Overcrowded camps force Palestinians back to Gaza City danger

Satellite image shows densely packed tents at the humanitarian zone al-Mawasi area, designated by Israel as a humanitarian zone, where aid agencies say basic services are inadequate for the large number of people living there, in Khan Younis, amid Israel’s military offensive on Gaza City, September 9, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Conditions in overcrowded coastal encampments for displaced Palestinians in Gaza are so desperate that some people who fled Israel’s new offensive on famine-struck Gaza City in recent days are heading back towards the falling bombs, they told Reuters.

Those fleeing are mainly seeking shelter either in the area by the sea immediately west of Gaza City or in Mawasi, a sprawling tent camp along beaches and farmland in the south that Israel has designated a humanitarian zone, aid agencies said.

Many of them are arriving to find no space for shelter, few tents, inadequate water supply and restricted health care, according to over a dozen Palestinians who had made the difficult trip with their families and who, along with UNICEF and the Hamas-run Gaza government, spoke to Reuters for this story.

“I have been in the sun for two days looking for a place and could not find any. Now I had to take my belongings and go back to Gaza City,” said Mohammed al-Sherif, 35, who left the Sabra district of Gaza City along with his family and those of his two brothers on Monday after Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on the area warning all civilians to get out.

With many motor vehicles destroyed and little petrol, travel inside Gaza is slow and expensive. Sherif’s family loaded all their belongings on a donkey cart and went to Mawasi, where Reuters video showed them trudging through densely packed camps, but they have no tent and could find nowhere to stay, he said.

“This is not our situation only, but everyone’s. People come, don’t find a shelter or a place, then leave and go back to danger. We don’t know what to do,” he said.

Displaced Palestinians shelter in a tent camp in Mawasi area, designated by Israel as a humanitarian zone, where aid agencies say basic services are inadequate for the large number of people living there, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip September 10, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Barely any agricultural land is still available in Gaza where aid agencies have cited the lack of space to grow food as a significant contributor to widespread malnutrition.

Other images showed increases in tent cover from August 20-September 10 along the coast in Mawasi and at al-Shati camp near Gaza City.

It has said all civilians should leave the city and go to Mawasi, which it has designated a humanitarian zone.

Read: Israel orders Gaza evacuation as it prepares for a major attack^[1]

Israeli forces killed 11 people in strikes on various parts of Gaza City on Thursday and five in a strike on the al-Shati camp, according to medics and local health authorities. In August, a global hunger monitor said Gaza City was in famine.

Despite Israel’s call for the population to leave, the Hamas-run Gaza government estimates that 1.3 million of Gaza’s roughly 2 million total population remain in Gaza City and the north.

Displacement is accelerating. The CCCM, an inter-agency working group that includes UN bodies and other aid organisations, recorded 20,000 people fleeing Gaza City from August 31 to September 7. From September 7 to September 10 it recorded another 25,000 leaving the city, mostly for the south.

The UN humanitarian country team, a grouping of UN agencies working in Gaza, rejected Israel’s description of Mawasi as a humanitarian zone.

“It has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals,” the team said in a statement on Wednesday.

Military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani told Reuters there was space in the zone for people to shelter, tents, food, clean water and medical supplies.

Asked by Reuters how Israel planned to fit a million people into already overcrowded areas and provide for them, Shoshani said: “That’s what we’re working on. More tents, more food, more water and more medical centres in this area to make sure that people can come.”

Israel has conducted strikes inside areas it has designated safe or humanitarian zones throughout the war. Shoshani said it struck Hamas fighters wherever they emerge, including Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Mawasi last year, and that militants hide among civilians. Hamas denies using the civilian population and property for military purposes.

Displaced Palestinian man Mohammed al-Sherif sits atop his belongings as he rides a donkey cart to return to Gaza City after he did not find a place to shelter at Mawasi area, designated by Israel as a humanitarian zone, where aid agencies say basic services are inadequate for the large number of people living there, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip September 10, 2025. Photo: Reuters

No land no tent

People already in Mawasi say the crowding is so intense already that as more people arrive they fear conflict with those already established. “There is no place for them to live. People are fighting with each other,” said Abu Fadi Abu Ouda, sitting in a tent in Mawasi

At Wadi Gaza, in the centre of the tiny enclave, Reuters saw displaced Palestinians heading north towards Gaza City.

“We are returning back on foot. Some people go to their relatives or someone else who booked a spot for them. We don’t have any land, any tent, even the basic life necessities. I don’t even have water,” Ahmed Abu Deya, pushing a cart loaded with the family’s belongings.

Back in Gaza City, Aya Mohammad, 31, has a family of eight and lives in the Sabra neighbourhood in a house damaged by an airstrike early in the war. She and her family fled in 2023 but returned along with hundreds of thousands of others in January during a truce.

Satellite image shows tents at al-Shati camp, near Gaza City, ahead of Israel’s expected full-scale military offensive on Gaza City, August 23, 2025. Photo: Reuters

They plan to stay in the city as long as they can because they do not know where they can find shelter in the south and the family has members who are old or sick and would struggle to travel.

“I have been searching for a place to put a tent and I can’t find one. I asked people in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah and they told me they can’t find a space for me and my family,” she said.

Read more: US ‘accomplice’ in Qatar attack^[2]

Adding to the difficult decisions Gaza City families have to make is the high cost of moving south with all their belongings.

One displaced person, Abu Ahmed, put the cost of travelling at $600 and the price of a new tent at $1,200. The Norwegian Refugee Council northern Gaza office manager Salma Altaweel estimated the cost of travel at $700 and a tent at $1,000.

Those sums are beyond most people, leaving them with a choice between staying or taking with them only what they can carry, abandoning shelter tarpaulins, mattresses, cooking pots and clothes.

The United Nations and aid agencies say Israel in practice blocked deliveries of materials for shelter for nearly six months and despite the lifting of the restriction last month only a tricke of tents is coming in.

Satellite image shows tents, in what Israel designated as a humanitarian area, near Deir al Balah, ahead of Israel’s expected full-scale military offensive on Gaza City, August 20, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Israel’s military issued a media statement on Wednesday including pictures and maps of what it said were empty areas in Mawasi where people could pitch tents.

The maps, showing different areas to those in the satellite images reviewed by Reuters, were of land on the inland edges of the designated humanitarian zone, close to places where fighting may continue. The pictures it shared showed what appeared to be sandy ground with no sign of nearby infrastructure.

UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingrams, who was in Gaza this week, said there was very little space in Mawasi, where she had seen tents set up along the shoulder of roads. She said the inland areas there were where conditions were worst.

“A lot of the families who are coming down in this latest displacement, the available space is in that area where, for example, there might not be a water tank,” she said.

Satellite image shows tents, in what Israel designated as a humanitarian area, near Deir al Balah, amid Israel’s military offensive on Gaza City, September 8, 2025. Photo: Reuters

Raeda el-Far, making bread over an open fire while her small children sat nearby, said she had been displaced five times. Now, after a recent Israeli evacuation order, she and her family are in a tent in central Gaza, next to a rubbish dump covered in flies, where street dogs prowl at night, she said.

“End the war. It’s enough. We’re really exhausted,” said el-Far, the dump rising behind her. “There is no safety at all wherever you go.”

Germany on two state solution

Germany will support a United Nations resolution for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but does not believe the time has come to recognise a Palestinian state, a government spokesman told Reuters on Thursday.

“Germany will support such a resolution which simply describes the status quo in international law,” the spokesman said, adding that Berlin “has always advocated a two-state solution and is asking for that all the time.”

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“The chancellor just mentioned two days ago again that Germany does not see that the time has come for the recognition of the Palestinian state,” the spokesman added.

A two-state solution is the idea that the two sides could co-exist in peace alongside each other – a Palestinian state on territory Israel captured in a 1967 war, with the Gaza Strip and West Bank linked by a corridor through Israel.

Britain, France, Canada, Australia and Belgium have all said they will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly later this month, although London said it could hold back if Israel were to take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and commit to a long-term peace process.

The United States strongly opposes any move by its European allies to recognize Palestinian independence.

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US has told other countries that recognition of a Palestinian state will cause more problems.

Those who see recognition as a largely symbolic gesture point to the negligible presence on the ground and limited influence in the conflict of countries such as China, India, Russia and many Arab states that have recognised Palestinian independence for decades.

Israel’s war on Gaza

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 62,686 people and wounded 157,951, the Palestinian Health Ministry in the enclave says.

The latest deaths raise the total number of aid seekers who have been killed by Israeli fire since the establishment of the US- and Israel-backed GHF at the end of May to 2,095, with more than 15,431 wounded.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave. The proposed deal includes a pause in hostilities, increased humanitarian aid, and negotiations on the release of captives.

Israel began ramping up its attack on Gaza City late last month, saying it aimed to free remaining hostages held by Hamas from its October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war, the bloodiest bout of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.