Last Saturday represents a turning point for Israel: never since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day as in the massacres carried out by Hamas over the weekend, said President Yitzchak Herzog. Terrorists in Israel have killed more than 1,300 people, most of them civilians. As Israel announced, the counterattacks are comprehensive. Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, the US and Israel, will be destroyed to the last man, it was said in Jerusalem.
The population of the Gaza Strip, which has been isolated by Israel, is once again in the line of fire. Egypt also temporarily closed its only Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip due to Israeli bombings. “I have experienced all the wars and invasions in the past, but I have never experienced anything worse than this war,” said Jamin Hamad, whose home was destroyed in Israeli attacks on Bait Hanun.
Entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip destroyed
Israeli airstrikes following Hamas’ major attack on Israel destroyed entire neighborhoods in the isolated Gaza Strip. Many people can only be rescued from the rubble when they are dead.
Small refuge
In the Gaza Strip, entire neighborhoods have been leveled in recent days. According to the UN, more than 1,400 people died in Gaza, hundreds of whom, according to Israeli data, were Hamas fighters. But countless civilians are also affected. Around 340,000 people were forced to flee their homes, many of them gathered in overcrowded UN facilities. There are almost no other places of refuge.
Graphics: APA/ORF; Source: OCHA
The confinement disrupted the already inadequate supply of food, fuel, electricity and medicine. According to the United Nations, water is currently scarce for more than 650,000 people, although only one in ten has access to safe drinking water. Gaza’s Health Ministry said there were fears that wastewater treatment plants would also be closed, which would cause illness across the area.
The Gaza Strip
The coastal strip was under Ottoman rule for centuries. Britain took control in World War I, Egypt secured the strip in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Israel seized the coastal area in the Six-Day War in 1967 and withdrew from it in 2005. Since then, Israel controls external borders. Hamas won elections in 2006 and has since seen itself as a legitimate government power.
Hospitals are full, there is a shortage of medicines
The only power plant in the Gaza Strip was closed on Wednesday because it ran out of fuel. Without electricity, water cannot be pumped into homes. Hospital stocks of medicines and fuel for emergency generators are also expected to run out within days.
“The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent and I implore both sides to alleviate the suffering of civilians,” said Fabrizio Carboni, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in a statement on Thursday: “If When There is no electricity in Gaza, hospitals are also without power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients receiving oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis is stopped and x-rays cannot be taken. Without power, hospitals run the risk of turning into morgues.”
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, is no longer accepting patients. The day before it was said that hospitals on the coastal strip were full. “If this continues for a few days, the health system will collapse,” Mohammed Abu Mughasib of Doctors Without Borders told Portal.
Population density in the Gaza Strip
Israel wants hostages released first
Relief is unlikely to come quickly. Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz linked the resumption of basic services in the Gaza Strip to the release of Israeli hostages in the hands of Hamas. “No switches will be thrown, no taps will be turned on, and no fuel trucks will enter until the Israeli hostages return home,” Katz wrote on Twitter (X) on Thursday.
Humanitarian gestures will only be given in exchange for humanitarian gestures. “And that no one preaches morality to us,” Katz wrote. The army also pointed out that Hamas destroyed the passages to the coastal zone itself.
Portal/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Water supply is one of the biggest problems in the Gaza Strip
At 360 square kilometers, the Gaza Strip, inhabited by more than two million people, is smaller than Vienna. The birth rate and population growth are among the highest in the world, with almost half of the population being under 18 years of age. Prospects are rare and poverty is omnipresent. Hatred of Israel has been fueled at a political level for generations.
According to the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which regularly carries out surveys in the country, around half of the population of Gaza supports Hamas. In the last elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, the parliament of the Palestinian territories and the Palestinian Authority, in 2006, Hamas obtained an absolute majority of 76 seats. Since then, it has controlled the Gaza Strip, including the police, hospitals and emergency services.
UN: Collective punishment
The destruction in Gaza is much greater than in previous conflicts. A ground offensive by the Israeli army, which could be imminent after the formation of an emergency government in Jerusalem, would further worsen the humanitarian catastrophe.
It is still unclear how long Israel plans to bomb and isolate the Gaza Strip. UN special rapporteurs spoke on Thursday about collective punishment. The group of independent experts condemned Hamas’ atrocities but said Israel resorted to indiscriminate military means against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, its statement said. There is no justification for violence against innocent civilians – neither by Hamas nor by Israeli soldiers. “This is prohibited by international law and is a war crime.”
Dark outlook
If Israel truly succeeds in destroying Hamas, a power vacuum will emerge in the Gaza Strip. “Other warlords could take control, perhaps even worse than Hamas, if that were possible,” Jonathan Rynhold, head of the politics department at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, told dpa. Another possibility would be for the Palestinian Authority to regain control of the coastal strip.
However, she could then be seen by the population as a traitor and collaborator with Israel. “The Palestinian Authority is so corrupt, authoritarian and at the same time weak that the chances of this happening are very low.” A new, permanent Israeli occupation would also come at too high a price, Rynhold said.
In his opinion, sending an international peacekeeping force would have little chance of success. Without a robust mandate, they would have no chance of stabilizing the situation, he said. “Nobody wants to send their troops here.”