Humanitarian crisis in Gaza

[Fishnut]

I meant to post on the anniversary but it's also my birthday and I didn't really feel up to it. The TL:DR is that Israel has created hell on earth in Gaza and the rest of the world is just looking on, shrugging its shoulders and saying 'nothing we can do'.

The BBC has done a retrospective that included these maps:

Damaged areas shown in red.jpg (36.07 KiB) Viewed 2341 times

They say a picture speaks a thousand words and four of them speak of over 42,000 people known to have been killed, more than 100,000 injured and more than 10,000 missing. The scale is unbelievable and the fact we are doing nothing to stop it - and are indeed facilitating it through arms sales - is baffling.

The following facts and figures are from OCHA's impact snapshot for 22 October 2024.

Casualties
- 42,718 fatalities up to 7 October 2024 who have been fully identified, including 13,319 children and 3,447 elderly.
- More than 10,000 people reported as missing, most likely crushed under rubble
- 100,282 people injured

Food security
- 60-70% of livestock has been killed or prematurely slaughtered
- 68% of cropland has been damaged as of 1 September 2024
- 44% of greenhouse areas have been damaged as of 1 September 2024
- 70% of the fishing fleet has been destroyed as of August 2024

Nutrition
- Over 96% of women and children under 2 are not getting their nutrient requirements
- more than 50,000 children are estimated to need treatment for acute malnutrition

Water and Sanitation
- there is less than a quarter of the water supplied prior to October 2023 is reaching Gaza
- there are 395,000 tons of accumulated solid waste

Infrastructure
- 80% of commercial facilities have been damaged
- 68% of roads have been damaged

Shelter
- 87% of homes have been destroyed or damaged
- each person has an average of 1.5m² in shelters, below the minimum emergency space of 3.5m²
- 1.34 million people are in need of emergency shelter and essential household items
0.9 million people need help to survive the winter - the second winter since this massacre began

Health
- 19 out of 36 are out of service
- 17 hospitals are partially functional
- 130 ambulances have been damaged

Education
- at least 87% of school buildings either need to be completely rebuilt or undergo major work as of 6 September 2024
- 35 university buildings have been destroyed and 57 damaged as of 7 October 2024
- 10,839 students and 441 educational staff have been killed as of 22 October 2024

Humanitarian aid
- since 1 October, an average of 28 trucks a day have been allowed access to Gaza, compared to a pre-October 7 2023 average of 500.
- there has been a steady decline in trucks over the last few months, with a peak in April of 165 (still only a third of the pre-crisis average), reducing to 88-80 trucks a day between May and July, 67 in August and 54 in September.

Media access
Back in 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, gave a statement via his Spokesman on the importance of journalists in conflict zones,

The fundamental role of journalists in ensuring access to reliable information is essential to achieving durable peace, sustainable development and human rights. The Secretary-General recalls that civilians, including civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict, must be respected and protected under international humanitarian law. He calls on all parties to conflict, and the international community as a whole, to protect journalists and enable conditions for the exercise of their profession.

Yet foreign haven't been allowed into Gaza unless they agree to be escorted by the Israeli military and the visits are often highly controlled. An open letter to the Israeli government by 55 foreign correspondents and a second letter by more than 30 international news organisations was published early this year calling for open access to Gaza for journalists. A further open letter was written in July, again urging media access. Yet the Israeli High Court said Israel can continue to prevent journalists from entering Gaza and the government has shown no signs of allowing journalists in.

An editorial in Haaretz, published in September, called on the Israeli government to allow in journalists,

When Israel prevents journalists from going into Gaza it prevents them not only from reporting on the horrors of the warfare, but also from examining the claims of Hamas in real time – something that is a clear Israeli interest. When Israel prevents foreign journalists from covering what is happening in Gaza we must ask: What does the state have to hide? How does it benefit from journalists not entering Gaza?
...
In any case, precisely during wartime there is great importance to permitting the entry of journalists who are not a party to the conflict: people who can cover the event without fear of pressure from their own society or government. In wartime today, when any image risks the accusation of having been generated using artificial intelligence, the role of the journalist in the field is more important than ever.

Jodie Ginsburg from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote in an opinion piece in Haaretz in July,

Israel's ban on independent media access to Gaza falls outside the norm.

While restrictions on reporting are common in war, seasoned correspondents have told CPJ that the effective total ban on journalists entering Gaza—both foreign nationals and Israeli and Palestinian journalists from outside the territory—is unprecedented in modern times.
---
Elsewhere around the world journalists have been able to report from the frontlines in almost every major conflict over the past three decades: from Ukraine to Rwanda. The world's largest news organizations understand the risks and are prepared to take them because they know how important these stories are.
...
Media access to Gaza is only one example of a regime of censorship that is denying the Israeli people their right to know what is happening there and closing the door to international oversight. The emergency legislation that allows Israel's government to ban foreign broadcasters such as Al Jazeera, the shadowy arrests of journalists both in Gaza and the West Bank, and alleged direct attacks on journalists—these are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes.

Yet foreign media are still banned from entering Gaza, meaning that Palestinian journalists are put in the unbearable position of reporting on the very hell they are trying to survive.

The CPJ has confirmed 128 journalists and media workers have been killed since 7 October 2023, making it the deadliest year on record since the CPJ began documenting journalist killings back in 1992.

All of the killings, except two, were carried out by Israeli forces. CPJ has found that at least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work and is investigating at least 10 more cases of deliberate targeting.

The killings, along with censorship, arrests, the continued ban on independent media access into Gaza, persistent internet shutdowns, the destruction of media outlets, and displacement of the Gaza media community, have severely restricted reporting on the war and hampered documentation.

Jewish Currents put out a statement on 24 October 2024 stating,

Jewish Currents condemns Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists in the strongest terms, and calls upon every media institution in the United States to do the same... The normalization of Israel’s flagrant targeting of journalists has implications for reporters around the world. Media institutions have a responsibility to speak out to deter the Israeli military from any further attacks on Palestinian journalists.

Israel’s threats against Palestinian journalists should be treated as a crisis for the international media. When journalists cannot safely inform the public, a crucial check on state violence disappears. And when states are allowed to kill journalists with impunity, it threatens journalists around the world.

Israel has now begun targetting journalists in Lebanon.

I'm focusing on journalists because I think they highlight the difference between what's going on in Gaza right now and other conflict zones. It reinforces the asymmetrical nature of this conflict. Israel has complete control of the borders of Gaza. It is walled off completely. The only way for independent verification of what's going on there right now is satellite images. To call it a 'war' as many in the media are doing only serves to play into the idea that this is a fair fight. This is the human version of shooting fish in a barrel. People are trapped and are being bombed to oblivion and starved to death.

That the Israeli government hasn't really been challenged on this and is still being supplied weapons at an incredible rate ($17.9 billion in arms from the US alone since the crisis began) means that it is feeling a level of impunity that has led it to start bombing Lebanon and Iran.

The Knesset has voted today to ban UNRWA from Gaza and declared it a terrorist group. A member of the UN is calling a UN organisation a terrorist group! Israel continues to take 'unprecedented' action again and again and no-one is stopping them. They may think that it's ok because Israel is one of the good guys (though if these are the actions of a 'good guy' I'd f.cking hate to see a bad guy) but by allowing Israel to do this, there is no way any country can condemn another for breaking the rules of war.

Bomb a hospital? Israel's done it, so many times it's become impossible to count and seemingly impossible to care.

Bomb a refugee camp? Israel's done it, again so many times that the incidents all blur into one.

Remember how they did their best to pretend it wasn't them, or that it was but it was an accident? Now they aren't bothering to deny it because no-one's stopping them so why bother.

Kill humanitarian aid workers? Israel's done that too.

Bomb civilians? Done.

Bomb journalists? Done.

Bomb schools? Done.

Capture civilians, call them terrorists and then torture them? Done that too, and been proud of it.

Prevented humanitarian aid from reaching civilians? Done that for a year now, and it's not exactly like the borders weren't already restricting what could come into Gaza beforehand.

And in recent months they've bombed other countries and even done a massive terrorist attack of their own, planting bombs in hundreds of pagers and walkie talkies. And instead of saying 'holy f.ck, they've just shown that every electronic device could be a potential bomb, we're going to have to massively increase our surveillance on supply chains and airport security because this could be replicated by malign actor, we've somehow collectively gone "wow, that's awesome!"

From Popular Mechanics,

Organizations of all kinds now have added reason to inspect personal communication devices received in bulk for their personnel, particularly as successful novel attacks often inspire copycat attempts. Furthermore, future terrorist groups may attempt supply chain gambits with the intent of causing indiscriminate harm rather than targeting a specific group.

Where does this end? It's increasingly clear where Israel wants it to end. With Gaza empty of Palestinians and Israeli settlements built in their place. NPR reported on a recent rally where 'government minister May Golan said permanently claiming land in Gaza was appropriate punishment',

“What in the end will we do that will really hurt them? Only taking territory will really hurt them…those who got territory and took advantage of it to plan a holocaust will, God willing, receive another Nakba,” she said, using the Arabic term for the mass displacement of Palestinians in Israel's founding war.

The Times of Israel reports that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a conference recently,

Israel must free itself “from wrong concepts” and make an “unequivocal Israeli statement to the Arabs and the entire world that a Palestinian state will not be established,” through “the establishment of new cities and settlements deep in the [West Bank] and bringing hundreds of thousands of additional settlers to live in them.”
...
"Those who do not want or are unable to put aside their national ambitions will receive assistance from us to emigrate to one of the many Arab countries where the Arabs can realize their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world,” he [continued].

Meanwhile ITV reports on a small, and relatively fringe, group of settlers who have friends in the government and we've seen what happens when fringe groups have friends in high places and it's not good.

Just on the other side of the border, some Israelis are already plotting to move into the land that’s currently being evacuated. The war in Gaza has become a twisted kind of tourist attraction for families of Israel's right-wing settlers. They pose for pictures - family smiles, with Gaza smouldering in the background. We asked one woman what her message to the people of Gaza would be. “To the Arabs?” she asks in response, as if surprised at the idea she would say anything to them. “Just go away!”

Looking further than Gaza, and even Israel, where this ends is nowhere good for any of us. Israel has broken so many conventions - both formalised in law and informal but globally understood - that they've broken protections that all of us unknowingly rely on. Israel has been allowed to act with impunity for the last year and has made conflict so much more dangerous. By allowing Netenyahu to get away with so much for so long the global north has lost any sort of moral high-ground when it comes to calling out rogue states. Now any country that wants can target civilians with impunity and when called out say 'Israel did it' and also, and more importantly, recognise that world leaders might 'condemn' them but won't actually do anything to stop them.

I'm f.cking terrified by what's going on right now. Gaza is almost completely destroyed, it's going to take decades to rebuild and billions of dollars. Israel seems to have gone insane. It's bombing so recklessly now that it feels like they are just goading their neighbours into all-out war in the middle east. I don't know how we get sanity to prevail, but I feel that we are seeing the beginnings of a permanent reshaping of Israel both geographically and politically. There's no going back to how things were.

[Fishnut]

At least 93 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahiya in Northern Gaza today.

[Director-general of the Gaza government’s media office, Ismail al-Thawabta] said that the building Israel attacked housed 200 people. Dozens of people are reported missing and 150 others estimated to be injured. Medics said 20 children were among the dead.

[IvanV]

I made a prediction a little while ago that we would never get to Stage 2 of the Gaza ceasefire, because we never get to Stage 2 of any agreements between the Palestinians and Israel.

On this occasion, it is quite clear that Israel broke the agreement. There were accusations of Hamas breaking the ceasefire agreement, but they were not credible. Normally the situation has broken down when the time for stage 2 arrives, and there is room for argument about who was to blame, though certainly one can point to provocative actions by parties who didn't want to get there.

Moreover, the reason looks quite cynical. When the Israeli government accepted the ceasefire, one of the coalition partners, Jewish Power, left the coalition. This meant that the government couldn't pass its budget. If it was unable to pass a budget by the end of March, that would lead to a general election. And lo and behold they have gone back to war, Jewish Power has rejoined the coalition, and sneaked the budget through just in time.

There was no plausible threat from Hamas at this time, but they have gone back into Gaza, guns blazing, killing lots of people, stopping food aid, turning off power and water, demanding the evacuation of large areas - this time Rafah and Khan Younis - so they can go in and raze it. The central corridor has been reoccupied.

Meanwhile 50,000 people in the West Bank have been displaced, as Israel has chosen to to occupy those areas for no very clear reason or with any statement about what happens next. Probably the people aren't coming back. There is only lip-service to preventing Israeli settlers going around committing acts of arson and violence. A number of "informal Israeli settlements", ie illegal ones, have just been formalised. Settlement expansion continues apace elsewhere. It all adds just looks like a large acceleration in land annexation in the West Bank. As with the timing of Erdogan's authoritarian uptick in Turkey, it all looks like taking advantage of the rest of the world mostly worrying about other things.

[IvanV]

Funny how it is completely unacceptable when Iran bombs an Israeli hospital due to missing a nearby military target, or so the Iranians claim. But it is inevitable collateral damage when Israel bombs hospitals while flattening Gaza, even though it is only military targets they claim to be addressing.

Trump seems to have a TACO weakness not only over trade negotiations with China etc, but also over whatever Netanyahu does. It seems astonishing if it is indeed true that Netanyahu did this without prior permission and got Trump to approve after. But so far as can be told, that seems to be what happened, and Trump is approving of it after the event. Maybe Trump tipped him a wink, but I suppose we won't know unless someone leaks some confidential communication to that effect.

In terms of why Netanyahu made such a rash move, I can only suppose that Netanyahu thinks the more war there is, the better his chance of remaining in power without having to face the voters, or else improve his chance of being reelected if he manages to muzzle Iran, as Thatcher reversed a politically lost situation with the Falklands War. And - correctly it appears - thought that he had Trump around his little finger.

I also find it hard to credit Merz cheering it on so enthusiastically.

[Fishnut]

It's been far too long since I last posted here. I don't have any justification, it's just that the longer I leave it the harder it gets to try and summarise everything and I get intimidated and put it off.

So I'll state up front, this is not a comprehensive list of events since I last posted. It's barely touching the surface to be honest but I think an update is important, even if it is only partial.

So where do things stand? Let's start with what Israel is supposed to care most about - the hostages. 251 people were taken hostage on 7 October 2023.

Wiki has the best info I can find but I couldn't make the numbers add up and there didn't seem to be anywhere that had fully collated things in a sensible way. So I spent a couple of evenings making a spreadsheet of hostages which can be viewed in all its glory here.

To summarise, of the 251 hostages, 35 were actually killed in the initial attacks and their bodies taken to Gaza. 44 were killed or died while in Gaza, 3 were killed by IDF after they managed to escape and 1 was killed during a rescue attempt but it's unclear which side killed them. So that accounts for 83 people.

138 have been released as part of hostage exchanges, ceasefire deals, third-nation negotiations or for humanitarian reasons.

8 have been rescued by the IDF.

As for the hostages, there are 22 still being held though there have been no evidence of life since the initial attacks for two of them - Bipin Joshi (Nepali) and Tamir Nimrodi (Israeli).

If we subtract the 35 who were killed on 7/10 and their bodies taken to Gaza, that leaves us with 216 people who were being held alive by Hamas. Of those, 64% have been released as a result of negotiations. Only 3.7% have been rescued and 1.4% were killed by the IDF. 20% have died while in captivity and while I'm sure some of those were deliberate killings, I would not be at all surprised if some were from the incessant bombing and starvation of the people in Gaza that would also impact the hostages.

Going back to the day that started it all, 1,195 people were killed, though it's since been confirmed that at least 14 people were killed in friendly fire. Of these, 736 were civilians, 79 were foreign national and 379 were members of the security forces. While these figures are awful and in no way justified, the fact that the IDF reported about 6,000 Gazans breached the border wall in 119 locations (an average of about 50 people at each location) and around 1,000 were firing rockets, it's incredible the death toll wasn't significantly higher. Even with the element of surprise and the fact they were attacking predominantly unarmed people that's still an average of one person killed for every 5 Hamas combatants. I don't know anything about military operations but if killing was the aim that seems a pretty ineffective use of manpower.

Israel responded decisively, by relentlessly bombing and blockading Gaza which it continues to this day.

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, as of 25 June 2025 56,156 Palestinians have been killed, and 132,239 Palestinians have been injured. That is almost 47 Palestinians killed for each person killed in the 7 October attacks, and over 110 injured.

OCHA's Humanitarian Situation update 300 for the Gaza Strip makes for incredibly grim reading.

Casualties
Of the 55,202 Palestinians killed between 7 October 2023 and 15 June 2025, 31% were children, 17% women, 45% men and 7% were elderly persons.

Haaretz has a report on the casualties. They discuss research published as a preprint recently on mortality in the Gaza Strip. They conclude that the Ministry of Health is likely undercounting deaths by about 40%, which agrees with previously peer-reviewed research.

These data, says [lead author] Prof. Spagat, position the war in the Gaza Strip as one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century. Even if the overall number of war victims in Syria, Ukraine and Sudan is higher in each case, Gaza is apparently in first place in terms of the ratio of combatants to noncombatants killed, as well as in terms of rate of death relative to population size....

Data compiled and published by Spagat indicates that the proportion of women and children killed via a violent death in Gaza is more than double the proportion in almost every other recent conflict...

Another extreme datum found in the study is the proportion of those killed relative to the population. "I think we're probably at something like 4 percent of the population killed," Spagat says, adding, "I'm not sure that there's another case in the 21st century that's reached that high.

Displacement
82.6% of the Gaza strip is now within Israeli-militarised zones or placed under displacement orders. This means that the people left in Gaza are being squeezed into an increasingly small area which makes it increasingly difficult to find shelter and food.

Gaza.png (521.95 KiB) Viewed 28 times

The white is where people are currently allowed.

No shelter materials have entered Gaza since 1 March 2025. There's 980,000 shelter items, including over 49,000 tents ready and waiting to go into Gaza but Israel is denying permission for them to enter.

Makeshift shelters are now concentrated in bombed-out schools, public lots, and urban rubble, often far exceeding site capacity and without basic infrastructure.

Food security
From the 25 June 2025 impact snapshot,
- <5% of cropland is available for cultivation as of April 2025
- 71% of greenhouse areas have been damaged as of 1 April 2025
- 72% of the fishing fleet has been destroyed as of December 2024
- 100% of the population is projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity classified in IPC Phase 3 or above.
From wiki,

IPC phases.png (377.73 KiB) Viewed 28 times

It's estimated that 1 million people will be in phase 4 and 470,000 in phase 5 by the end of September if nothing changes.

This is not a natural famine. Israel is deliberately preventing food from entering the Gaza strip. At the beginning of March, Israel shut all crossings into Gaza and prevented aid from entering, and it doesn't seem to have lifted that blockade. Instead the newly-formed 'Gaza Humanitarian Fund' has been distributing limited amounts of food. IDF soldiers have been shooting people coming for food. According to Haaretz,

Since the rapid distribution centers opened, Haaretz has counted 19 shooting incidents near them...

"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."
...
According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

From the Financial Times,

Ashraf Abu Shbaker, a father of six, went to the [food distribution] site three times: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. But every time he reached the site, everything was already taken.

He tried to ask one of the security contractors on Tuesday why there was nothing left. He said the contractor pepper sprayed him in the face. Three other witnesses, including one who was sprayed himself, said the contractors used spray and sound grenades within the site.

“Today, I didn’t want to go. I’m tired,” Abu Shbaker said. “If you want to starve people, go ahead, but don’t debase us like this.” ... “This isn’t aid,” Zaydan said. “It’s a mouse trap.”

Nutrition
- Most families survive on just one nutritiously poor meal per day, while adults routinely skip meals to prioritize children, the elderly, and the ill amid deepening hunger and desperation.
- On average, 112 children have been admitted daily for treatment of acute malnutrition since the start of the year, with the situation set to deteriorate if conditions do not change immediately.
- As of 15 June, a total of 18,809 children under five years of age have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition, including 5,486 in May – within a population of children where wasting was non-existent 20 months ago.

Water and Sanitation
- 89% of water and sanitation facilities have been either destroyed or partially damaged
93% of households have experienced water insecurity and 91% reported worsening levels of drinking water security in June 2025

Infrastructure
- 92% of housing is destroyed or damaged.
- 70% of all structures are destroyed or damaged, as of April 2025.
- 81% of classified roads and 62% of the total road network, including agricultural roads, have been damaged or destroyed as of February 2025.

Health
- Incredibly, 17 hospitals are still partially functional.
- Channel 4 will be showing the documentary Doctors Under Attack tomorrow night (Wednesday 2 July) that documents the deliberate targetting of hospitals and medical staff by the IDF. I will be watching.

Education
- More than 2,300 educational facilities, ranging from kindergartens to universities have been destroyed as of February 2025
- More than 658,000 school-aged children have no access to formal learning spaces
- Over 88% of schools will require full reconstruction or major work to become functional, as of April 2025
- over 76,000 students in Gaza were unable to sit for their general secondary examinations over the past two academic years

Gender-based violence
- Incidents of gender-based violence continue to rise, with women and girls facing increasing risks of abuse, exploitation, coercion and harmful coping strategies in their struggle to survive.

Humanitarian aid
Barely anything is getting through. There is aid waiting to be delivered but the IDF is refusing to let the majority through and even when it does initially agree it is then creating issues that lead to missions being aborted or being only partly successful.

It's not just food that's the problem. The lack of fuel is limiting access to water and medical care.

MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza [said]: “The charade of only allowing medical and fuel supplies at the very last minute before a looming disaster is nothing but a band-aid on a gushing wound. The weaponization of aid must end.”

This is genocide, pure and simple.

How do we make it stop?

[discovolante]

Thanks again Fishnut. What an absolutely horrifying read.