September 11, 2025, Gaza City, Gaza
The Israeli military has issued an unprecedented order for the complete evacuation of Gaza City, marking the first time such a sweeping directive has been given for the entire urban area since the current conflict began. The order, delivered through airdropped leaflets and online messages, urges the city’s one million residents to move south immediately, warning that a large-scale offensive is imminent and that staying behind would be “extremely dangerous.”
This latest order comes as the humanitarian situation in Gaza City has reached a critical point. Aid groups and the United Nations have declared that famine has been confirmed in the city, with a high number of malnutrition-related deaths among children. Despite the dire warnings, many residents are choosing to stay, citing a lack of safe places to go, the high cost of transportation, and the exhaustion of being repeatedly displaced. The designated “humanitarian zone” of Al-Mawasi in the south is already severely overcrowded and lacks the infrastructure to support a renewed influx of displaced civilians.
The directive has been widely condemned by international aid organizations, including Amnesty International, as unlawful and inhumane. They argue that the order for mass displacement is part of a pattern of deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to cause suffering and that the areas people are being told to flee to are not, in fact, safe. As the Israeli military intensifies its strikes on the city, with dozens killed in the last 24 hours, the fate of the city’s population hangs in the balance.