‘The scenes of the Nakba are repeating’: Rafah in panic as Israeli invasion begins
Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, 7 May 2024
Ruwaida Kamal Amer and Mahmoud Mushtaha report in +972 on 8 May 2024:
Israel’s long-threatened invasion of Rafah has begun. Under cover of intense aerial bombardment Tuesday morning, Israeli forces moved into Gaza’s southernmost city, which has become a shelter for 1.5 million Palestinians with nowhere else to go. This is the moment they most feared, carrying the potential for a catastrophe greater than anything we’ve seen so far. Gazans counted on the world to stop this invasion, and the world let them down.
Residents of Rafah have long been in a state of panic in anticipation of this eventuality. That panic intensified Monday morning, when the Israeli army dropped leaflets from the sky ordering those living in Rafah’s eastern districts to immediately flee to the ill-equipped coastal area of Al-Mawasi.
Within hours, tens of thousands packed up what remains of their lives — many of them for the third, fourth, or fifth time since October — and headed northwest to what Israel is calling an “expanded safe zone.” But if Palestinians have learned anything from the past seven months, it is that nowhere in Gaza is ever safe from Israel’s onslaught.
Residents fleeing Rafah, 9 May 2024
“Since the first day of displacement, I have been living in fear,” 48-year-old Reem Al-Barbari told +972. “I was displaced from Gaza City five months ago and took refuge in Rafah straight away, as the army told us it was a ‘safe area.’ But on Monday morning, leaflets fell instructing us to evacuate, and there was intense bombing throughout the night into Tuesday. “The sky turned red from the intensity of the explosions,” Al-Barbari continued. “We were unable to sleep at all as we waited for the morning hours to uproot our lives again. The streets were very crowded with citizens — everyone was fleeing.”
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“We find ourselves ensnared in an unending nightmare as they breach our borders, seemingly sanctioned by the green light from America,” Abu Salem, a 55-year-old living in a tent in the Tal el-Sultan neighborhood, told +972. “Across all regions of Gaza, the cycle of ground invasions persists, accompanied by atrocities against civilians. Yet the world remains eerily silent, as if oblivious to our plight.”