(Beirut, October 26, 2024) – Israel’s renewed northern Gaza offensive is displacing and endangering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Human Rights Watch said today. Videos, photographs, satellite imagery, media reports, and UN agency reports analyzed by Human Rights Watch show that civilians are at grave risk of mass forced displacement and other atrocities as the last remaining places of refuge in northern Gaza, including shelters and hospitals, come under fire.
Since early October 2024, Israel has renewed mass evacuation orders for Gaza’s north, largely ordering civilians to move south, including to the “humanitarian” zone in al-Mawasi. The overcrowded area lacks adequate food, shelter, water, sanitation, and medical care. Israeli forces have also frequently attacked the zone, killing civilians.
“Israeli forces in northern Gaza are issuing evacuation orders after having done everything to ensure that there is no safe place to go in Gaza,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Unsafe evacuations are cruel and unlawful and a set up for further crimes against civilians.”
Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, is under a duty to ensure that civilians are evacuated in satisfactory conditions of health and safety and with proper accommodation for the displaced. Its failure to do so makes the displacement unlawful.
Israeli forces have been ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to leave, including from schools turned shelters, detaining men and then burning, attacking, or militarily occupying those shelters. Reports allege and videos reviewed by Human Rights Watch also show that Israeli forces have killed civilians, including children, in these shelters in recent days.
Photographs and videos posted to social media between October 19 and 23, verified by Human Rights Watch, show Israeli forces rounding up thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza for evacuation or detention. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that more than 60,000 people have been further displaced in northern Gaza in October alone, primarily from Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun.
A series of videos from in and around one school compound in Jabalia, next to a small wastewater pond, which was being used as a shelter, shows the chaos and danger of the situation.
In one video taken next to the school shared on social media on October 21, the buzzing sound of what appears to be a drone can be heard as a broadcast announcement instructs people in Arabic to “head south to al-Awda street,” around which Israeli forces are staging and appear to be screening and detaining people.
The incident matches descriptions from news and social media reports and evacuation orders from the day. Researchers were unable to find the video on social media before October 21.
Israeli quadcopters were used to issue orders on October 21 to evacuate the school compound near the wastewater pond area, the BBC reported. Minutes later, a medic told the BBC that Israeli forces struck the compound.
The medic, Nevine al-Dawawi, who filmed the attack’s aftermath on her phone, said the quadcopter “descended on the school at nine in the morning, giving us an ultimatum to get out by 10.” Ten minutes later, she said, Israeli forces attacked.
In response to a question about whether Hamas was using human shields, al-Dawawi said no, adding that “they were protecting us and standing with us.”
Three videos shared on X on October 21 and analyzed by Human Rights Watch show a woman carrying a bag of medical supplies and filming the aftermath of an apparent attack on or near that same school complex. The videos show bloody and gravely injured and dead men, women, and children. A group of people can be seen walking away from the shelter with their belongings. In Beit Hanoun, northeast of Jabalia, the Israeli military had been rounding up Palestinians for evacuation or detention for days around al-Awda street near the Indonesian Hospital and a series of schools used as shelters. On October 19, the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, shared drone footage on X showing Israeli forces rounding up Palestinians outside one of those schools, the Kuwait School.
By October 20, photographs posted to social media and verified by Human Rights Watch showed that school ablaze. In one photograph, three people with uniforms and equipment consistent with the Israeli military watch the school burn. Drone footage shared by Adraee on October 23 on X shows the ruined school blackened by fire with people amassed in front of it as others walk past flattened buildings, newly razed ground, and Israeli military vehicles.
A photograph posted to X on October 21 and geolocated by Human Rights Watch shows the Aleppo School, on the opposite side of the street, also on fire.
Medics from the hospital said Israeli troops stormed a school next to the hospital and detained men, then set the school on fire, Reuters reported.
Satellite imagery captured on October 23 and analyzed by researchers shows several additional school compounds and other informal shelters across Jabalia with signs of razing, damage, and fires. Many were filled with tents on satellite imagery captured on October 14 and reviewed by Human Rights Watch. However, by October 23, satellite imagery shows that most tents are gone or damaged, and military vehicles are in or around the courtyards.
Photographs on social media and published by Israeli press on October 22 show Israeli military leaflets, said to be dropped over northern Gaza, warning people in hospitals and shelters that they “are in a dangerous combat zone” and ordering them to “move towards the Indonesian Hospital” via al-Awda Street. This is the same area where shelters appear to have been destroyed by fire the previous day.
A video posted to the Qassam Brigades’ Telegram channel on October 22 shows an Israeli tank driving over what the caption claims is an explosive device approximately 100 meters away from the Indonesian Hospital.
Satellite imagery collected in the early morning of October 23 shows crowds of people in the courtyard of the Kuwait School walking toward southern Gaza along the razed main road of Beit Lahia and Salah al-Din Road, flanked by Israeli armored vehicles.
A photograph and video shared on social media on October 22 and 23 by Israeli journalists show Israeli soldiers blindfolding and detaining barefoot Palestinian men, dressed in white jumpsuits with hands bound behind their backs, in front of the Kuwait School.
As of October 23, satellite imagery also shows that a large camp for displaced Palestinians set up in July next to Salah al-Din Road has been razed and replaced by Israeli military vehicles; agricultural fields have been also razed along both sides of the road compared with a satellite image 10 days earlier.
Palestinians across Gaza have faced scores of evacuation orders over the past year. Recent Human Rights Watch reporting shows that previous evacuation orders did not take into account the needs of children and adults with disabilities.
Yet Israeli authorities deliberately cut off access to humanitarian assistance in northern Gaza for two weeks in October, and only a trickle of aid has entered since. The World Health Organization on October 23 cancelled a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza due to “intense bombardments, mass displacement, and lack of access.”
Human Rights Watch has documented Israel’s use of collective punishment and starvation as a weapon of war, which are war crimes.
The laws of war require parties to a conflict to “take all feasible precautions” to avoid or minimize the incidental loss of civilian life and damage to civilian objects. These precautions include doing everything feasible to verify that the objects of attack are military objectives and not civilians or civilian objects, giving “effective advance warning” of attacks when circumstances permit, and avoiding locating military objectives in or near densely populated areas.
Even if an evacuation order or warning has been given or a military objective is present, the attacking party is not relieved from its obligation to take into account the risk to civilians, including the duty to avoid causing disproportionate harm. Civilians who do not evacuate do not lose their status as civilians and their protections under international humanitarian law.
Temporary evacuations may be lawful if required by imperative military necessity or civilian safety. However, evacuations that are not justified under those grounds or fail to ensure safety, basic necessities, and the ability to return as soon as possible, are prohibited as forced displacement. Forced displacement with criminal intent—intentionally or recklessly—is a war crime. Several Israeli officials have called for new Jewish settlements in Gaza and “taking territory” from the Palestinians.
“Forcing people to evacuate again without ensuring their safety is unlawful, and intentional forced displacement is a war crime,” Fakih said. “When a party that has committed war crimes makes statements and takes action suggesting it’s willing to commit more crimes, we need to see a more serious response from the international community."
