On Thursday, the White House said Israel had agreed to pause its assault on northern Gaza for four hours per day to allow civilians to flee south. The U.N. estimates that on Thursday alone, 50,000 people were forced to travel on foot along what Israel’s military is calling a “humanitarian corridor.” Many of them compared the mass expulsion to the 1948 Nakba that saw about 700,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes and turned into refugees during the creation of the state of Israel.

Um Hassan: “What do things look like behind us? Destruction and death. It has become here a second Nakba for the Palestinians. What more does the world want?”

Khaled Abu Issa: “The Beach refugee camp is burning. The whole northern and western areas of Gaza are, as well. They’re driving people to schools and scaring them so they would leave. What we see today is a plan for a second Nakba.”

“Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

Craig Mokhiber, the U.N.'s former top human rights official in New York, condemned Israel's so-called humanitarian corridors, writing, “Four-hour pauses between massacres are not 'humanitarian.' They are merely managed ethnic cleansing. Saying to caged victims 'go ahead, I'll give you a head start before I come to kill you again’ is a cruel and cynical charade, for which the perpetrators must be held to account.” Click here to see our full interview with Craig Mokhiber.