As the 69-day Israeli war of genocide against Gaza sees more war crimes being committed, the Palestinian resistance has delivered painful blows to the Israeli forces in Khan Younis, Jabalia, and Gaza City.
Dozens of Israeli soldiers have been killed, hundreds have been wounded, and much Israeli military hardware has been destroyed or put out of commission, according to the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian group Hamas.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian relief supplies that have entered Gaza so far cover barely two per cent of the inhabitants’ needs, and only 425 injured people have been transported out of the Strip.
As the Israeli offensive enters a third phase, shifting its attention to the south of Gaza to Khan Younis, where residents have been ordered to leave their homes, it is abundantly clear that the Israeli occupation is pressing ahead with its plans to forcibly expel the Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt.
The casualty toll wrought by the Israeli war on Gaza now exceeds 18,000 people killed and 50,000 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
“The Israeli army commits new atrocities daily, massacring entire families,” Ministry Spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“We have received countless cries of help from people in residential neighbourhoods and schools where the occupation forces have committed heinous massacres killing dozens and wounding hundreds. The criminal acts of genocide that Israeli is perpetrating, with the callous support of the US and Europe, intended to end the Palestinian existence in Gaza defy description.”
Al-Qudra said that Israeli forces and snipers continue to lay siege to the Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda Hospitals in northern Gaza. Many pregnant women have been killed or wounded in the attacks.
In addition, Israel targeted an ambulance that was trying to evacuate the wounded in the vicinity of the European Hospital, wounding two paramedics. Hospitals in southern Gaza are filled beyond capacity and are unable to cope with the huge numbers of wounded. Many people have died as a result.
Al-Qudra appealed for immediate action to muster medical supplies and fuel to keep the Al-Shifa Hospital in operation. This is now the only hope for the ill and wounded in northern Gaza, he said.
He called for a humanitarian corridor to bring in adequate quantities of medical aid and fuel to all the hospitals in the Strip. Stressing the urgency of this measure, he explained that the mechanism to transport the sick and wounded outside of Gaza for treatment is so limited as to be futile and contributes to the loss of the patients’ lives rather than their preservation.
After announcing safe zones in the south of the Strip and ordering half the population to go there, the Israeli army opened fire on all parts of the Strip with the aim of turning it into an area unfit for human habitation.
Mass murder, forced evacuation, terror by bombardment, and mass starvation are being used in turn or in conjunction to exterminate the Palestinian population.
“The Israeli army is using starvation as a weapon of mass displacement,” Ismail Al-Thawabteh, director of the government Media Office in Gaza, said. “Towards this end, they are bombing bakeries, food manufacturers, food stores, water pumping plants, and water tanks. The ongoing blockade continues to prevent food, water, electricity, and fuel from entering the Strip.”
“The Israeli occupation is deliberately obstructing the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid in sufficient quantities through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt. It has been estimated that less than two per cent of the humanitarian aid needs have been let through the crossing.”
Thawabteh added that the Israeli army has also prevented the delivery of food, medicine, or fuel to northern Gaza where 800,000 people continue to refuse to move south.
“All this is being done with complete political cover and logistical support from Washington and amidst the silence or complicity of the international community and the UN and its organisations operating in Gaza,” he said.
FOOD SHORTAGES
While the food shortage has lasted since the war began and before, it has grown worse since the seven-day truce ended on 1 December. The number of food delivery trucks entering Gaza from Egypt has dropped, and the fierce fighting has hampered food distribution even in the south.
“Displaced children go to bed and wake up with stomachs aching from hunger. Their parents resort to desperate measures to feed them, such as diluting powdered milk in double the amount of water or feeding their children just one meal a day,” Thawabteh said.
Thomas White, director of Affairs for the UN relief organisation UNRWA in Gaza, warned on his X (Twitter) account that Israel’s latest evacuation orders could cause over 600,000 more people to be displaced to Rafah, which normally has a population of 280,000 and is already hosting around 470,000 internally displaced people.
The city’s water and sanitation infrastructure cannot come close to meeting the needs of the displaced population, which would exceed a million, he said.
Anas Abed, a UN World Food Programme (WFP) official, told the Weekly that it has become impossible to deliver relief to the hungry in Gaza because Israel has ratcheted up its attacks there in its war with Hamas.
“Due to such small amounts of essential food supplies coming in, the complete lack of fuel, the interruption of communications systems, and the lack of safety for our staff and the people we serve in food-distribution centres, we simply cannot do our job properly,” he said.
On 25 October, the international NGO Oxfam released a statement saying that “starvation is being used as a weapon of war against Gaza civilians.” It reported that after analysing UN data, it had found that “just two per cent of food that would have been delivered has entered Gaza since the total siege – which tightened the existing blockade – was imposed on 9 October.”
It added that while a small amount of food aid has been allowed in, no commercial food imports have been delivered.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Regional Middle East director, said that “the situation is nothing short of horrific. Where is humanity? Millions of civilians are being collectively punished in full view of the world. There can be no justification for using starvation as a weapon of war.”
As 2.3 million people continue to suffer such systematic cruelty, she reprimanded world leaders. They “cannot continue to sit back and watch. They have an obligation to act and to act now,” she said.
International humanitarian and relief organisations in Gaza have also documented outbreaks of infectious diseases such as hepatitis, rabies, and herpes, resulting from overcrowding, inadequate water, and over-extended sewage treatment plants.
The fuel shortage prevents desalinisation plants from fully treating water, causing widespread diarrhoea among the displaced populations.
The director of an UNRWA-operated school for sheltering displaced people told the Weekly, speaking on condition of anonymity, that “the situation for the displaced is worsening. They only have wood to use as fuel to keep warm, cook food, and boil water to drink.”
“The prices of food and clean water are rising, and the supply of medicine and healthcare products, especially for women and children, is dwindling.”
WAR ON THE SOUTH
After initially focussing its campaign of destruction and devastation on the north of the Gaza Strip, displacing most of the inhabitants towards the south, the Israeli war machine then turned its attention to areas that it had previously declared safe zones and ordered the recently displaced people to move further south.
According to documentation from the government Media Office in Gaza, the Israeli military launched intensive waves of bombardments, deliberately and systematically targeting homes, inhabitants, and everything that sustains human life.
The entirety of Gaza, with the exception of parts of Rafah, has been turned into a theatre of war. There are no safe places left apart from some areas directly adjacent to the Egyptian Rafah Crossing. Israel is still bent on carrying out its plan of forcible population transfer and expulsion.
In a statement to the Weekly, Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesperson for UNRWA, described Rafah in Gaza near the Egyptian border as the “epicentre of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.”
Noting that the city’s population has tripled since the beginning of the war, he said that “the UN has warned that Rafah could soon host half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. The city currently hosts about half a million of the displaced people (470,000) on top of the existing population of around 300,000.”
As noted above, Thomas White, the director of UNRWA’s Gaza Division, warned that the latest evacuation orders threatened to add at least another half a million displaced people to the city.
Hundreds of families fleeing the relentless Israeli bombardments have filled schools and other refuges in southern Gaza. According to some reports, the rent of a small flat has soared from $100 before the war to around $5,000.
Displaced families have few options apart from finding gardens or empty plots to set up makeshift camps using whatever materials they can find to keep out the cold.
Meanwhile, Al-Qassam Brigades Spokesman Abu Obeida said in a recently broadcast audio recording that none of the Israeli prisoners of war and detainees in Gaza would be released except in accordance with the conditions for exchange announced by the Palestinian resistance at the beginning of the war.
The Israeli army has acknowledged that is losing soldiers during the battles with the Palestinian resistance on an almost daily basis. According to the Israeli army’s official figures at the time of writing, 104 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground operation began a month and a half ago.
However, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sunday revealed significant discrepancies between the Israeli army’s figures on the number of wounded and hospital records that show a much higher number.
The Israeli army released its first report on the number of wounded since the beginning of the war shortly before Haaretz published its report. The Israeli army listed 1,593 soldiers wounded, of whom 255 had suffered serious injuries, 446 moderate injuries, and 892 minor injuries.
The newspaper noted that the army had initially refused to disclose information on the wounded, so reporters began to investigate the hospital records where the soldiers were treated and discovered “a considerable and unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals.”
According to the hospital figures, the number of wounded Israeli soldiers is twice as high as the number given by the army.
“For example,” Haaretz writes, “the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon alone reports treating 1,949 soldiers hurt in the war since 7 October (out of 3,117 injured people treated there during the war), whereas the army reports a total of 1,593 wounded soldiers.”
“Assuta Ashdod reportedly treated 178 patients, Ichilov (Tel Aviv) 148, Rambam (Haifa) 181, Hadassah (Jerusalem) 209, and Sha’arei Tzedek (Jerusalem) 139. In addition, another 1,000 or so soldiers were treated at the Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Medical Centre, while another 650 were treated at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel-Hashomer.”
“This is a partial list, as the data does not include soldiers currently in rehab wards who have already been counted as wounded upon arrival at emergency wards and inpatient wards.”
The newspaper found it difficult to account for the discrepancies but posited that perhaps some hospitals had admitted soldiers requiring medical attention unrelated to the war.
However, it added that “the relevant hospitals keep notes and also operate a situation room dealing with war casualties. Therefore, the reported data refers to soldiers wounded in the war.”
Israeli Ministry of Health data throws the gaps between the Israel army’s and the hospitals’ data into sharper relief. As Haaretz reported, citing the ministry’s Website, 10,584 soldiers and civilians wounded in the war have been admitted to hospitals since 7 October.
Of these, 131 died in hospital, 471 were in serious or critical condition, 868 were in moderate condition, 8,308 suffered minor injuries, 600 suffered anxiety attacks, and the condition of 206 is unknown.
Although the Israeli army had ceded to pressure from the public and the press to release data about the dead and wounded, it continues to keep tight control over all the information released. According to Haaretz, Israeli army representatives are in the hospitals around the clock.
“Every press release regarding wounded soldiers, as well as replies to media queries, must receive their approval,” it said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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