 18, many of them repeatedly. One of the most significant recent orders, issued on 20 May, covered 34.9 square kilometers, roughly 10% of Gaza's land area, that affected 150,000–200,000 people in North Gaza's Beit Lahia and Jabalia. The effect of such orders on already-displaced populations has been devastating.

"Imagine trying to move with four children or an elderly parent in the middle of the night, with no transport and nowhere to go," said Oxfam gender adviser Fidaa Alaraj, who has been displaced with her family several times. "People are so exhausted, many would rather face death than flee again."

Palestinians, United Nations experts, international humanitarian groups, progressive U.S. lawmakers, and others including a former right-wing Israeli defense minister have called Israel's forced displacement ethnic cleansing.

Fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and forced starvation—recently said that Israel will control all of Gaza after Operation Gideon's Chariots, a campaign to conquer, ethnically cleanse, and indefinitely occupy the strip.

Far-right members of Netanyahu's Cabinet and the Israeli Knesset want to permanently seize Gaza and reestablish Jewish-only apartheid colonies in the coastal enclave, which U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed taking over and turning into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

"There is one essential condition: We must not reach a situation of famine, both from a practical standpoint and a diplomatic one," Netanyahu said on May 19. "People simply won't support us."

While 82% of Israelis surveyed in a recent poll said they supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and nearly half backed a biblical genocide of Palestinians—much of the world is aghast at Israel's annihilation of the strip, which has left more than 191,000 people dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, often more than once.

Meanwhile, the famine against which Netanyahu warned looms larger than ever as hundreds of Gazans, mostly children and the elderly, have recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care, according to local officials.

On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the interim U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, warned that Gazans are "being starved and denied the very basics" by Israel, which in March tightened an already crippling "complete siege" of Gaza. The blockade has been cited in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice.

"The entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine," she warned, likening the trickle of aid allowed into the strip by Israel to offering "a lifeboat after the ship has sunk."

Kaag highlighted the despair pervasive among Gazans, who she said bid farewell not by saying, "Goodbye, see you tomorrow," but rather with the words "see you in heaven."

"Death is their companion. It's not life, it's not hope," she said.

"Since the collapse of the ceasefire in March, civilians have constantly come under fire, confined to ever-shrinking spaces, and deprived of lifesaving relief," Kaag added. "Israel must halt its devastating strikes on civilian life and infrastructure."

"This annihilation campaign and the bloodshed must end."

Echoing Kaag's remarks, Oxfam's Khalidi said that "this annihilation campaign and the bloodshed must end. It is long past time for Western governments and other influential powers to move beyond statements and apply meaningful pressure on Israel to lift the siege and abandon any designs on annexing Gaza."

"Peace cannot be brokered on the ruins of Gaza nor the theft of Palestinian land," she stressed. "Ahead of the Two-State Solution Summit planned in New York next month, world leaders must urge Israel to lift the siege and abandon any annexation plans of Gaza or the West Bank."

"What's at stake is not only Palestine's future," Khalidi argued, "but the integrity of every nation that claims to uphold international law."