Extract from ABC News
Evacuation orders issued to Gaza residents during the ongoing Israeli assault on the heavily populated Palestinian enclave have been unclear and contradictory, an ABC News analysis has found.
Shortly after a temporary ceasefire ended on December 1, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a map, cutting up the tiny strip into 621 blocks.
It said this was to enable residents to "orient themselves" and evacuate from targeted areas when necessary.
"Anyone who sees the block number in which he lives or is near must track and follow the instructions of the IDF through various media outlets and obey them," said an IDF social media post. "It is a safe way to preserve your safety, your lives, and the lives of your families."
However, NGOs and human rights organisations said that inconsistencies in the maps, along with frequently changing and contradictory instructions, were causing chaos on the ground.
"I cannot overstate the fear, panic & confusion that these Israeli maps are causing civilians in #Gaza, including my own staff," Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, posted on X.
"People cannot run from place to place to try to escape Israel's bombs, nor does international law expect them to."
Grid system introduced despite UN concerns
In the first phase of the war in Gaza, Israeli instructions to residents were mostly clear: leave the northern half of the besieged strip and go south of Wadi Gaza.
Almost a million residents were displaced from Gaza City, according to the United Nations (UN), with almost 1.9 million people — nearly 85 per cent of the population — being internally displaced since the start of the conflict.
The first warning came on December 1 in the form of social media posts in Arabic on some of the IDF's main accounts.
Weeks before this new system was announced, the UN had rejected the idea of "safe zones" when they did not have the agreement of all parties involved.
"Under the prevalent conditions, proposals to unilaterally create "safe zones" in Gaza risk creating harm for civilians, including large-scale loss of life, and must be rejected," it said in a statement.
It warned that it "may constitute a breach of international humanitarian and human rights law".
Over a dozen maps published up to December 15, the combined area flagged for evacuation covered almost 30 per cent of the Strip's entire area, excluding the rest of the evacuated swaths in the north.
Contradictory instructions
Less than 24 hours after the first warning to evacuate a large area in the south, Israel's military posted another map that contradicted the earlier instructions.
It ordered residents from several neighbourhoods in the centre of Khan Younis to leave in three directions — but one led back into an area that had been marked as dangerous the previous day.
The original post from the IDF had several issues and would go on to be corrected twice.
It initially mislabelled the top two "safe areas" and had to swap the names around many hours later. The next day it reposted the same warning area with each arrow extended further south without taking down the erroneous posts.
This left already displaced Palestinians having to move again, hours after following previous Israeli instructions, some of whom vented in the comment sections of the warning posts.
"You said go to the south, and we went to Khan Younis, where should we go now, we want to save our children," commented a Gaza resident on one of the IDF social media posts.
The December 2 warning was also issued with another map circling a smaller area which overlapped the larger one.
One man had to resort to commenting on Facebook to confirm whether his block number was to be evacuated — as it was included in one but not the other.
"Is block 53 included … Please reply," he wrote.
But no public response came.
Several other posts also had comments asking for clarification as residents struggled to interpret the instructions needed to remain safe.
Confusing maps
The confusion was fuelled by further inconsistencies in how the evacuation areas were communicated.
The block numbers flagged for evacuation were sometimes either only highlighted on the map without being included in the warning text, or vice versa.
This meant relying on the low-resolution maps posted on social media directly — which sometimes had outlines running through the middle of blocks rather than cleanly along grid lines — to identify the danger areas.
Reading the low-resolution maps was made even more difficult because block numbers were omitted when they did not fit on the map, while others were covered by arrows and other map elements.
The arrows indicating where to evacuate pointed in a general direction and often not accurately towards the named neighbourhood from the accompanying post.
After the initial flood of warnings being published daily, there was an unexplained lull that lasted four days, during which a different style of map showing a single evacuation route was posted instead.
The next warning — that was not a repeated map — came on December 9.
It highlighted block 103 on the map — where the number was not visible — but did not specify it in the text instructions.
This again left someone with no recourse but to ask the IDF Facebook page: "Is block 103 included?"
These errors contrast with the technological sophistication often touted by Israel's military, which reportedly uses artificial intelligence to identify targets.
The IDF did not respond to the ABC's request for comment on these inconsistencies.
Difficulties accessing online-only information
This new system was announced by the IDF via social media and press releases, and by dropping leaflets on eastern areas of the main southern city, Khan Younis.
"What civilians should do to stay safe is listen to the instructions that are coming out from our Twitter accounts, from our website, and also to look at the leaflets that are landing in their areas," IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht told reporters in the days that followed.
The warning leaflets included QR codes and directed people to check for instructions online.
Printed in red at the bottom was an apparent disclaimer: "Those who warn are excused" — a widely used Arabic proverb that means to absolve those who warn of the blame of what will happen to those who are warned.
But with little access to electricity and much of the Gazan telecommunication infrastructure experiencing interruptions, many residents were unable to access online communications.
ABC News repeatedly lost connection with a person in Khan Younis while attempting to discuss their experiences interpreting the maps.
Humanitarian organisations critical
Human Rights Watch's Andrew Stroehlein said that the IDF's approach to protecting civilians was "ignoring reality".
"There is no safe place to flee to. It's not like the Israeli military is promising not to bomb certain places," Mr Stroehlein said.
"They are sending people to smaller and ever more crowded areas without any guarantees of protection.
"No military force in any conflict can just make an announcement and then bomb an area with no regard for civilians there – no matter how many warnings it gives and no matter in what form, QR codes or otherwise."
The situation, according to several humanitarian organisations, was insufficient to protect civilian lives.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder posted on social media: "Expecting hundreds of thousands of people to relocate again and again, in the middle of a war with no pause in fighting, is simply unworkable."
He also criticised the humanitarian zones nominated by Israel for being inadequate to shelter the number of displaced civilians.
Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Israel's prime minister, told the BBC he does not "believe that nowhere is safe".
"We've designated safer zones for people to go to," he said.
"If you believe the Hamas propaganda, we're just hitting innocent buildings, right? But if we're hitting a structure, it's because there's Hamas either in or under the structure."
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 18,787 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far.
"About 70 per cent are said to be women and children, and about 50,589 were reportedly injured. Many people are missing, presumably buried under the rubble, waiting for rescue or recovery," it said in its daily report based on figures from the Gaza health ministry.
1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed by Hamas on October 7 when the conflict began.
OCHA also estimates that more than 60 per cent of Gaza's housing units, 352 education facilities, 11 bakeries, and 20 WASH (water, sanitation, health care, waste management) facilities were damaged or destroyed, with 22 hospitals and 52 health care centres out of service.
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