After being expelled from Jabalia in Gaza under intense bombardment and after hours of interrogation, Israeli The soldiers handed Samir* a glowing stick.

He was then forced to flee south and received a simple instruction: release the light and you will be bombed.

It is a new practice of Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip to mark forcibly displaced people Palestinianseyewitnesses told Middle East Eye.

The glow sticks, originally intended for emergency signaling or visibility in the dark, are being used to indicate which group of Palestinians have been interrogated, cleared and are following forced displacement orders from northern Gaza.

But legal experts warn that this leaves people without the cudgel vulnerable to Israeli attacks, as they could be seen as potential targets.

Samir, 42, is one of thousands of people who have been forced to leave northern Gaza in recent weeks, since Israeli troops laid siege to the area and launched a new attack there.

Human rights groups have expressed fears that the offensive is part of a plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza of Palestinians and turn it into a “closed military zone.”

Forced to leave Jabalia to save his injured friend in a wheelchair, Samir fled the area last month with a group of women before encountering Israeli troops along the way.

“They told us, ‘Okay, walk and carry the light with you and don’t throw it. “Leave it and we will bomb you.”

– Samir, resident of northern Gaza.

During the men’s interrogation, the soldiers told Samir to head south and leave his friend, a request he refused to comply with.

His friend was beaten shortly after and when Samir tried to defend him, he was also beaten, he said.

One of the soldiers then reminded Samir that he had previously been detained while in Al Awda hospital in December, and was then told to head south.

He warned him that if he was captured a third time in northern Gaza, he would be arrested.

“They threatened me with imprisonment simply for being in the north, although they recognized that I had nothing to do with anything,” Samir told MEE.

After long hours of waiting, Samir was released around 11pm with his friend and five other men and ordered to head south.

“It was dark and the road was very bumpy because of the debris everywhere,” he recalled.

“I had great difficulty pushing my friend in the wheelchair.”

When the group reached the civil administration area, Israeli soldiers, speaking over loudspeakers, told them to stop and explain where they were coming from and why they were late.

“We told them that the army was holding us,” Samir said.

“They told us: ‘Okay, walk and carry the light with you and don’t throw it. Leave it and we’ll bomb you.

“We kept walking until we reached an Unrwa school on Salah al-Din Street, where we had to sleep until morning and then we headed to Gaza City.”

Light bars on the streets

Over the past month, Israeli troops have imposed a strict siege on cities in the northern Gaza Strip.

Under cover of intense airstrikes, they began moving from house to house and shelter to shelter, forcing people out at gunpoint.

It is estimated that only 50,000 people have been expelled from the Jabalia refugee camp so far.

Those left behind have not received food or water for more than a month and have no access to medical care.

Living in these conditions, Muhammed Kareem Hamdan decided to leave Jabalia towards the west and head to the neighboring city of Beit Lahia at the end of October.

“The road was full of shells, shelling and gunshots. “It was something incredible, inhuman,” the 21-year-old told MEE.

‘Even with the light, they terrified us. The tanks sped past us and could have run us over.’

– Muhammed Kareem Hamdan, resident of northern Gaza

As soon as they arrived in Beit Lahia, an Israeli quadcopter drone followed them and transmitted recordings ordering them to head south.

Hamdan said that after a day passed in which people ignored the message, Israeli troops shelled the area and dropped smoke bombs, killing many people, including children.

With medical and civil defense teams forced to cease operations due to repeated Israeli attacks, Hadman and her family made the difficult decision to comply with displacement orders.

“When we arrived at the Kuwait school (in Beit Lahia), the Israeli army asked the women to keep walking while the men entered the school. There were old women in wheelchairs abandoned on the street who couldn’t move because the army had detained their children in schools, leaving them alone and unable to move,” Hamdan recalled.

“They detained us from 8 in the morning until midnight. We remained at the school for hours without the soldiers taking any action. They just watched us all day while we were out in the sun, without water or food.

“In the afternoon they started taking us and putting us in front of (facial recognition) cameras, selecting who they wanted. “I stood in front of the camera and they took me in for questioning.”

Hamdan then had to wait for hours as he watched dozens of young men stripped down to their boxers and dressed in white clothing before being taken by soldiers to the Sheikh Zayed Towers.

“I could hear them screaming as they were being tortured there,” he said.

After midnight, soldiers ordered Hamdan and three other men, including a disabled man in a wheelchair, to head to the southern Gaza Strip. Like Samir, they were given a glow stick.

“They gave us a yellow light. It is a piece of plastic that lights up when broken. It only lasts about 12 hours and then it goes off. This light does not have an on or off button; “They told us to suck it up and walk south,” he explained.

“This light is given to each group to indicate to other (soldiers) or drones that we have been interrogated and released, so that we are not a target.

“Yet even with the light, they terrified us. The tanks were speeding past us and could have run over us if we hadn’t been careful.”

Along the route to Gaza City, Hamdan saw multiple bars of light on the ground.

“There were blue and green light bars. I don’t know if the soldiers threw them or if the displaced people threw them. I’m not sure if they were taken by people who were murdered. “It was dark and we couldn’t see anything.”

Pretext to “do more damage”

Although the Israeli military told Palestinians that carrying sticks would protect them from attacks, legal experts say this conduct violates a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law (IHL), which is the distinction between combatants and civilians.

“Under IHL, attacks must be directed exclusively at combatants, and civilians must never be targets,” Lima Bustami, a Palestinian legal consultant, told MEE.

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“The criteria for determining who can be legally attacked should be based on an individual’s participation in hostilities, not arbitrary factors such as whether they are carrying a light stick.”

Bustami added that this practice undermines the protection provided to civilians who do not have access to the glow stick, or who have lost it, or whose sticks have malfunctioned, leaving them exposed as “direct and illegal targets.”

It also perpetuates a cycle of fear and vulnerability among civilians, he added.

“It provides Israel with a pretext to further harm and injure more innocent people, while falsely asserting the legitimacy of its actions by claiming that it has taken precautions that, in reality, are fundamentally inadequate or even misleading.”

The attack on northern Gaza has so far killed at least 1,250 Palestinians, according to local officials.

In total, the Israeli war in Gaza has killed nearly 43,400 people and injured 102,000 more since October 7, 2023, most of them children and women, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

*Name changed for security reasons.