Rafah

Palestinians walk among the ruins of their homes in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza, October 17, 2025. (Khalil Kahlout/Flash90)

What’s behind Israel’s new plan to divide Gaza in two

While Trump hails "peace," Israel is entrenching a new regime of fortified borders, proxy rule, and engineered despair — with expulsion still the end goal.

By Muhammad Shehada October 31, 2025

Armed and masked Palestinians secure trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entering Gaza through the Israeli Kerem Shalom Crossing, on Salah al-Din Road east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 19, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

How Israel is engineering Gaza’s social collapse

By empowering criminal gangs and weaponizing aid provision, Netanyahu seeks to fracture the Strip into rival fiefdoms — allowing only chaos to reign.

By Mahmoud Mushtaha June 12, 2025

An Israeli bulldozer demolishes a house in Rafah, April 2025.

‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction

While airstrikes account for mass casualties, bulldozers and explosives are flattening Gaza from the ground — what soldiers say is a systematic campaign to make the Strip unlivable, a joint investigation reveals.

By Meron Rapoport and Oren Ziv May 15, 2025

Latest

Palestinians mourn those killed in an Israeli airstrike, Nasser Hospital, Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, March 24, 2025. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

‘They’ll kill us all’: Gazans plead for intervention as Israeli attacks intensify

Israel’s army is pummeling Gaza with an intensity that parallels the deadliest phase of the war, displacing civilians en masse from Rafah and Gaza City.

By Ruwaida Amer and Ahmed Dremly April 7, 2025

An aerial view of destroyed residential buildings in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood, following the withdrawal of Israeli army in Rafah, January 19, 2025. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)

Gazans dreamed of returning to Rafah. The reality is a nightmare

Few have gone back to Gaza’s southern city, where Israeli forces on the border are still firing at civilians. Those who have barely recognize their own homes.

By Ruwaida Amer February 4, 2025

Palestinians are treated at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, prior to its closure, February 1, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

‘We’re all at risk of being targeted’: Doctors evacuate Rafah’s last hospitals

Almost no facilities remain to treat the wounded in Gaza's southernmost city, as doctors fear a repeat of Israel's attacks on hospitals across the Strip.

By Ruwaida Amer June 5, 2024

Marah Mahdi with her niece near her family's tent in Rafah. (Marah Mahdi/Instagram)

A Gaza journalist’s agonizing search for safety

From Gaza City to Rafah, Marah Mahdi and her family have been displaced 11 times since October. Yet surviving each Israeli attack brings little solace.

By Mohammed R. Mhawish and Asmaa Yassin June 4, 2024

Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 7, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

‘The scenes of the Nakba are repeating’: Rafah in panic as Israeli invasion begins

With Israeli forces entering Gaza’s southernmost city, Palestinians describe their hardships and fears in the Strip’s last vanishing refuge.

By Ruwaida Amer and Mahmoud Mushtaha May 8, 2024

Palestinians fleeing from the fighting in parts of Khan Younis to Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, January 26, 2024. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

I got out of Gaza. But I’m still trapped by the war

I left my family in Shuja’iya, crossed an Israeli army checkpoint, and spent weeks in a tent in Rafah in order to leave the Strip. The decision still haunts me.

By Mahmoud Mushtaha April 20, 2024

Palestinians at the site of Israeli airstrikes in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, February 12, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

With no safety in Rafah, Palestinians are fleeing back to Gaza’s decimated center

Escalating attacks, unlivable conditions in tents, and a looming Israeli invasion are forcing many Palestinians to abandon the Strip's last refuge.

By Ruwaida Amer and Ibtisam Mahdi March 14, 2024

Palestinians wait for a hot meal prepared by volunteers in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, January 26, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

‘My children are crying from hunger. This is a war of starvation’

With insufficient aid and skyrocketing prices across Gaza, Palestinians in the overcrowded city of Rafah are struggling to feed their families.

By Ruwaida Amer January 31, 2024

Tents as far as the eye can see in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, January 9, 2024. (Mohammed Zaanoun)

‘Tents everywhere’ as Rafah struggles to hold a million Palestinians

Displaced multiple times by the war, many in Gaza's southernmost city are living in makeshift shelters without sufficient food, water, or blankets.

By Mohammed Zaanoun January 15, 2024

Palestinians at a temporary camp set up for people who evacuated from their homes, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, December 4, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

In Gaza ‘safe zone,’ Palestinians are living out their nightmares

Israel ordered thousands to evacuate to the area of Al-Mawasi, where they are struggling to find food, water, and shelter amid the war and winter cold.

By Ruwaida Amer January 4, 2024