People run as smoke rises over a building in Gaza City, September 14, 2025. Photo: Omar Al Qattaa/AFP.
By Youssef Fares – Sep 15, 2025
In Gaza, the sky holds nothing but the dust of shattered buildings bombarded every few minutes by US-supplied Israeli warplanes. On Saturday alone, 16 buildings were reduced to rubble, including three towers and facilities of the Islamic University, where tens of thousands of forcibly displaced people had taken refuge. In al-Karama neighborhood, the most crowded area of northwest Gaza, airstrikes tore through shelters and ignited a massive fire that consumed hundreds of tents.
Israeli tactics have escalated from threatening a single residential building to ordering the evacuation of entire blocks. Intelligence officers now call residents of 100 homes at once and give them five minutes to evacuate before striking multiple buildings at once. This transforms Gaza’s streets into a “marathon of terror”. Children and adults flee the bombardment while others hurl mattresses and blankets from upper floors in a race against collapse.
Hundreds of families now sleep homeless on hospital steps and roadside pavements. Today Gaza is the portrait of a doomsday scene. Survivors are emptying the place and moving toward the center and south of the Strip. According to Israeli estimates, around 300,000 residents have fled in the past two weeks, more than half of them in the last three days alone. Around 900,000 people remain for lack of travel means. They are left with no option but to endure whatever comes their way.
Today Gaza is the portrait of a doomsday scene
This evokes memories of the 1948 Nakba. An entire city, with its cultural and historical identity being systematically erased. The immediate result is thousands of families left homeless and hopeless, with emigration increasingly seen as the only lifeline for survival.
‘Israel’ Continues to Level Gaza Towers, Residents Defy Displacement
Meanwhile Israeli media outlets report that Benjamin Netanyahu has put in motion a plan to deport Gazans by sea and air while exploring the options of countries willing to receive them – including Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan.
Despite Arab and international condemnation, nothing for now suggests that the Israeli government is halting its long-term campaign. Ending the war without rapid mechanisms to restore civilian life would create unbearable conditions. This is precisely the outcome the Israeli entity seeks.
Yet despite ferocious bombardment, even the Israeli army admits the difficulty of emptying Gaza City, which proves Palestinians’ deep attachment to their land. But the displaced, hungry, and defenseless cannot resist the occupation’s machinery of destruction alone. Their survival requires genuine Arab and international political and humanitarian support to withstand this campaign of forced expulsion.
