FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – “Here we are all equal.” There is only one difference: someone is alive, someone is dead. It is enough for me to be alive. Safwat’s voice is thin. The message in one breath. He says that in Gaza, the 18th day of total siege, the 432nd hour of absolute fear, we live by radical choices: drink to avoid dehydration or wash to prevent infection? And the fuel: for hospitals or for bread ovens? And again: bury the dead to avoid epidemics, or leave them where they are and avoid the bombs? Many living are dead.
“It’s unimaginable,” sighs Safwat. It is unacceptable – protests the Sheikh of Qatar, Al Thani – As if the lives of Palestinian children do not deserve consideration. As if they were faceless and nameless…”. Some aid trucks arrive from the Rafah border crossing, but they are full of rice and lentils: “What are we going to do with them?” – Tamara Al Rifai, a UN official, gets angry – Without water to cook, they are useless! We sent a very clear list of what we need! But have you read it?”.
Siege and silence
There is silence around Gaza. Even car navigators are silent because Israel has disabled Waze and Google Maps from here to Egypt and Lebanon. We arrive in the dark and find Tsahal sharpening the blades of the Iron Sword operation. In the kibbutzim emptied on Black Saturday, the hour of revenge awaits the 500 Israeli armored vehicles, the dozens of Merkavas, the fifteen jeep columns, the two-kilometer-long technical tents, the 169,500 soldiers, the 360,000 reservists…
Ice cream trucks are like hearses
In the strip, the opposite is the case: the apocalypse. Mobile phones were left without charge and more than twenty Palestinian journalists remained lifeless and silent. We navigate by sight to tell the story of the people of Gaza paying for jihadist madness and the Al-Aqsa storming operation. According to Hamas, there are 5,791 dead in the overcrowded morgues, in mass graves, and in ice cream vans used as hearses. And 2,360 of them – 40% – are children and young people. The injured: 16,297, a quarter very seriously. The missing people are 1,550 and more than half (870) are children. The jihad movement praises those who ascended to the paradise of martyrs without saying a word about the hell of the living: “We are moving from a desperate to a catastrophic situation,” summarizes the WHO, the World Health Organization.
Hospitals are collapsing
The most urgent disaster is the hospitals: 12 out of 35 are closed, and of the private clinics, 24 out of 72 are functioning (poorly). The large Shifa hospital has a bed occupancy of 150%, it is designed for 700 patients and holds 5 thousand, not to mention the 45,000 displaced people who are housed in the basement because they do not know where to go. The 13,000 dialysis patients are without medication and the same applies to 130 premature babies without mechanical ventilation and to the chemotherapy of the 2,000 patients in the Turkish hospital, the only oncology center in the Gaza Strip. The Indonesian hospital only keeps the intensive care unit open, the one in Beit Hanoun has stopped all surgical procedures because it has no fuel for the generators.
alcohol and vinegar
Through Rafah, the United Nations delivered 34,000 liters to four clinics, but it was only enough for ambulances and 24-hour essential machinery. “When these supplies arrived,” explains a WHO employee, “the doctors rushed to unload them personally.” Even the medicine boxes: they immediately took them to the operating rooms, where they worked without anesthesia and even vinegar was used instead of alcohol.
Due to overcrowding and poor hygiene, there is a risk of epidemics. There is a disease emergency: stomach and pneumonia infections, skin rashes, all the children are sick because they sleep outside, it is cold at night and there are not enough blankets for everyone. “There is a clear violation of human rights in Gaza,” denounced UN Secretary Antonio Guterres, who lost 35 officials. Israel responds that many of the data are inflated: The water is there, but the Hamas masters confiscated it. The same applies to fuel: “Half a million liters of diesel are in a warehouse in Rafah, but are used for rocket launchers and military vehicles.”