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Palestinians in Gaza face impossible choice: Stay home under airstrikes, or flee under airstrikes?
Palestinians are struggling to figure out what to do in the face of Israel's demand that they leave northern Gaza ahead of an expected Israeli invasion
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Watching the pulverized alleys of Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza empty of people, Naji Jamal was frozen with indecision.
Should he heed the Israeli army's demand that all Palestinians evacuate and make the risky trip to Gaza's south, where his only certainty was homelessness? Or should he stay at his multistory building — within what the Israeli army has now designated a target zone — ahead of a likely Israeli ground invasion?
“It's an existential question, but there is no answer,” Jamal, a 34-year-old health clinic worker, said. “There is no safe haven, there is no place that is not being shelled and besieged, there is no place to go.”
In an unprecedented order to civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City, the Israeli military gave Jamal — and 1.1 million other Palestinians — 24 hours to make up their minds. It was the sixth day of Israeli bombing prompted by Hamas’ brutal attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and stunned the country.