Israel continues to pound Rafah with intensive air strikes, having already killed over one hundred Palestinians, most of them children, and displacing thousands others, who have nowhere safe to go — except perhaps “to the moon,” to cite European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

The Sunday massacres seem to be only a prelude to the horrors to come, as Israel is now gearing up for invading the small refugee town, prompting mounting fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Rafah was believed to be Gaza’s last “safe zone,” where 1.5 million Palestinians, nearly two-thirds of the original Gaza’s population, are now taking shelter.

Rafah is a small and dusty city on the southern Gaza border with Egypt. On the eve of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Rafah was home to fewer than 300,000 Palestinians; by early February, the city had swelled to some 1.5 million in population virtually overnight. It now resembles a concentration camp choked with displaced Palestinian families, who are crammed into houses and tents, mostly in tented encampments, some of which encroach on cemeteries. Many are sleeping in the streets.