TEL AVIV, Israel — As Israel’s full-scale assault in Gaza City began last month, Khitam Ayyad fled from her home there barefoot and without her possessions, heading to an area in southern Gaza that the Israeli military had designated as a “humanitarian zone.”
The military said that tents, food and medical care would be provided to those fleeing the fighting in the north.
But when Ayyad reached the southern city of Khan Younis, one of the humanitarian areas, she said she found it overcrowded with desperate people who were being offered little help.
“We are exposed to the sun and the heat,” she said. There was no space for her to build a shelter, she added, and “no proper food or water.”
The Israeli military has said that its ground assault to take control of Gaza City, which began Sept. 16, is an effort to rout one of the last remaining Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip.
Before the operation, the military said the humanitarian infrastructure in southern Gaza was prepared for “the expected population volume moving from northern Gaza.”
This week, the military said 780,000 people had left Gaza City since an evacuation order was issued Sept. 9.
The huge influx of Palestinians into the south has further strained humanitarian services that aid groups say were not sufficient even before the arrival of thousands more people.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ humanitarian office who is working in a designated humanitarian zone, said there were “hundreds of people just sitting on the side of the road looking shell-shocked, without anything.”
On Monday, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel backed a proposal to end the war, which was ignited by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The plan stated that “full aid” would be sent “immediately” to Gaza once the plan went into effect, but it remained unclear if Hamas would accept the deal.
The Israeli military agency that coordinates aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, reiterated that the humanitarian facilities in the south were prepared for the new arrivals. “Accordingly, the transfer of food, medical equipment and shelter supplies has been increased,” COGAT said in a statement on Sept. 25. “Steps have been taken in the fields of water and medical response in the southern Gaza Strip.”
But two weeks into the offensive, there appeared to be little sign of that infrastructure, a visit by a New York Times photographer to the humanitarian zone showed and Palestinians and aid groups said in interviews. They said the facilities there were far from sufficient.
“The hospitals are completely overflowing,” Cherevko said. “The water production is at some of the lowest levels that we’ve ever seen. There’s all kinds of diseases.”
Since the ground offensive in Gaza City began, aid agencies say, efforts to alleviate a worsening humanitarian crisis across Gaza have been plunged into chaos.
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