The Last Refuge of Gaza’s Displaced Turn into Temporary Graves

Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
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The Last Refuge of Gaza’s Displaced Turn into Temporary Graves

Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)

Israeli forces have turned schools - which the displaced used as their last refuge - into mass graves, after systematically targeting many of them in the past few weeks, causing widespread destruction and numerous casualties.

The Israeli occupation forces are committing massacres inside schools, employing a new strategy that goes beyond targeting individual classrooms or side rooms. They are deliberately destroying large sections of these schools to keep them out of service and prevent the displaced from returning after significant damage.

On Saturday, Israel bombed Al-Tabaeen private school, which shelters about 1,800 displaced people, mostly from the destroyed Shujaiya neighborhood. Those had been forced to flee to the school a few days earlier after the occupation planes had destroyed two other schools.

Nermin Abed, who lost her husband Abdullah Al-Arair, among about 100 Palestinians who died in the attack, said that she could not believe that she saw her husband for the last time just moments before he left the classroom, where they were staying, to perform the dawn prayer inside a small prayer hall on the ground floor of the school.

Abed mourned her husband with tears, and collapsed several times when she was unable to accompany him to be buried, along with several others, in a temporary graveyard near the Shujaiya neighborhood.

Ahmed Abed, Nermin’s brother, told Asharq Al-Awsat that they arrived at Al-Tabaeen School after miraculously escaping Dalal Al-Maghribi School, which was bombed earlier this month.

“There is nowhere else to go. Every place in Gaza is a target,” he said.

In the Gaza Strip, government schools, those affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and private schools, have all been converted into shelters. Since the beginning of the war, 175 of these centers have been bombed, including 154 schools, resulting in the death of over 1,150 Palestinians, according to statistics from the Gaza government media office.

UNRWA confirmed that 190 of its buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely or partially destroyed, while two-thirds of its schools, which included displaced persons, saw the same fate.

Mohammad al-Jaabari, one of the survivors of the massacre who has lost at least 11 of his cousins, finds no place to shelter except these schools. He told Asharq al-Awsat: “This massacre was not and will not be the last, but give me a safe place to go to. They are targeting all schools in the north.”

The occupation has targeted seven schools housing displaced people since the beginning of this August, all in different areas of Gaza City, leaving at least 177 victims and dozens of injured.

Israel claims that it is targeting shelter centers, especially schools, under the pretext that they are used by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements to carry out attacks. However, numerous accounts backed by photos and videos reveal that many casualties are among women and children.

Hamas has denied the presence of gunmen in Al-Tabaeen School, and stated that there were strict instructions to ensure no fighters were among civilians.



Defending Migrants Was a Priority for Pope Francis from the Earliest Days of His Papacy 

Pope Francis poses for selfie photos with migrants at a regional migrant center in Bologna, Italy, Oct. 1, 2017. (AP)
Pope Francis poses for selfie photos with migrants at a regional migrant center in Bologna, Italy, Oct. 1, 2017. (AP)
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Defending Migrants Was a Priority for Pope Francis from the Earliest Days of His Papacy 

Pope Francis poses for selfie photos with migrants at a regional migrant center in Bologna, Italy, Oct. 1, 2017. (AP)
Pope Francis poses for selfie photos with migrants at a regional migrant center in Bologna, Italy, Oct. 1, 2017. (AP)

Advocating for migrants was one of Pope Francis' top priorities. His papacy saw a refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, skyrocketing numbers of migrants in the Americas, and declining public empathy that led to increasingly restrictive policies around the world.

Francis repeatedly took up the plight of migrants — from bringing asylum-seekers to the Vatican with him from overcrowded island camps to denouncing border initiatives of US President Donald Trump. On the day before his death, Francis briefly met with Vice President JD Vance, with whom he had tangled long-distance over deportation plans.

Some memorable moments when Francis spoke out to defend migrants:

July 8, 2013, Lampedusa, Italy

For his first pastoral visit outside Rome following his election, Francis traveled to the Italian island of Lampedusa — a speck in the Mediterranean whose proximity to North Africa put it on the front line of many smuggling routes and deadly shipwrecks.

Meeting migrants who had been in Libya, he decried their suffering and denounced the “globalization of indifference” that met those who risked their lives trying to reach Europe.

A decade later, in a September 2023 visit to the multicultural French port of Marseille, Francis again blasted the “fanaticism of indifference” toward migrants as European policymakers doubled down on borders amid the rise of the anti-immigration far-right.

April 16, 2016, Lesbos, Greece

Francis traveled to the Greek island of Lesbos at the height of a refugee crisis in which hundreds of thousands of people arrived after fleeing civil war in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia.

He brought three Muslim families to Italy on the papal plane. Rescuing those 12 Syrians from an overwhelmed island camp was “a drop of water in the sea. But after this drop, the sea will never be the same,” Francis said.

During his hospitalization in early 2025, one of those families that settled in Rome said Francis didn't just change their lives.

“He wanted to begin a global dialogue to let world leaders know that even an undocumented migrant is not something to fear,” said Hasan Zaheda.

His wife, Nour Essa, added: “He fought to broadcast migrant voices, to explain that migrants in the end are just human beings who have suffered in wars.”

The news of Francis' death shocked the family and they mourned “with the whole of humanity,” Zaheda said.

In December 2021, Francis again had a dozen asylum-seekers brought to Italy, this time following his visit to Cyprus.

Feb. 17, 2016, at the US-Mexico border

Celebrating a Mass near the US border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, that was beamed live to neighboring El Paso, Texas, Francis prayed for “open hearts” when faced with the “human tragedy that is forced migration.”

Answering a reporter’s question while flying back to Rome, Francis said a person who advocates building walls is “not Christian.” Trump, at the time a presidential candidate, was campaigning to do just that, and responded that it was “disgraceful” to question a person’s faith. He criticized the pope for not understanding “the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico.”

Oct. 24, 2021, Vatican City

As pressures surged in Italy and elsewhere in Europe to crack down on illegal migration, Francis made an impassioned plea to end the practice of returning those people rescued at sea to Libya and other unsafe countries where they suffer “inhumane violence.”

He called detention facilities in Libya “true concentration camps.” From there, thousands of migrants are taken by traffickers on often unseaworthy vessels. The Mediterranean Sea has become the world’s largest migrant grave with more than 30,000 deaths since 2014, when the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project began counting.

Feb. 12, 2025, Vatican City

After Trump returned to the White House in part by riding a wave of public anger at illegal immigration, Francis assailed US plans for mass deportations, calling them “a disgrace.”

With Trump making a flurry of policy changes cracking down on immigration practices, Francis wrote to US bishops and warned that deportations “will end badly.”

“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women,” he wrote.

US border czar Tom Homan immediately pushed back, noting the Vatican is a city-state surrounded by walls and that Francis should leave border enforcement to his office.

When Vance visited over Easter weekend, he first met with the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Afterward, the Holy See reaffirmed cordial relations and common interests, but noted “an exchange of opinions” over current international conflicts, migrants and prisoners.