I've been incredibly lax in updating recently. I went away for a couple of weeks, during which time there was the bombing of the refugee camp in Rafah and the Israeli army's invasion of the city they told people to flee to as a 'safe zone' earlier in their retaliation. The TL:DR is that things are getting worse, which isn't surprising given that the world is basically looking on while Gaza is being razed to the ground and its people killed in incomprehensible numbers.
According to
update 177, as of June 10 at least 37,123 Palestinians have been killed and 84,712 injured. These figures are
undercounting as a result of bodies trapped under rubble and a breakdown in data collection as the genocide continues.
Over 330,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated in or near populated areas in the Gaza strip. In May, the
BBC revealed that half of Gaza's water sites had been damaged or destroyed. UNRWA are warning that a
cholera outbreak could be imminent. Back in March around 677,000 people were experiencing famine and UN agencies reported last week that the figure could reach
over 1 million by the middle of July. According to the Guardian,
The term famine, when used by food and emergency aid professionals, has a strict technical definition, with three conditions that must be met in an area. The high threshold means that by the time famine has been declared, many people will already have died of hunger.
Incredibly, some hospitals are still running, though they are still struggling to get medical supplies and electricity. No hospitals in Rafah are open.
More than a thousand children have lost arms or legs. The
New Yorker has an article I urge everyone to read.
In Gaza, [Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a London-based plastic-and-reconstructive surgeon who specializes in pediatric trauma] was performing as many as six amputations a day. “Sometimes you have no other medical option,” he explained. “The Israelis had surrounded the blood bank, so we couldn’t do transfusions. If a limb was bleeding profusely, we had to amputate.” The dearth of basic medical supplies, owing to blockades, also contributed to the number of amputations. Without the ability to irrigate a wound immediately in an operating room, infection and gangrene often set in.
...
Israeli forces destroyed Gaza’s only facility for manufacturing prosthetics and rehabilitation, the Hamad hospital, which was inaugurated in 2019 and funded by Qatar. The leading manufacturer of child prosthetics, the German company Ottobock, is working to supply the necessary components to children up to the age of sixteen, with donors in place to fund the project through its foundation. Procuring prosthetics, however, is only the first step. “Child amputees need medical care every six months as they grow,” Abu-Sittah said. Because bone grows faster than soft tissue and severed nerves often reattach painfully to skin, child amputees require ongoing surgical interventions. In his experience, each limb requires eight to twelve more surgeries.
As of April, more than
80% of schools have been destroyed or damaged. In the first 100 days,
all 12 universities were bombed and wholly or partly destroyed. Libraries have been
intentionally destroyed.
The trauma that these people are being subjected to is unimaginable. Even if Israel stopped its bombing today, hundreds, probably thousands, would still likely die as a result of injury and/or starvation. We are watching a genocide take place before our eyes and no-one in power is doing anything to stop it. The UK and US needs to stop sending Israel bombs. The Israeli government has lost any sense of rationality or proportionality. They seem determined to destroy Gaza and make it uninhabitable for anyone who manage to survive. They don't even seem to care about the lives of Israelis, given that it seems that almost as many
hostages died in the latest attempt to free them as were rescued. And let's not forget it
shot three who had managed to escape back in December.
I don't know how this ends. But so far no end seems in sight. Just more death, destruction, trauma and an entire population likely radicalised.
