As dawn broke on Thursday, Gaza City suffocated under the weight of a new military order.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces sealed off the al-Rashid coastal road, the city's last surviving artery connecting the north, centre, and south of the Strip. Once a lifeline for families, aid convoys, and ambulances, it has now been reduced to a one-way corridor heading south, patrolled by tanks and soldiers, and governed by inspections and fear.
For Gaza's exhausted residents, the closure marked another chain in a series of sieges. Instead of triggering a mass exodus as the Israeli army had expected, nearly 600,000 people remain trapped in Gaza City, unwilling or unable to escape, according to official estimates.
Speaking to The New Arab, Palestinian residents in Gaza City said that they cling to the ruins of their destroyed homes, or resist heading toward the unknown horrors of overcrowded displacement camps in the south.
With the Salah al-Din Road, linking the far north and the far south of the Gaza Strip, blocked since March, Gaza City has been turned into an isolated peninsula, walled by rubble, hemmed in by Israeli military checkpoints, exposed to bombardment from the sea, and suffocated by the hum of drones overhead.
Endless attacks
In the battered neighbourhood of al-Jalaa in the centre of Gaza City, Umm Mohammed al-Jarousha, a mother of three, recalled the moment tanks appeared at her doorstep just before the road was sealed.
"They [the Israeli army forces] told us to move south. They searched the children's bags as if mercy had died. I didn't know where to go, so I turned back," she told TNA. "Now our lives are stuck under a red light, hospitals are closed, food is scarce, and medicine has vanished."
Israeli bulldozers and armoured vehicles were seen advancing within hundreds of meters of homes, intermittently firing to prevent families from returning or escaping.
Some residents risked side roads and alleys, but most remain frozen in place, trapped between staying in the rubble of their houses or risking death on the journey south.
The impact on Gaza's fragile health sector was immediate. The Ministry of Health confirmed that ambulances can no longer move freely, disrupting urgent operations at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in the coastal enclave.
"We're not talking about healthcare any more. We're just trying to keep people alive. There's no fuel, no medicine, and our doctors are collapsing," Monir al-Borsh, the general director of the health ministry, said in press statements.
The collapse extends far beyond hospitals. Schools are packed with displaced families, bakeries run at a fraction of capacity, and mothers walk for hours searching for bread or clean water.
"I buried my neighbour with my own hands under the rubble while my children watched, trembling in the corner. There is no home left, and no safety," Abu Mustafa, a Gaza-based Palestinian man, told TNA.
However, he cannot bury his oldest son, who was killed three days ago, because the body is trapped under the rubble.
"The Israeli army is punishing us [the innocent civilians] despite the fact that they knew very well that there are no militants in Gaza City," he said.
Despite the dire situation in Gaza City, Abu Mustafa refuses to go to the south, not because he is a hero, but because he will only escape from "death" to "hell", as he described.
Forced displacement
For many Palestinians, the closure of Al-Rashid Street is not just a "security measure." It is seen as part of a deliberate strategy.
Ramallah-based Political analyst Hani al-Masri argues, "Turning the road into a one-way corridor south is a tool of collective pressure, a strategy to forcibly reshape Gaza's population."
His words echo local fears that Israel is engineering another wave of displacement. Activists describe the closure as a "field-cleansing operation" designed to push families south while entrenching military control over Gaza City.
The move comes as the United States circulates a new political plan for ending the war, reportedly welcomed by Israel's prime minister. However, residents on the ground see no change: bombardment continues, the siege tightens, and daily life is shattered by military orders that make survival nearly impossible.
Human rights defenders, both Palestinian and international, have condemned the weaponisation of roads as a violation of international law.
Calls for accountability have been raised by European and UN parliamentarians, warning that turning infrastructure into a tool of forced displacement sets a dangerous precedent.
Still, for those inside Gaza City, such statements feel hollow.
"No one is protecting us," Ahmed al-Turk, based in Gaza, told TNA. "We are being erased slowly. The world debates plans while we bury our dead."
Gaza City is more of a cage than a metropolis today. Bread lines stretch for hours, bakeries can barely operate, and clean water has become as scarce as gold.
Meanwhile, local reports estimate that more than 234,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or remain missing since Israel's war began. Officially, the health ministry in Gaza reports that Israel has killed more than 66,000, mainly women and children.
"This is not a war of armies. It is a slow-motion genocide. People are being turned into numbers on displacement lists," Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson of the civil defence, said in a press statement.
"The only safe road for bringing in food and medicine has been cut. Announcements and speeches mean nothing if aid cannot reach civilians," he added.
"Unless Al-Rashid Road is reopened and the bombardment stops, Gaza City will collapse. Its residents remain trapped between the rubble and the sea, enduring a slow death as the world turns its gaze elsewhere," he said.