When displacement becomes a silent war: how human dignity is being eroded in Gaza

In contemporary armed conflicts, violence can no longer be understood solely through the immediacy of bombardment or the scale of visible destruction. Increasingly, war has evolved into a prolonged process reshaping human life itself. Within this transformation, displacement is no longer merely a humanitarian consequence of conflict; it has become one of its most powerful instruments. Its impact extends far beyond the physical movement of populations, eroding psychological stability, social cohesion and the temporal structure of everyday life.

Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in Gaza, where displacement has ceased to function as a temporary emergency and instead has become a permanent mechanism for the production of instability.

Repeated displacement and the collapse of stability

According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people – approximately 90% of the population of the Gaza Strip – have been forcibly displaced during the war. Many families have experienced repeated displacement, with some displaced more than 10 times.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirms that this pattern of movement is no longer confined to specific areas, but has become widespread across an increasingly shrinking geographical area, effectively eroding the very notion of a ‘safe area’.

Displacement is transformed from a movement between danger and safety into a circular movement between varying intensities of danger, where instability is continuously reproduced rather than resolved.

The management of societal exhaustion as an indirect logic of war

Within the literature on asymmetric warfare, scholars increasingly refer to the management of societal exhaustion as a form of indirect warfare aimed at making ordinary civilian life unsustainable through the cumulative pressure imposed on communities.

In Gaza, this logic manifests through three interconnected processes: the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, including homes, water networks, healthcare systems and electricity supplies; the systematic reduction of communities’ ability to recover or rebuild due to ongoing destruction and severe restrictions; and repeated forced relocation of civilians through evacuation orders.

Reports by OCHA indicate that 86% of Gaza’s territory has been subject to evacuation orders or designated as military zones.

The collapse of shelter and the transformation of protection into risk

Shelter, which should function as the primary line of protection during conflict, has itself become a site of extreme vulnerability in Gaza, with severe overcrowding, undignified living conditions and poor water and sanitation exacerbating disease risks.

Under such conditions, shelter ceases to function as a space of protection and instead becomes an environment that generates additional layers of risk. In this grim reality, mere survival is no longer a form of safety, but rather a prolonged struggle endured at the expense of one’s health, dignity and the basic necessities of human existence.

Psychological attrition and the erosion of human temporality

Alongside material destruction is a deeper and less visible form of violence: psychological and social attrition produced through repeated displacement. This continuous instability leads to the erosion of human temporality, trapping individuals in an endless, exhausting present focused solely on immediate survival, and stripping them of the ability to plan for, or even imagine, a future.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has emphasised that displacement places significant psychological and social stress on individuals, families, and communities. This can contribute to emotional suffering, disruption of social networks and the erosion of social support systems and a sense of belonging.

For many displaced families in Gaza, daily life is no longer organised around work, education or social continuity, but rather around the search for temporary safety, water, food and shelter. Ordinary routines that once gave meaning and stability to life have gradually disappeared under the pressure of repeated displacement. Uncertainty has become a permanent condition, and survival has been reduced to the management of immediate needs rather than the possibility of rebuilding a normal life.

As this reality persists, its impact extends beyond the material dimension of safety, altering how human beings experience time itself. The future is no longer a path one can actively plan for; instead, it turns into a painful state of suspension and endless uncertainty. This constant instability shatters the ability to programme long-term goals, leaving individuals unable to maintain any sense of continuity in their daily lives.

The regional expansion of attritional displacement

This pattern of repeated forced displacement is not confined to Gaza. Similar dynamics have emerged, to varying degrees, in other regional conflict zones, including southern Lebanon, where the UN has documented widespread civilian casualties, mass displacement and extensive destruction.

This reflects a broader transformation in contemporary warfare, where displacement increasingly functions not merely as collateral damage, but as a sustained mechanism of pressure exerted upon civilian populations living under prolonged conflict conditions.

When survival itself becomes a form of attrition

What Gaza reveals is a profound transformation in the nature of modern warfare. Violence is no longer measured solely by destruction or casualty figures, but by the extent to which entire societies are forced to exist under the collapse of the fundamental conditions necessary for ordinary life.

Within this model, displacement becomes a mechanism for restructuring life under permanent pressure. What is lost is not only place, but also stability, belonging and the human ability to imagine a recoverable future.

Rabah Jamal Al-Ashqar is a Palestinian researcher and humanitarian consultant based in the Gaza Strip. He possesses deep field and academic expertise in deconstructing and analysing protracted crises, as well as designing emergency response strategies in areas of high-intensity conflict.