To protect itself from Hamas
rockets and tunnels, Israel is forcing tens of thousands of people out
of their homes, turning their old neighborhoods into a no-man’s land.
BEIT
HANOUN, Gaza — This narrow strip of land that used to be called “the
Gaza Strip,” already one of the more densely populated places on earth,
is growing dramatically smaller. The Israeli military, relentlessly and
methodically, is driving people out of the three-kilometer (1.8 mile)
buffer zone it says it needs to protect against Hamas rockets and
tunnels. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, the buffer zone eats up about 44 percent of Gaza’s
territory.What that means on the ground is scenes of extraordinary devastation in places like the Al Shajaya district approaching Gaza’s eastern frontier, and Beit Hanoun in the north. These were crowded neighborhoods less than three weeks ago. Now they have been literally depopulated, the residents joining more than 160,000 internally displaced people in refuges and makeshift shelters. Apartment blocks are fields of rubble, and as I move through this hostile landscape the phrase that keeps ringing in my head is “scorched earth.”http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/as-israel-enforces-its-buffer-zone-gaza-shrinks-by-40-per-cent.html
