Sam Rose, the planning director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), has said that most of the 250,000 Palestinians affected by the latest Israeli evacuation order had already been displaced several times.
Rose spoke to Al Jazeera from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that the Israeli order to leave eastern areas of Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, left people in a “just harrowing, horrific and incredibly difficult” situation.
“It means yet another day, week, chapter of misery for these hundreds of thousands of people … most of them have been displaced several times. Some had just returned from Rafah where they were displaced a few weeks ago,” Rose said.
“They ought to go west, to al-Mawasi – the beachy, sandy area on the coast, but it’s already so overcrowded. There is no room to pitch a tent, there is no water, no infrastructure, no sanitary services. Many spend the night in vehicles or they sleep on their donkey charts,” he said.
“They go without knowing precisely where they will end up because this evacuation order told people to go urgently – they know that if they don’t go out within 24 hours the worst is to come.”