'Do they want Israel to kill all of us?': Palestinians in Gaza's Rafah have nowhere to go as Israeli forces close in

As the mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel for a ceasefire continue, the Israeli military has expanded its attack on the Gaza Strip, gradually getting closer to the city of Rafah in the south of the besieged coastal enclave.

For Palestinians trapped in the territory, there is nowhere else to go. 

Separately speaking to The New Arab, they stress that they do not know where they should flee if the Israeli army decides to expand their military invasion in Rafah.

"We do not have any chance to survive this time if Rafah will be the next target for Israel," Safaa Abu Abdu, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, remarked to TNA. 

To remain informed of the current news, the 45-year-old mother of six is forced to walk every day for at least two hours to reach the tents of journalists established beside al-Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah. 

"Every day, I come here to ask the journalists about the updates of the Israeli operation and if the army will come here and attack us," Abu Abdu said.

"Neither my eight-member family nor I have any other place to escape," she added. 

The desperate woman spoke of how she can barely deal with the harsh conditions she is experiencing as she and her family are sheltered in a tent set up on one of Rafah's streets.

"It too hard for us to leave without enjoying our human rights (..) we only count the days until the end of the war, but the Israeli army forces us to wait for death," she remarked.

The situation of Kamal Abu Ramadan, a Gaza-based Palestinian man, is similar to Abu Abdo. He was forcibly displaced several times in various cities across the besieged coastal enclave since the start of Israel's war last October.

During his displacement, the 62-year-old father of six was severely wounded by the Israeli army, and he is now in the hospital to receive his treatment. 

"No one around the world can bear such suffering. I am lucky that I am still alive, but really, no one in Gaza feels good since all of us are under Israel's attack," Abu Ramadan said to TNA. 

"If Israeli launches military operation in Rafah," the elderly man opined, "it (Israel) seeks to implement its plan of expelling Palestinians to Egypt because all the displaced people do not have any other place to protect themselves from death." 

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, killing over 26,000 people - most of whom were women and children - and injured at least 65,000 people.

The attack by Israel has displaced at least 85 per cent of the besieged enclave's population, and the strict limiting by Israel of aid supplies into the besieged coastal enclave has paved the way for famine.

Despite a provisional ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel persisted in its military onslaught of Gaza, still targeting media workers, hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructures.

"Israel's insistence on continuing its war means that Rafah will be next, and this means that more than 1.6 million people will be under attack, and we will witness more and more massacres," Ehab Abu Jahal, a  displaced Palestinian man, said to TNA. 

Abu Jahal, who was also displaced from his house in Gaza City and came to Rafah, expressed his fears that the Israeli army will kill him or his children. "We heard dozens of tragic massacres committed by the army against our people (…) I am really worried about myself and my children, as well as all my other loved ones," the 36-year-old father of four remarked. 

"I am shocked how the world still keeps silent despite all the Israeli crimes against us. What do they want? Do they want Israel to kill all of us and end our Palestinian cause forever?" he added.