Investigation: The Israeli army has ordered people to evacuate 78% of the Gaza Strip since March

France 24

a day ago

"Of course I'm not safe here, but I'm being forced to remain,' Mohammad said to our team on May 22. Like tens of thousands of other people living in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Mohammed had three days earlier received an order from the Israeli Army to evacuate. They said his neighbourhood, Abasan al-Kabira, is 'dangerous'.
"Some chose to stay, like me, but the majority left or were displaced, fearing for their lives,' he said. Mohammad didn't want to leave, afraid that his 17-year-old autistic son, who 'has become very agitated since the start of the war', wouldn't be able to cope with the displacement.
"If I am staying home despite the evacuation orders, it is because life in the areas that are supposedly 'safe' is much more difficult than what we are experiencing currently and actually is more than we could endure,' he said.
But a few days after our conversation, Mohammad finally had to resign himself to leaving after the army ordered the complete evacuation of his neighbourhood and threatened to bomb the homes there. Now, he and his family are in Al-Mawasi, where they are living without tents or any kind of adequate shelter. They can't afford to buy a tent, which is now going for at least 2,000 shekels (around €500). Mohammad is waiting and hoping for a ceasefire. His son, who needs special treatment, remains particularly vulnerable.
32 evacuation orders published concerning 78% of the Gaza Strip
Since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, the majority of the two million Gazans, like Mohammad, have been forced to flee their homes by evacuation orders issued by the IDF.
The IDF issued 32 official evacuation orders between March 18 and May 29, which averages out to an order every two days. The IDF shares orders saying what areas are to be evacuated on its Telegram, Facebook and X accounts as well as publishing flyers.
One such order, written in Arabic and shared on the Telegram channel of the IDF's Arabic-language spokesperson on April 11 said, for example: 'The defence army launched a powerful offensive to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organisations. This is a dangerous combat zone. For your safety, you must immediately evacuate to the known shelters in Khan Younis. Staying in shelters, homes or tents puts your life and the lives of your family in danger.'
The FRANCE 24 Observers team mapped all of the zones under order. Some other sectors have also been evacuated after orders sent out by text or leaflets, but these evacuations were temporary and haven't been included in this mapping.
According to our analysis, more than 78 percent of the Gaza Strip has been affected by at least one evacuation order since fighting began again on March 18 and May 29, 2025.
Some of these orders cover wide swaths of land and have resulted in large-scale displacement of the population. The evacuation order issued on March 31, for example, included nearly all of the city of Rafah, a city in the south of the enclave. It affected an area of nearly 50 km², which represents 14 percent of the Gaza Strip. The evacuation order issued on May 19 affected an even larger territory – 80 km² around Khan Younis, which represents more than 20 percent of Gaza.
Some areas, like the area near the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, were subject to multiple, successive evacuation orders.
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A large buffer zone
Along with the evacuation orders, the IDF has also severely restricted the Gazan population's ability to move by establishing military zones, sometimes called 'buffer zones' or 'secure zones'. Gazans are banned from going into these areas, which run alongside the border with Israel as well as the border with Egypt.
The Israeli army 'will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria,' said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on April 16.
These buffer zones were described as 'death zones of enormous proportions', in a report published in April 2025 by the NGO Breaking the Silence, which gathered testimonies of Israeli soldiers.
'The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighbourhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions,' the report reads.
The 'buffer zone' designed on the IDF's official site represented more than 50 percent of Gazan territory, including most of the city of Rafah, by May 29.
The area that is considered an 'Israeli militarised zone' by OCHA, the UN's humanitarian wing, is even larger: by May 22, it covered more than 60 percent of the territory. It includes a large area around Netzarim, which the Israeli army described in a tweet from March 19 as a 'buffer zone between the north and the south of the strip'.
OCHA estimated on May 21 that 81 percent of the Gaza Strip was either under evacuation orders or under Israeli military control.
If you add the zones considered militarised by the United Nations to the zones under evacuation order, our analysis showed that more than 300 km2, or more than 82 percent of the Gaza Strip, is not accessible to the population.
Today, the two million Gazans are confined to an area that measures less than 65 km².
This is an area nearly as restricted as before the ceasefire. OCHA reported in August 2024 that 86 percent of the Gaza Strip had been placed under evacuation order by the Israeli army since October 2023.
600,000 people displaced by force since March 18
Nearly 600,000 Gazans were displaced by evacuation orders between March 18 and May 21, 2025, according to data from the UN's Site Management Cluster.
"It is important to remember that the entire population of Gaza has already been displaced once, sometimes four, five, six, eight times,' Claire Nicolet, who runs Gaza emergency operations for the French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), told our team.
Our team contacted the IDF, who said that their evacuation orders were to protect civilians.
"As part of its operational activity to defeat the Hamas capabilities, the IDF acts to warn the civilian population in order to allow it to distance themselves from areas of active hostilities, and therby mitigate the potential harm, in accordance with international law.'
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However, these orders, which contain no indication of the length or the possibility of returning, make humanitarians fear that civilians will be permanently prevented from returning to these areas.
'Since the hostilities began again on March 18, there is no going back for all of these zones under evacuation order,' said Nicolet of Medecins Sans Frontières.
Our team contacted OCHA. A spokesperson said that 'OCHA considers any Israeli displacement order to remain in effect until it is publicly rescinded by the Israeli authorities who issued them.'
'Civilians must be protected whether they leave or remain when displacement orders are issued,' the OCHA spokesperson added.
Hospitals in evacuation zones
NGOs have been working to help people still in evacuation zones, who are denied humanitarian aid.
"We are endeavouring to remain in areas that enable people in the so-called evacuation or forced displacement zones to access medical care,' said Caroline Bedos, an operations coordinator for the Middle East with French medical charity Medeçins du monde (MdM).
Nicolet, from Medecins Sans Frontières, said that it is terrible that some operating hospitals, like Nasser Hospital, are now in evacuation zones.
"If these hospitals are in evacuation zones, then that means that there are ever fewer places where the population can access medical care,' Nicolet said.
Most hospitals in Gaza are no longer providing care.
Evacuation orders that run counter to humanitarian law
As well as humanitarian consequences, the steps taken by the Israeli army may also raise legal questions, even if the army says that its actions abide by international law.
'These evacuation orders raise serious legal concerns,' said Shai Grunberg, the spokesperson for the Israeli legal organisation Gisha, which aims to protect freedom of movement for Palestinians. "Under international humanitarian law, evacuation orders are lawful when they're strictly necessary for civilian safety or imperative military reasons,' she added. "But in Gaza, Israel issued tens of evacuation orders that are not temporary, lack clear justification and offer no safe return for people, while allowing people to flee to areas with no shelter or infrastructure, which are themselves unsafe."
According to article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons, an occupying power can only call for civilians to evacuate 'if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demands'. But these evacuations can only be temporary, with the possibility for civilians to return safely as soon as hostilities are over. Moreover, articles 55 and 56 require the occupying power to guarantee the displaced people have access to food, medical care, hygiene and decent shelter.
'Even when you are in a zone that has not been evacuated, there is a risk to staying'
A number of organisations, including the UN agency that works with Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and French medical charity Medeçins du Monde, have spoken out about the absence of real safe zones since the start of the Israeli occupation, despite mass displacements of the population.
On the night of May 25, 20 people were killed when Israel bombed a refugee camp in Gaza City. Just a few days earlier, evacuation orders had told people in northern Gaza to go to this same zone.
An order dated May 21 – just four days before the deadly bombings – very clearly told people to go to the area that was later bombed.
In Al-Mawasi, for example, 10 people were killed by the Israeli Army during an attack on refugee tents on the evening of April 16.
Once again, an evacuation order issued a few days prior pointed the population towards this zone.
All in all, 11 out of 32 evacuation orders issued between March 18 and May 29 have sent the population towards this zone, located to the west of Khan Younis. Since May 2024, Israel had referred to this area as a 'humanitarian zone' – until recently. However, since the end of the ceasefire, the army, which never called it a "safe zone" and has already bombed it several times, no longer designates it as "humanitarian."
"Even when you are in a zone that has not been evacuated, there is a risk to staying,' says Nicolet of Doctors Without Borders. 'In fact, there isn't really anywhere left to live because it is all saturated. There is pretty much no place where you can set up a tent or even a piece of cloth. And we know that, sadly, many people don't even have a tent, just a few pieces of cloth or blankets. They improvise however they can to make some kind of shelter.'
'Depopulating areas and entrenching long term military control'
All of these factors have resulted in organisations like Medeçins sans Frontieres and the NGO Oxfam to denounce what they say is the IDF's campaign of 'ethnic cleansing'.
'The scale and nature of of these evacuations suggest broader goals to depopulate areas and to entrench long term military control,' said Grunberg from the Gisha organisation.
Medeçins sans Frontières also posted a statement on May 27, saying that Israel was using evacuation orders as a 'weapon of war in its ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza'.
The Israeli army's current plan for military operation, "Gideon's Chariots", includes the 'extensive evacuation of the entire Gazan population from combat zones, including from northern Gaza, to areas in southern Gaza, while creating separation between them and Hamas terrorists, in order to allow the IDF operational freedom of action,' as one senior Israeli defence official told several media outlets in early May.
More than 53,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to estimates by UNICEF. On May 29, the United States suggested a new ceasefire, which was accepted by Israel but rejected by Hamas. This plan included a 60-day truce, the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, as well as the opening of aid corridors to Gaza.