Elham Shamali, like hundreds of thousands of Gaza City residents, faces an agonizing choice. She can flee with her family — again — to suffer the uncertainties and indignities of displacement, or risk defying Israel’s evacuation orders ahead of what is expected to be a full-scale assault on Gaza’s largest city.
Ms. Shamali, 47, fled her home in the city once before during the war that began nearly two years ago, but she returned when the southern part of Gaza began to feel too dangerous.
This time, she said her family would move to a different Gaza City neighborhood that she thought might fare better in an Israeli offensive, but insisted they would not leave the area altogether.
“We know if we leave, we will never return,” said Ms. Shamali, who was a university professor before the war. Many of her neighbors felt the same way. In recent days, she said, she had seen them prying valuable construction materials off their homes before heading south.
“I saw people carrying window frames and doors,” she said. “Stuff that suggests they know they won’t be back.”
The Israeli military on Tuesday ordered the entire population to evacuate Gaza City, as it prepares for an offensive that it said will take full control of the city. It has already taken over about 40 percent of the city and bombed several high-rise towers.
But many people in Gaza City, much of it already reduced to rubble, say they cannot, or will not, leave.
In interviews, many Palestinians in the city said they did not trust Israel to let them go home again if they were to flee. Others said they did not have the money to go, or that they or their loves ones needed medical care that might be unavailable if they left.
Nearly all have been forced from their homes and shelters at least once already during the war, many of them multiple times, and many said they did not believe that any place in the territory was safe.
“I cannot leave Gaza City to go to the south. I just cannot,” said Dr. Bakr Gaoud, a physician at Al Nasser Children’s Hospital, where his son, Saif Eldin, 11, has been receiving treatment for epilepsy. “Almost all the drugs he needs are missing, but things in the south will be much worse.”
Israel has portrayed Gaza City as a Hamas stronghold and said it must take full control of the city to rout the group’s fighters there. Last week, it began telling civilians to leave for what it called a “humanitarian zone” in the southern coastal area of al-Mawasi.
Earlier in the war, the Israeli military instructed civilians to go to that same general area. But al-Mawasi, which was thinly populated before war, lacked the shelter, sanitation, water, food distribution and medical care needed to absorb masses of people. And Israel conducted airstrikes there repeatedly, killing dozens of people in what it had labeled a safer zone, saying it was killing Hamas fighters.
For those who have decided to remain in Gaza City, a feeling of dread set in as they watched panicked neighbors begin to pack up what remained of their belongings.
Hidaya al-Falouji, 30, said she and her four children would stay. She said their home in nearby Jabaliya was destroyed earlier in the war by a strike that killed her husband and brother. When they had to leave the building’s ruins behind to move into a tent, she felt like she had “abandoned” both her home and her life before the war.
“I cried all along the way,” said Ms. al-Falouji, whose youngest son is now three. “I will not leave. I will not abandon Gaza. Either I die here, or I remain steadfast in my city.”
The memory of privation and violence during earlier evacuations looms large for many who said they would stay in Gaza City.
Mohamed al-Najjar, 36, said he remained haunted by his experiences in the south, where he lived for a year earlier in the war with his wife and two children. The area was as bleak and ruined as the north, and he said they eventually returned to Gaza City because the south had “no resources, no infrastructure and no safety.”
It would cost around $1,000 to go back to al-Mawasi and build a new tent there, said Mr. al-Najjar, who works as a photographer for Palestinian news outlets that are unaffiliated with Hamas. If he were to leave now, he would never see the city as he knows it again — even if he did come back.
“I am very worried this time if they manage to push us to the south, we might never be able to return,” he said. “And if we return, Gaza City will be completely flattened.”
Ms. Shamali shared his concerns. Her family does not have the money to get to al-Mawasi, and “the south is not safe at all,” she said. “The army has been killing people in the south just like in the north, so what is the point?”
They will seek safety in a neighborhood of Gaza City that is further to the west than their current shelter, she said, betting that the area will be safer during the offensive.
When her family fled before, they expected they would only be displaced temporarily, said Ms. Shamali, who taught at a university in Gaza City before the war. They no longer believe that.
For Dr. Gaoud, the most important thing has been to stay close to the hospital so he can keep treating the wounded, but also so that his son might receive care. He has lost 18 family members during the war, he said, including his brother and nephew last month. He does not want to lose anyone else.
Two weeks ago, the family’s home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood was destroyed. They were forced to move to a tent by the beach, where he said he listens to the sound of explosions at night with his wife and two children, including Saif Eldin.
“But it is not too far from the hospital where I can still take care of my child,” he said. “As long as I am at the children’s hospital, I have a better chance to help him.”
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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