As Israel Pounds Gaza City, an Overwhelming Exodus

As Israel’s full-scale assault in Gaza City began last month, Khitam Ayyad fled from her home there barefoot and without her possessions, heading to an area in southern Gaza that the Israeli military had designated as a “humanitarian zone.”

The military said that tents, food and medical care would be provided to those fleeing the fighting in the north.

But when Ms. Ayyad reached the southern city of Khan Younis, one of the humanitarian areas, she said she found it overcrowded with desperate people who were being offered little help.

“We are exposed to the sun and the heat,” she said. There was no space for her to build a shelter, she added, and “no proper food or water.”

The Israeli military has said that its ground assault to take control of Gaza City, which began on Sept. 16, is an effort to rout one of the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza.

Before the operation, the military said that the humanitarian infrastructure in southern Gaza was prepared for “the expected population volume moving from northern Gaza.”

This week, the military said that 780,000 people had left Gaza City since an evacuation order was issued on Sept. 9.

The huge influx of Gazans into the south has further strained humanitarian services that aid groups say were not sufficient even before the arrival of thousands more people.

Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ humanitarian office who is working in a designated humanitarian zone, said there were “hundreds of people just sitting on the side of the road looking shellshocked, without anything.”

On Monday, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel backed a proposal to end the war, which was ignited by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The plan stated that “full aid” would be sent “immediately” to Gaza once the plan went into effect, but it remained unclear if Hamas would accept the deal.

The Israeli military agency that coordinates aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, reiterated that the humanitarian facilities in the south were prepared for the new arrivals. “Accordingly, the transfer of food, medical equipment and shelter supplies has been increased,” COGAT said in a statement on Sept. 25. “Steps have been taken in the fields of water and medical response in the southern Gaza Strip.”

But two weeks into the offensive, there appeared to be little sign of that infrastructure, a visit by a New York Times photographer to the humanitarian zone showed and Palestinians and aid groups said in interviews. They said the facilities there were far from sufficient.

“The hospitals are completely overflowing,” Ms. Cherevko said. “The water production is at some of the lowest levels that we’ve ever seen. There’s all kinds of diseases.”

Since the ground offensive in Gaza City began, aid agencies say, efforts to alleviate a worsening humanitarian crisis across Gaza have been plunged into chaos.

In the north, where hundreds of thousands of people are still sheltering in Gaza City, the delivery of food and aid has been severely disrupted, aid agencies say.

The United Nations’ humanitarian office said the Israeli military closed the Zikim crossing on Sept. 12, days before the Gaza City operation began, cutting off an important entry point for aid and goods.

When asked about the closure, the Israeli military said the entry of aid trucks through Zikim was “subject to operational considerations.”

The United Nations said the Israeli authorities had also denied or impeded about half of its attempts to bring aid from the south to the north of Gaza in recent weeks. That, Ms. Cherevko said, had severely hampered the work of community kitchens in the north, meaning they were able to prepare about a third of the meals they had before the offensive.

The Israeli military said in a statement that aid deliveries from southern to northern Gaza were “facilitated through internal coordination” between itself and aid groups, and that the delivery of aid “continues on an ongoing basis.”

Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza City has also devastated health care there.

On Wednesday, the Red Cross said it would suspend operations and move its staff out of the city, days after Doctors Without Borders, a medical charity, announced a similar move saying that Israeli forces had “encircled” their facilities. At the weekend, the United Nations said that fighting had rendered four hospitals in the north unusable over the past month.

Israel’s conduct of the war, and its effect on civilians, has been widely criticized and has left the country isolated internationally.

Last month, a U.N. commission investigating the war said Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians, an accusation that Israel has denied.

In August, a U.N.-backed panel of food experts found that Gaza City and its surrounding area were officially under famine, with at least half a million people facing starvation, acute malnutrition and death. Israel has denied the report’s findings and criticized the panel’s methodology.

Israeli officials have said they let enough food into Gaza but argue that it is stolen or that aid agencies struggle to distribute it. The United Nations and other aid groups say that Israel frequently denies or delays requests to pick up supplies waiting at the border and move them into Gaza safely, among other challenges.

The persistent lack of security across Gaza has also made it difficult for aid agencies to reach people.

Before the Gaza City offensive, UNICEF delivered specialized treatment for malnourished children to northern Gaza twice a week, but it has delivered only one since the offensive began, said Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for UNICEF. And last week, the United Nations said in a report that it had succeeded in getting a shipment of malnutrition treatment into Gaza City, only to have the supplies, which included enough treatment for 2,700 children, stolen by armed men.

The United Nations said that 73 percent of aid entering Gaza in September had been stolen from its trucks by desperate civilians or armed gangs. Some of that pilfered aid is then sold in local markets across the territory for inflated prices.

In Gaza City, some markets had stayed open in the earliest days of the Israeli ground offensive as vendors tried to offload their stocks before they fled. But residents said many markets now appeared to be closed or picked clean.

Amani al-Hessi, 40, a journalist for Al Madina, an Arabic-language newspaper based in Israel, who was sheltering in a badly damaged house in Gaza City, said there was nowhere left to buy food in her area.

“I went yesterday to what used to be the market in Shati, but no one was selling a thing there,” she said, referring to one of Gaza City’s neighborhoods. “We have food enough for one more week at best.”

Aid agencies say the Israeli military appeared to have been unprepared for the exodus of people its Gaza City offensive would unleash.

“Is there food and water in al-Mawasi? Yes,” Ms. Ingram, the UNICEF spokeswoman, said, referring to one of the designated humanitarian zones in the south. “Is it sufficient for the people who are currently here? No. Will it be sufficient if hundreds of thousands of more people come? Definitely not.”

Bassem al-Qedra, 43, said he and his children slept on the street for three days after he fled to Khan Younis from Gaza City. He said that, eventually, he found an empty patch of sand and paid someone almost $100 to pitch a tent for his family there.

“No water, no food, no money,” said Mr. al-Qedra, who worked as a taxi driver before his car was destroyed in the war. “No one could help.”

Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.

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