"Gaza: The Largest Open-Air Prison"
The other day I received a text from someone who stated, "Well Israel gives them plenty of warning when they are going to bomb, so why don't they just leave?" It made me realize that maybe Americans still don't know.
Maybe we still don't know that no other place in this world shows the sad fate of the Palestinians quite like Gaza. 2.2 million Palestinians live in an area that is approximately 365 square kilometers, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. That means, there is around 14,893 people living per square mile. For context, we can compare this to American cities as you can see in the picture below.
Maybe we still don't know 50% of the people living in Gaza are children and there has been a total blockade on Gaza since 2006. People are locked in by both land and sea. Even though Gaza is on the coast of the Mediterranean, people cannot go further than 12 miles out, or they will be shot by Israel. There are two “gates” to Gaza, the Rafah crossing which borders Egypt and Egypt controls it, and the border with Israel called the Erez Crossing.
Maybe we still do not know no one goes in or out of Gaza without Israel’s permission. Even those with life-threatening medical conditions have to take permission from Israel to seek medical treatment outside and it is not always granted. In 2017, 54 patients died waiting for permission.
Maybe we still don't know because Gaza is under a total blockade, this means when Israel tells people they are going to bomb a residential home or an area, these people have no place to go. Israel will not let them out and as we have seen once again from this war, Israel tells people to leave an area, and then bombs the area where they have moved. One example of this is the Palestinians evacuating from the north to the south and Israel bombed them on the road killing 70 people. Another example is a Palestinian journalist that evacuated his family from the north to the south and Israel bombed them in the place they were taking refuge, killing the entire family.
Some have said, how humane Israel is for letting the civilians know in advance when they are going to bomb their homes, giving them time to leave. Not when you have locked them into an open-air prison with nowhere to run. Israel has dropped countless bombs on residential homes, mosques, churches, UNRWA schools, and hospitals. Please understand clearly, in Gaza there is no safe place to go as Israel is bombing even the places that are supposed to be considered safe under international law.
70% of the people living in Gaza are refugees from the 1948 Al-Nakba, both Muslims and Christians that were pushed into this area after their villages were taken over by Israeli forces. That means now, half of the population has never seen anything outside the walls of Gaza. With Israel’s total blockade since 2006, which many call collective punishment, Israel controls how much food and water goes in. Many say, they have counted the calories, so the people have just enough food not to starve. There are no exports allowed outside of Gaza. Fuel shortages mean the people do not have electricity for 20 hours each day and 95% of the water is undrinkable. The UN said that by the year 2020, Gaza would become uninhabitable. Gaza is truly hell on earth.
In 2006, the US pushed for elections to take place in Palestine. Hamas won the votes in parliament beating the group Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas won the Presidency. Hamas took over the Gaza strip, Israel removed the rest of their settlements out of Gaza and blockaded them in. You should know, Hamas was initially funded by Israel according to Israel's military governor of Gaza, Yitzhak Segev, as a way to keep the power from both the communist and nationalist movements in Palestine from fully rising to power. Obviously, this failed, and Israel lost control of Hamas when they began militant attacks in the 1990's. In the early 2000's, Palestinians attempted non-violent resistance, but then once again, Hamas came in with violence. Gaza became walled off, electricity, food and water were controlled, and poverty set in.
There is a major difference between the civilian Palestinians living in Gaza and Hamas.
This week a document was leaked from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry that recommended a forcible and permanent transfer of all the civilians in Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula. The 10-page document from October 13, 2023, assesses three options for the future of Gaza in the framework of the current war, and recommends a transfer of the current population as its preferred action. This does not mean Israel has adopted this policy, but it was just a recommendation from the Ministry. Watch closely in the coming months to the narrative being spoken about this.
Here is the document in translated into English.
