Since October 2023, Israel’s infrastructure of displacement in Gaza has consisted of so-called ‘warnings’, ‘evacuation orders’, ‘safe corridors’, and ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian zones’. FA’s research has revealed these to be little more than performative displays of compliance with long-standing humanitarian and legal norms. In practice, these mechanisms of forced displacement sow terror among the population of Gaza, as unreliable and often uncontradictory orders issued by the Israeli military leave civilians with impossible choices, and surrounded by danger, even after the ‘ceasefire’ of October 2025.
In this narrative study, Forensic Architecture documents the story of Nadia* and Ahmad*, a young couple from Beit Hanoun whose experiences tell an individual story of how this ‘humanitarian violence’ unfolds.
Nadia, Ahmad and their families were first displaced from their homes on the night of 7 October 2023, as Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza began.
At every turn, they followed the instructions given to them by the Israeli military, through evacuation orders, online announcements, and airdropped leaflets. They were displaced over a dozen times, seeking out shelter in a shrinking number of ostensibly ‘protected’ spaces, including hospitals, schools, and religious buildings. Instead, like millions of others, Nadia and Ahmad found themselves forcibly relocated to areas under active military assault, or otherwise lacking the basic provisions for survival, with barely a moment to grieve for the loss of their homes and lives, under constant and enduring threat of violence.
Their experiences are a microcosm of the broader patterns outlined in our Cartography of Genocide platform, which maps Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since 7 October 2023, revealing a pattern of genocidal conduct, including where seemingly disconnected practices together evidence a clear intent to destroy the conditions necessary to support and sustain life in Gaza. For example, at the same time as Israel’s ‘evacuation orders’ pushed people into overcrowded areas where water sources had been contaminated and local agricultural land razed, aid infrastructure was also destroyed and restricted, limiting the capacity of international humanitarian actors to mitigate the loss of local food sources. Meanwhile, the destruction of medical infrastructure drastically curtailed the capacity of Palestinian civil society to ameliorate the effects of the resulting ‘engineered famine’.
The experiences of Nadia and Ahmad are consistent with these intersecting patterns of violence, and the inhumane conditions created by them.
During their prolonged displacement, Nadia and Ahmad’s spent three days, from 28 to 30 January 2024, in a classroom at al-Azhar University in Gaza City, where they and their families were imprisoned, and individuals among them were tortured, humiliated, and even physically mutilated by Israeli forces.
The families were grouped together with dozens of others in the university. Men, women, and children were separated; the men were searched, beaten, and tortured, while the women and children were detained nearby, within earshot of the sounds of torture.
During days of torture and abuse, an Israeli soldier carved a Star of David into Ahmad’s back with a knife. Another soldier carved a smiley face into Nadia’s father’s neck.
After three days, Israeli soldiers announced that the women and children were to be displaced south, and the men were to remain.
Unwilling to leave her husband behind, in a remarkable display of strength, Nadia bravely fought and pleaded with the Israeli soldiers to save him, knowing if she left, she was unlikely to see him again. She ultimately succeeded in securing Ahmad’s release, as well as that of several other men in her family. Together they fled to the south, where they took temporary shelter in a school building in al-Nuseirat.
The Israeli military has a record of marking Palestinian property and lands with the Jewish Star of David, as a means of claiming ownership and supremacy. The atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers against Nadia and Ahmad’s families at al-Azhar University echo the ‘branding’ practices of slave owners in colonial north America and elsewhere around the world**, as a similar attempt to dominate and humiliate their victims.
* All individuals have been anonymised.
** See, for example, The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations by Mary Ellen Snodgrass (M.E. Sharpe Publishers, 2008).