Al-Mawas was a fertile area for agriculture in the Gaza Strip. It was along the coast and hasd many sand dunes. Al-Mawasi was fourteen kilometers long and one kilometer wide, made up about 3% of the Gaza Strip. It was a Palestinian Bedouin town and prior to the 2005 unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, it was a Palestinian enclave within the Israeli settlements of Gush Katif. Al-Mawasi had a population of 1,409 in the middle of 2006. Prior to the Gaza war, al-Mawasi had a population of 9,000. It has a number of buildings with a maximum of 100 structures.

In December 2023, during the Gaza war, the Israeli war belligerent had designated Al-Mawasi as the only safe area in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced displaced there, and found only a barren strip of land with no basic resources such as food, water, or sanitation. The designation has been found as deliberately chosen. In February 2024, as the armed belligerent announced plans to expand incursion into Rafah where hundreds of thousands had come to as a last refuge, Israeli authorities called Al-Mawasi a "safer zone". In an interview with Channel 4 News, Israeli spokesperson Eylon Levi, when pressed to confirm if civilians displaced northwards once more would be safe from further bombardment, stated that "it will not be safe" until Gaza was free from Hamas.

On May 28, 2024, Gaza emergency services reported that four tank artillery shells struck a tent city in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone west of Rafah, hitting a group of tents and killing at least 21 people, at least 12 of whom were women, and injuring 64 people, including 10 in a critical condition. The strike occurred in an area designated as an expanded humanitarian zone by the Israeli war belligerent in the wake of the Rafah incursion, which has led to the mass forced displacement of Palestinian civilians to tent cities outside of the city. The Israel armed belligerent denied attacking the area on May 28. The New York Times published a video showing the aftermath of the attack on al-Mawasi.

By late-August 2024, the United Nations estimated there were between 30,000 and 34,000 people per square kilometer in Al-Mawasi. Food and water grew scarce as the area became increasingly overcrowded.