From Gaza City to the unknown: Palestinian residents desperately escape Israel's attacks

At the coastal road linking between Gaza City with the southern areas of the war-torn besieged coastal enclave, waves of Palestinian families move in silence, carrying their belongings and centuries of memory.

Blankets, cooking pots, mattresses, and family photos are stacked on carts and donkey carriages, balanced on shoulders, or clutched tightly in children's arms. Their eyes wander back toward the ruins of the city they are leaving, as though the past holds more certainty than the future.

Each step southward or toward the centre of the coastal enclave feels like a tearing apart from the self.

"Leaving Gaza is like leaving our hearts behind. It is not just a journey of kilometres, it is a journey of the soul leaving the body," Mohammed Abu Shar, a Gaza-based Palestinian man, told The New Arab.

"We tried to stay in Gaza City as long as possible. Every day we told ourselves that maybe the bombardment would ease, maybe the situation would calm down. But the strikes only grew more intense, reaching every neighbourhood and every corner of the city," he said.

"My children cannot sleep at night because of the constant explosions. They cover their ears and cry. In the end, we had no choice but to leave, even though it breaks our hearts," Abu Shar added.

South Gaza: A refuge that isn't

Reaching the south does not mean safety. Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah have turned into sprawling, chaotic camps where life is stripped to its barest form. Streets once crowded with markets and schools are now suffocating with tents made from torn plastic, wooden poles, and cloth stitched together in desperation.

But this misery comes at a price. Merchants exploit the desperation, selling tents for more than US$1,000, while landlords charge up to US$2,000 for a single room.

Families who once lived modest, but dignified lives in their homes are reduced to bargaining for scraps of privacy.

Umm Mahmoud, displaced from Gaza City, said she spent days sleeping in the open before relatives abroad sent money for a small tent.

"Everything here has become a business, even suffering. How can a poor family pay thousands of dollars for a piece of cloth tied to sticks?" she told TNA.

"In Gaza, we lost our house. Here, we lose our dignity. Families sleep on dirt floors without water, bathrooms, or medicine. Prices rise every day, and no one supervises. Even the fabric for tents is sold in dollars," Mohammed, her husband, said.

Nearby, Robin Maatouq, a 27-year-old tailor, was forced to sell his last belongings to find shelter.

"My shop was destroyed. I looked for a small room to rent, but they asked for US$1,800," he told TNA. "People here are selling their wives' jewellery, even their last pieces of furniture, just to survive. This war displaces us with bombs and then crushes us with hunger."

Journalists, who carry the responsibility of documenting Gaza's suffering, are not spared. Khader, a Palestinian cameraman from Gaza City, lost his home to Israeli shelling.

When he sought to rent a house in Khan Younis, landlords turned him away, fearing Israeli attacks on journalists.

"I felt hunted, even in displacement," he said. "No one wanted me nearby. I left my family in a tent, while I slept in Nasser Hospital's corridors. I report during the day and rest on hospital floors at night."

"My children ask why I don't stay with them. But I cannot put them at risk. Being a journalist here means losing your home, your work, and even the right to hold your children," he said.

City of ghosts

Gaza City is no longer the city its people knew before October's war. For weeks, the Israeli army has pummelled its neighbourhoods from the air, sea, and land, flattening entire blocks and reducing once-vibrant streets to silence.

Leaflets and loudspeakers warn civilians that the city is now a "dangerous combat zone," urging them to head south along Rashid Coastal Street toward so-called "humanitarian areas."

Behind this cold military language lies the raw reality of mass exodus. Convoys of displaced people clog the roads: women dragging exhausted children, men balancing bags of flour on their backs, elderly people leaning on canes, pausing every few meters to breathe.

Families pile onto carts pulled by weak donkeys or pay whatever they can to secure a spot on a truck heading south.

Salah Asaleya, a young man in his thirties from Shati refugee camp, recalled his ordeal after finally reaching Deir al-Balah: "Displacement wasn't a choice; it was survival. I paid hundreds of dollars to reach here with my family."

"I found a barren plot to pitch a tent, but there's no water, no electricity, no life. Gaza is not just a house or a street; it is our soul. We left it because the bombs made it hell, but leaving feels like death," he told TNA.

For the displaced, the suffering does not end with the journey. In many ways, it begins anew. Central Gaza and the south are already stretched beyond capacity.

Schools, mosques, and public squares are overflowing, and thousands of tents mushroom across barren land. Clean water is scarce, toilets are almost nonexistent, and medicine is running out.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that families walked for hours under fire, often with no destination in mind.

"They are walking into the unknown. Children are collapsing from exhaustion, mothers are fainting, and the elderly are left on roadsides," the UNRWA said in a press statement.

The Gaza Civil Defence called the exodus a "mass forced displacement," noting that those least able to move, the sick, the wounded, the elderly, have been effectively abandoned.

"It is a catastrophe beyond measure," Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson of the civil defence, said in a press statement.