Gaza’s worst fear is no longer bombs but ‘humanitarian cities’

We thought returning location would extremity the nightmare.

After months of fleeing bombardment, sleeping successful tents, schools, oregon nether makeshift nylon sheets, galore families yet walked backmost to their homes successful bluish Gaza during the fragile ceasefire successful January 2025. The roads were lined with rubble. Our houses were breached shells, neighbourhoods unrecognisable. Yet we carried a fragile hope: that by stepping backmost onto our land, adjacent among ruins, we were reclaiming our lives.

But arsenic soon arsenic we returned, the headlines followed us. Terms similar “mass relocations”, “humanitarian cities,” and “population transfers” began to appear, suggesting that adjacent aft everything we had endured, our adjacent destination mightiness not beryllium what remains of our homes, but military-controlled camps successful the acold southbound of Gaza, wherever the service had swept done and wiped retired full residential neighbourhoods, turning them into barren, flattened deserts.

For galore extracurricular Gaza, specified reports work arsenic distant governmental debates. For us, they onshore similar threats. Each caller connection feels similar a draught of our adjacent exile. The thought that the Israeli subject mightiness herd hundreds of thousands of america is terrifying precisely due to the fact that we cognize what those “cities” would truly be: overcrowded compounds, controlled checkpoints, nutrient and h2o organisation nether equipped ticker — if we are fortunate capable to person them — nary state of movement, nary warrant of ever leaving.

Families who person conscionable swept particulate from their breached floors present susurration astir whether they should support bags half-packed, acceptable to fly erstwhile again. Children, who person hardly adjusted to sleeping successful their ain beds aft months away, overhear the connection “relocation” and commencement crying. We each cognize what it means: different circular of humiliation, different erasure of what small mean beingness we are trying to portion together.

Meanwhile, beingness successful bluish Gaza is already unbearably hard. Water and energy are scarce. Food is overpriced and often unavailable. Families unrecorded among rubble, patching holes with nylon sheets. Yet adjacent successful these conditions, radical cling to the dignity of being connected their ain land.

But that fragile dignity is overshadowed by the anticipation that it could each vanish. Every effort to rebuild — a repaired roof, a replanted garden, a reopened store — feels provisional. Parents inquire themselves: Should we put successful repairing the location if we whitethorn beryllium forced retired again? Students beryllium with books by candlelight yet wonder: What schoolhouse volition I postgraduate from if we are moved tomorrow? Every infinitesimal of normality feels arsenic though it could beryllium interrupted by soldiers demanding we leave.

What would it mean to unrecorded successful these camps? The precise thought keeps america awake astatine night.

We representation agelong queues for food, babelike connected ration cards for each meal. We ideate tents lined successful rows, stripped of privacy, wherever families huddle with strangers and women fearfulness for information successful overcrowded conditions. We ideate soldiers controlling the gates, deciding who enters and who leaves, monitoring our lives with cameras and watchtowers.

For children, it would mean increasing up without classrooms they know, without streets that transportation their memories. Their “playground” would beryllium a fenced ungraded lot. For young men and women, it would mean the extremity of immoderate accidental astatine acquisition oregon work; for, wrong camps, beingness shrinks to survival. For the elderly, it would mean dying distant from what remains of the houses and trees they planted with their ain hands.

These are not abstract fears; they lucifer what has already been documented successful displacement zones and what ineligible experts predict. Analysts penning for JURIST and the Council connected Foreign Relations enactment that erstwhile wrong specified camps, Palestinians would beryllium incapable to permission freely, their movements tightly monitored, their lives babelike connected assistance distribution. The United Nations agencies and NGOs person besides warned that further wide relocations nether subject oversight could represent forcible transfer.

The information of these proposals is not lone the carnal hardship but the permanence they suggest. History has taught america that erstwhile radical are forced into camps, “temporary” becomes long-term. A structure pitched “for now” becomes a marker of exile for decades.

That is wherefore the fearfulness contiguous feels heavier than adjacent the demolition we person endured. Bombs destruct cities, but forced relocation destroys roots. If we are pushed into these camps, it volition not conscionable beryllium the nonaccomplishment of homes; it volition beryllium the nonaccomplishment of immoderate assertion to return.

Satellite imagery already confirms this information is not theoretical. In Rafah, Al Jazeera’s Sanad bureau documented the demolition of astir 30,000 buildings betwixt April and July 2025, providing grounds of land-clearing accordant with preparations for specified a “humanitarian city”.

What makes this looming menace unbearable is the trajectory of our lives. We person already been pushed from hard to harder: from homes to schools, from schools to tents, from tents backmost to breached houses. And now, the program being whispered is the hardest yet — military-run shelters that portion america of autonomy altogether.

What we truly fearfulness is not paranoia. It is simply a recurring task to erase america from our land. Some whitethorn wonderment wherefore the thought of relocation is much terrifying than the bombs we person survived. The crushed is simple: bombs destruct walls, bargain lives, but they bash not sever america from our land. Forced relocation uproots america forever.

To suffer a location is devastating. To suffer the anticipation of instrumentality is annihilating. That is wherefore families susurration astir the proposals with trembling voices. Because heavy down, we know: erstwhile we are herded there, we whitethorn ne'er spot location again.

The satellite indispensable spot done the connection being used. The word “humanitarian” is simply a mask. What is being projected is not alleviation but imprisonment. What is being prepared is not structure but a strategy of power designed to marque displacement permanent.

If you work those headlines, bash not ideate children playing safely successful neat caller towns. Imagine them staring done barbed wire, asking wherefore they cannot spell home. Imagine mothers queueing for a ration of flour nether the eyes of soldiers. Imagine fathers pacing astatine night, incapable to support their families from the indignity of being treated arsenic captives.

For america successful Gaza, the worst whitethorn inactive beryllium ahead. We returned location believing the nightmare was opening to end. Instead, we unrecorded successful the shadiness of a caller displacement, 1 that could erase adjacent the ruins we telephone ours. This is the fearfulness that defines our present: not lone surviving bombardment, but surviving each time with the dread that the adjacent section is already written, that the hardest section is inactive to come.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.