18,000 people per square kilometre without power or water: the nightmare of the southern Gaza Strip
If Israel’s infantry indeed does invade Khan Yunis while it’s bombarded from the air, the sea, and the land, or afterwards, it means that sometime in the near future, Israel intends to compel, concentrate, coerce and force about two million people into around 110 square kilometres, raising the density there to 18,181 people per square kilometre. The barely, or no longer operating, water, sanitation, electricity, traffic and health systems, which even in more peaceful days barely provided for the needs of around a million people, will collapse entirely when faced with two million humans.
By Amira Hass *
25–44 per cent of Israelis support renewing Jewish settlement in Gaza Strip, according to The Jewish People Policy Institute and Meet the Press. Meanwhile, the land that once housed the Gush Katif settlements now awaits newly displaced Palestinians. The IDF’s order to evacuate northern Gaza attests that their intention is not to target noncombatants. As mentioned in a few of the flyers dropped by Israeli fighter planes, those who fail to follow instructions will be considered terrorist supporters. We can infer that those that remain in northern Gaza are responsible for their own deaths under heavy artillery and crossfire, or for being buried alive under rubble. If it was the right thing to do in south Lebanon, it’s also right for Gaza, if you follow military logic.
But the Palestinian coastal enclave is smaller than Lebanon: 365 square kilometres versus 10,230. And the overpopulation in Gaza much higher: 6,100 people per square kilometre, compared with 547 in Lebanon, according to both the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics and the World Bank. And so, it seems we need to emphasise the ways in which condensing over two million people into half the space they were originally allotted, while fighting ensues not far from away, bombs falling nearby — this impacts their health and the humanitarian conditions. It is particularly those who support a continued ground attack until they “destroy Hamas” that must know what these impacts will be once gunfire dies down, the final numbers are confirmed, and placed on every media and foreign minister’s desk around the world.
In addition to the spread of communicable diseases already reported by medical bodies, including respiratory infections and various gastric and skin diseases, this week they the first signs of spreading hepatitis infections in some of those displaced persons. This is on top of the ongoing food shortage, which affects pregnant women and children in particular, the shortage of medicines for those suffering from chronic illnesses, and the difficulty in caring for the tens of thousands of injured people in fewer and fewer remaining functional hospitals, and without anaesthetic.
Awareness of the dire conditions today and the anticipated impacts of further combat has already caused the US government to tweak its position: ‘It is vital that Israeli fighting, as it moves south, is done in a way that will minimise widespread displacement’, it stated, according to Reuters. In other words: go back to fighting, but be more careful. Does this tongue twister convey some awareness of this inherent contradiction and of the inability to both send soldiers and tanks to a densely populated area and also avoid mass displacement?
There’s nowhere to go
If the IDF extends its ground attack into southern Gaza and especially into Khan Yunis — the city and refugee camp where Yahya Sinwar was born and raised — it is hard to imagine it doing anything but ordering people who already fled there to leave their homes and shelters. It’s also hard to imagine it foregoing air cover for the infantry. It’s also hard to imagine most of the residents remaining in their homes and temporary shelters while the IDF bombs and shells them. But where will they go?
During last week’s ceasefire, the IDF prevented people from returning to their homes in the north, not even to retrieve medications or warm clothes. The prevailing belief is that Israel will forbid the return of displaced people to the north and so they will just remain in the south. The area south of Wadi Gaza, as well as its three subsections, is 230 square kilometres, a quarter of which is agricultural land, and theoretically could hold the additional displaced persons. But the IDF has already set a span of one kilometre along the southern border, that is, a strip of approximately 30 kilometres, that is off limits. It has already ordered the residents of five villages south of Khan Yunis to evacuate. As far as we know, they have, and many of their homes have been destroyed. That is to say, a cautious estimate has at least 60 of the 230 square kilometres in the south of Gaza to which the IDF prohibits or prevents access.
Khan Yunis and its refugee camp cover 54 square kilometres. Despite some residents choosing to risk remaining in their homes — as had an unknown but significant number of people Gaza City and Jabaliya refugee camp — one must also deduct this urban space from the supposedly ”safe” zone in the south. Before the war, the three districts that make up the south — Deir al Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah — housed about a million people (out of 2.2m) at 4,347 people per square kilometre. Now, after being uprooted from the east and the northern Gaza Strip, we can estimate that figure to have increased to 11,000 people per square kilometre.
If Israel’s infantry indeed does invade Khan Yunis while it’s bombarded from the air, the sea, and the land, or afterwards, it means that sometime in the near future, Israel intends to compel, concentrate, coerce and force about two million people into around 110 square kilometres, raising the density there to 18,181 people per square kilometre. The barely, or no longer operating, water, sanitation, electricity, traffic and health systems, which even in more peaceful days barely provided for the needs of around a million people, will collapse entirely when faced with two million humans.
Agricultural lands, which still yield some food, will fill up with tents and maybe caravans brought in as humanitarian aid through Rafah, as one rumour has it. The manufacturing plants are mostly in the north and if they have not yet been destroyed, they’re certainly not functioning. And those still operational hospitals and clinics in Khan Yunis will most likely become inaccessible if not destroyed, just as had happened in the north. When every “safe”’ zone is adjacent to a combat zone it means that every slightly inaccurate bomb or shell would hit many civilians. Logic suggests that as the population density goes up, so do the number of casualties.
To the beach
One of the relatively empty agricultural areas in Gaza is the coast which stretches from Rafah in the south to Deir il-Balah in the north. Depending on how you calculate the width of this strip, it covers around 14–26kms. it was mentioned on 18 October by IDF spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, who gave his daily instructions in Arabic to Gazans, telling them to relocate to a part of this coastal region.
Up until their dismantling in 2005, 16 of the 22 Jewish settlements in Gaza Strip were along this coastal area and the area between the coast and Khan Yunis. It housed around 6,500 of the approximately 9,000 Israelis who settled in Gaza, as well as a few hundred Palestinian farmers. Khan Yunis today is home for around 291,000 residents in the city and the camp, as well as 300,000 more displaced persons from Gaza’s north and east. How many of them will manage to squeeze into the former settlements area, where residential neighbourhoods had meanwhile been built, as well as university campuses and military training bases? Several thousand people had already fled there in the first month of the war. How many more will be forced to crowd in there, in their relatives’ homes, in tents or maybe in caravans, without any suitable infrastructure, when the central hospitals there are increasingly forced to shut down?
“You’re asking me to describe the indescribable,” says Omar Shaban, an economist from Deir al-Balah, forced by the war to leave Gaza. “Those who couldn’t find shelter with relatives, nor in schools or hospitals, sleep in their cars. I have a few friends sleeping in their cars with their family. Could New York have absorbed twice its current population in a few weeks?”
If they’re not killed by the attacks of Israeli military forces or in the crossfire, Gazan residents may well die from the diseases and contamination caused by overcrowding and lack of water and medical care, especially during this cold and wet winter season. Their utter dependence on humanitarian aid and inability to earn a living are one of the reasons for the pervasive depression and exhaustion. Many speak increasingly of emigrating, as well as using bribery to get into Egypt.
One engineer who lived and worked in Gaza 20 years ago estimates that the intolerable overcrowding, along with ongoing bombing and fighting, will eventually force the desperate residents to breach the border into Egypt. Then he wonders: with all of its declarations condemning Israel’s plan to resettle Gazans within its borders, would Egypt ever dare order its own to shoot and kill many thousands of despairing, thirsty, hungry, and frightened people breaking in?
