"More than 200 days of forced displacement"
"We heard news about people returning to the northern Gaza, and we found thousands, but when we arrived, the planes fired at us, and there were young men and women who got injured, and there were a large number of wounded whose fate is unknown."
This was the testimony of one of the displaced persons from Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip... Following 200 days of fighting, Israel opened fire on Palestinians who had been forcibly displaced, killing and injuring many, including women and children, as they tried to return to their homes in Gaza City and its environs. The remainder of them were barred from going back to their residential neighborhoods in the northern part of the Strip and were compelled to return to their places of displacement. All of the horrific crimes committed during the occupation are part of the genocide that has been going on for more than six months, particularly the crime of forced relocation, which has as its main goal the eradication of Palestinian existence in the Gaza Strip.
Beginning on October 12th, the occupation forces launched the largest campaign of forced displacement against approximately 1.1 million residents of Gaza City and the northern Strip, forcing them to relocate to the central and southern parts of the sector without any guarantees regarding their safety during their journey or their ability to return in the future. The occupation forces had been practicing this systematic displacement operation against the residents of Gaza for five days prior to the massacre. The Israeli army extended its illegal evacuation orders on December 1st, covering a large portion of the southern sector's Khan Yunis city. Later, it ordered the evacuation of regions in the central Gaza Strip, leading to Rafah city, which is located in the southernmost part of the sector. For over seventy-five years, the Zionist occupation has been displacing indigenous people from their land and driving them off it through a program of forced relocation.
About two million individuals are thought to have been forcibly displaced in the Gaza Strip; many of them have been displaced more than once as a result of families being compelled to continuously flee in search of safety. According to international law, which requires the occupying authority to return the displaced population to their homes once hostilities cease, the world must put an end to the crime of forced displacement being committed by Israel against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the land's legitimate owners, and work to enable them to return immediately to their homes and places of residence.