Humanitarian Violence: a report by Forensic Architecture

Humanitarian Violence

Phase 1: Mass displacement from ‘North’ to ‘South’

Phase 2: The Evacuation Grid

Phase 3: Mass expulsion from ‘safe zones’

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after 7 October 2023 is turning principles of humanitarianism into weapons, deployed against a civilian population.

Forensic Architecture has documented three phases of mass displacement across Gaza, presented as ‘humanitarian’ evacuation orders directing civilians towards supposed ‘safe zones’.

Phase 1: Mass displacement from ‘North’ to ‘South’

The first phase began on 13 October 2023. The Israeli army issued an order for ‘the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza’ to evacuate to the south within 24 hours.

At that time, approximately 1.1 million Palestinians lived in the area subject to the evacuation order.

On the same day as the evacuation order, the ‘safe route’ it proposed, along Salah al-Din Street, was bombed by Israel. A civilian convoy was hit, and seventy civilians were reportedly killed.

The areas south of Wadi Gaza were themselves far from safe. On 15 October, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians moved south, a UN report revealed widespread destruction throughout Gaza, including in the southern areas to which civilians had been ordered to move.

To enforce and administrate the new north/south divide, Israeli forces carved an east-to-west military route through the lived fabric of Gaza, demarcating a new makeshift border 3km north of Wadi Gaza.

Satellite imagery reveals that by 14 November an Israeli military checkpoint had been installed where the new border intersected with Salah al-Din Street.

Witnesses describe how people passing through this checkpoint were ‘ordered to show their IDs and undergo what appears to be a facial recognition scan’. Those orders were communicated by megaphones, under threat of sniper fire and arrest.

Videos captured just south of the checkpoint show how this makeshift border is enforced by the Israeli military.

Palestinians who followed the instructions to move south were not allowed to return to the ‘north’. This video shows snipers positioned south of the checkpoint, reportedly to shoot at anyone who disobeyed the order.

Phase 2: The Evacuation Grid

The second phase began on 1 December 2023, immediately after the end of a temporary ceasefire. The Israeli military released an interactive grid-based map dividing Gaza into 623 numbered blocks, any of which could be subject to evacuation orders at any time.

Using this evacuation grid, Israel ordered Palestinians in areas south of Wadi Gaza—including Khan Younis, and refugee camps in the middle of the Gaza Strip—to evacuate.

Dr. Muhammad Harara described how the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis ‘received orders from the Israeli military to evacuate—along with nearby residential areas and a school where people had taken refuge’.

Evacuation orders were unevenly distributed by air-dropped leaflets, or published online during frequent internet and telecommunications blackouts.

The information communicated in these orders was often self-contradictory and confusing.

For example, an order published online on 2 December marked an area for evacuation incongruous with the shape of the ‘evacuation grid’.

Contradictory instructions such as these left Palestinians uncertain as to which neighbourhoods were being ordered to evacuate.

There was also seemingly no way for civilians to confirm this information. When this 2 December order was published to Facebook by an official Israeli account, a comment asked:

‘Is Block 53 in Ma’an within the zone of evacuation? Please reply.’

The comment received no reply.

An order published on 3 December 2023 used the grid to indicate which blocks were being ordered to evacuate.

However, the map and the accompanying text referred to different blocks. The text also instructed civilians to relocate to al-Fukhari—an area which had been subject to an evacuation order the previous day.

Inconsistent and self-contradictory, the sequence of evacuation orders nevertheless constitutes a systematic mass displacement of Gaza’s civilian population.

For example, the highlighted neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate to the west of Gaza City on 8 December 2023.

Subsequently, on 29 January 2024, the western part of Gaza City was ordered to evacuate southwards.

In this way, repeated displacements have pushed the civilian population out of northern Gaza and into an ever-shrinking ‘south’.

Palestinian civilians were also often directed towards areas that were already, or imminently, under attack.

On 20 February, Zaytoun neighbourhood was ordered to evacuate south, towards the ‘humanitarian zone’ of al-Mawasi.

Within hours, al-Mawasi was attacked — including a building operated by Doctors Without Borders.

Declarations about ‘safe zones’ were also inconsistent and contradictory. The Israeli military had published at least four different boundaries of al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’ prior to 20 February.

Evacuation orders also instructed civilians to relocate to Deir al-Balah and Rafah, without providing clear boundaries for the ‘safe zones’ there.

In some evacuation orders, Palestinians were instructed to go to al-Sultan, al-Zohour, and al-Shaboura in Rafah.

In another instance, the ‘evacuation grid’ was used to designate specific blocks as ‘safe’ in Deir al-Balah, while in other cases the orders referred to Deir Al-Balah in general.

These ‘safe zones’ were also repeatedly attacked. A surgeon working in Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah told Forensic Architecture:

‘Between 26 December 2023 and 7 January 2024, the area of the hospital was [within the] ‘safe zone’. Despite this, I treated dozens of patients injured from attacks in the area’

By the end of February 2024, the major hospitals in Khan Younis and al-Mawasi were attacked and forced out of service, accelerating the departure of Palestinians from areas which were at that time subject to evacuation orders.

The use of ‘evacuation orders’ and ‘safe zones’ has concentrated hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Rafah, al-Mawasi, and Deir al-Balah.

These areas lack the basic infrastructure to house, feed, and medically care for such numbers of civilians.

Approximately 67% of the total area of the Gaza Strip has been issued ‘evacuation orders’. As the ground invasion commenced, the Israeli military threatened that anyone who refused to obey the evacuation orders ‘might be identified as an accomplice in a terrorist organisation’.

In Khan Younis, Israeli ground forces pushed beyond the boundaries communicated in their own evacuation orders and into the ‘safe zone’ in Mawasi.

Phase 3: Mass expulsion from ‘safe zones’

The invasion of al-Mawasi on 22 January started the third phase of mass displacement, expelling Palestinians from ‘safe zones’.

Rafah continues to face the imminent threat of ground invasion and displacement.

Satellite imagery shows thousands of Palestinians taking refuge in al-Aqsa University, located within the ‘safe zone’ in al-Mawasi.

By 29 January, the Israeli military had attacked the campus and razed the temporary accommodation to the ground.

Satellite imagery shows Palestinians at a nearby makeshift checkpoint on the same date. Rather than providing a place of refuge from military operations, safe zones are used to tighten Israel’s control over a displaced population.

In Rafah, satellite imagery shows the expansion of a tent camp inhabited by displaced Palestinians since 15 October 2023.

A ground invasion in Rafah would exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation for the 1.5 million displaced Palestinians

On 6 January 2024, a UN assessment had already concluded that ‘there is no safe place in Gaza’.

Since that time, and through February, attacks on the remaining ‘safe zones’, including Rafah, have only escalated.

At the International Court of Justice in January, Israel claimed that its humanitarian policies sought to protect civilian life.

On the contrary, these policies function as a tool of mass displacement, pushing civilians into unliveable areas that later come under attack, augmenting Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian population.

Military evacuation of civilian populations is only legal under select, rare circumstances, and requires that displaced civilians be temporarily relocated to areas safe from conflict and with access to fundamental provisions for their safety and survival.

Where Israel’s evacuation orders might individually be framed as humanitarian in nature, in fact when closely analysed and considered over time, they reveal patterns of systematic mass displacement, with Palestinians deliberately and repeatedly being expelled from one unsafe and under- resourced location to another.

Read the full report here