"We will not leave Gaza City: we have nowhere to go."

BarcelonaAware that there is no safe place in the entire Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have remained in Gaza City, amidst the Israeli army's offensive to conquer the city"We have to stay here because the people need us," unionist Fayez Elemare, who has been displaced to the city's beach, which has become a vast refugee camp, explains to ARA in a WhatsApp message. The tent where he lives with his children and grandchildren is by the sea and was hit by shrapnel from the explosions on Tuesday. "Luckily, we're all fine," he says. Communication is intermittent due to Israeli blockades, and sometimes it takes days to receive replies.

Israel has declared 86% of Gaza, home to 700,000 people, a combat zone and has ordered Palestinians to leave for the southern area of Al Mawasi, which only occupies the remaining 14%, where it is materially impossible to house the entire population and which has also been.

Israeli tanks are advancing on Gaza City, covered by intense aerial fire from fighter jets and drones, warns Sobhi Abu Warda, a 22-year-old electronic engineering student. "The bombing hasn't stopped for a minute. They're attacking the high-rise buildings, the displaced persons camps... right here in front of the house where I live, they've dropped incendiary bombs from drones on Al Rantisi Hospital." He says that many people are trying to sell the few belongings they have left and can't carry, even cutting up wooden furniture to sell as firewood, to raise money to move south, as directed by the leaflets dropped by the Israeli air force. "We're facing hell itself. This is ethnic cleansing and genocide before the eyes of the whole world," says Abu Warda. In addition to the bombs, hunger continues to worsen, caused by the Israeli blockade of food and basic goods and by the destruction of markets and businesses.

But not everyone is fit to leave. There are sick, elderly, and young children who cannot walk 15 kilometers under shelling and hide from snipers to reach the south, which is also unsafe and has no space to pitch a tent. Palestinians face the impossible choice of fleeing to displaced persons camps where only hunger and bombs await them, or staying in the city, where the Israeli army, as the UN noted on Friday, is destroying life as much as possible. In the tent where the trade unionist's family is staying—where they had to flee after the Israeli army bombed their home in the north of the Strip—they have at least been able to install a water tank for washing, some jerry cans of drinking water, a small kitchen, and they have a large tent in which they have set up three smaller ones, one for a girl. Being so close to the sea, they say the air is cleaner. The cold will soon arrive, but in Gaza, no one thinks about the future because they must focus on trying to survive another day. If the next bomb falls any closer, they'll be left with nothing. Last week, they considered packing up and leaving for the umpteenth time, but they couldn't find transportation.

3000 euros for fleeing in a truck

In the midst of the Israeli genocidal offensive, moving is very expensive. A truck ride that can carry the entire family, mattresses, blankets, warm and house clothes, jerry cans, and food supplies costs about $3,000. A van, $1,500. A tuk-tuk or small car, $500. "Under the constant bombardment of the occupation and the evacuation orders to the south, people are fleeing, loaded and exhausted, dragging whatever they can. Some carry mattresses and blankets on bicycles and wheelbarrows, others carry bags and backpacks." Elemare. She experienced terrifying situations when the Israeli army devastated the northern part of the Strip, the hardest hit area in these two years, but she confesses that she shudders at what she sees these days: "People fleeing death under the bombs, their eyes full of misery and suffering, and with all their hope and desire." This Saturday, a video was released documenting an Israeli attack on one of the trucks loaded to the top, where a family was trying to reach the supposedly safe area.

Hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in Gaza City. So are the engineering student and his family. "We're not going to leave because we have nowhere else to go. We'll have to sleep on the streets because they bombed the house where we were. On Thursday, we saw bulldozers and tanks of the occupying army advancing toward the city center. But more than the tanks, we're scared of the drones—here in Gaza, we call them cabs. They carry them overhead, carrying our drones at night without being seen, and they drop them on areas where civilians gather, on inhabited houses, and on anything that moves in the streets," Abu Warda notes. He goes on to describe in great detail the old tanks loaded with bombs that the Israeli army moves by remote control to detonate in the city without risking its soldiers.

The union leader doesn't budge. "We are human and we are afraid when we see body parts on the street. When we see a house being bombed next door and we have to pull the bodies of boys, women, children, or the elderly from the rubble. We are also depressed by the complicit international positions of Israel and the United States, including all the Arab countries. The destruction will not be able to end the existence of the Palestinians or rob us of our right to freedom and independence.

This Saturday, Israeli tanks continued to advance on Gaza, while the air force, according to Tel Aviv, launched around 100 airstrikes. The Israeli army bombed the Al-Mutasimo school west of Gaza City, where hundreds of refugees lived. Among the victims of the day's attacks were the family of Mohamed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in the center of the city, where the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law arrived. "Anything can happen now, that we receive the dead or wounded bodies of our loved ones," he said. the doctor told AFP.