MONROE — Israel has intensified its assault on Gaza in pursuit of Hamas, perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, with hundreds more kidnapped. However, retaliation from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has come at a cost of morale not only in Israel, but around the globe.
In the weeks following the initial terrorist attack, the IDF has cut off food, water, fuel, and power supplies, plus communication services — all while leveling much of Gaza City in the northern half of the Gaza Strip. The retaliation has led to more than 9,000 Palestinians killed — more than 41% of which were children.
For comparison, nearly as many Palestinian civilians have died in 25 days (9,061) as Ukrainians (9,614) have in the first 563 days of Russia’s war that began in February 2022. Ukraine has lost just over 550 children in that time, compared to 3,760 in Palestine as of Nov. 1.
The Gaza Strip, a small, densely populated region on the eastern Mediterranean Sea, is home to about 2.3 million people — about 45% of which are children.
In 2007, Hamas won 44% of the government election, which was higher than the other two political parties. Those that voted for Hamas make up less than 10% of the current population, as almost 80% of today’s Gaza civilians were either too young to vote, or not even born yet.
Hamas is considered a terrorist organization and not a political party in several countries across the world, including the United States.
Former Monroe High School exchange student Anastasia Yacoub, a sophomore last school year here in Wisconsin, returned to her home country of Palestine in June. She is now trapped with her family in the Gaza Strip. Friends in Monroe anxiously check in on her social media accounts, hoping to see new postings and actions, fearing for her death. Anastasia has been able to reconnect to the outside world after some nearby cell phone service was restored last weekend.
During the latest blitz by Israel in the now four weeks of war, communication services were turned off for the region. United Nations representatives, journalists and humanitarian aid workers stuck in the Gaza Strip were among those without a means to communicate while the IDF launched a ground invasion into the narrow state.
According to reports on Nov. 2, Israeli forces have circled all three land sides of Gaza City. Forces are attempting to kill Hamas fighters, many of whom move from location to location in underground tunnels and hide among the refugees seeking shelter from the constant shelling of IDF artillery.
This week, IDF missiles hit separate locations that thousands of Palestinian refugees were attempting to use as shelter, killing hundreds. One of the locations, known as the Bureij refugee camp, has been housing as many as 46,000 people. Since the ground attack began, just 18 Israeli soldiers have died. News organizations have also been hit, with 36 journalists killed the 4-week conflict — more than the total killed during the U.S. War on Terror in Iraq (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2001-2021), which saw 30 and 22 journalists killed. Officially, 17 journalists were killed during World War II (1939-1945), five during Korea (1950-1953) and four during Vietnam (1955-1975).
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement Nov. 2 that four of its schools in Gaza that are being used as shelters have been damaged in less than 24 hours.
UNICEF described the airstrikes on the refugee camp at Jabalia “scenes of carnage” while calling yet again for a ceasefire in order to give humanitarian aid to civilians in critical need.
According to international human rights organizations, like Amnesty International and Save Our Children, as well as leaders in the United Nations, Israel’s shutting off of clean water, electricity, fuel and food supplies are considered war crimes. In fact, many in the international community have call the acts of shelling shelter locations — which include schools, hospitals and places of worship — as war crimes, even genocide.
The International Criminal Court defines the crime of genocide as the specific intent to destroy in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing its members or by other means, including imposing measures intended to prevent births or forcibly transferring children from one group to another.
According to health officials from the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, the only cancer treatment hospital in Gaza, the facility went out of service on Nov. 1 due to lack of fuel to power generators and machines.
“We tell the world — don’t leave cancer patients to a certain death due to the hospital being out of service,” Subhi Skaik, the director, said at a press conference.
Humanitarian aid began entering Gaza through the southern border crossing with Egypt last weekend, but shipments have been slow. Gaza received between 500-800 trucks of supplies a day before the current war broke out. After three weeks of zero shipments, about 217 had made it into Gaza between Oct. 21 and Nov. 1.
Some evacuations through the Egyptian Rafah crossing have happened, though it has been completely controlled to those severely wounded and foreign nationals.
Egypt is concerned with the practicality of allowing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugees to enter through a small crossing all at once in a mass exodus. Safety, not just from a stampede of a mass of humans crossing at once, but for hospitality, food, and medical care, are not readily available to aid the Palestinians, let alone the fear of Hamas or other terrorists blending in with the crowd and entering new territory.
Egypt’s authoritarian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi considers the risk of housing up to 1 million Palestinians — even in designated camps — a political risk not worth taking.
In leaks from inside the Israeli government on Thursday, an intelligence ministry concept paper written this month suggests that Israel plans to eject tens of thousands of Palestinians into the Sinai in Egypt. In 1948, when modern Israel was created, 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, and the current conflict has Palestinians fearing history repeating itself.