Media coverage
DER SPIEGEL · 2023-10-14
The report says people in the Gaza Strip have become very difficult to reach because internet and electricity have largely collapsed, while testimonies from inside describe streets full of desperate people, overcrowded shelters and schools, and hospitals overwhelmed by the wounded and displaced. It adds that Israeli evacuation orders have pushed large numbers to flee despite the absence of any safe place, and that analysts and local sources warned of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
The report says people in the Gaza Strip have become very difficult to reach because internet and electricity have largely collapsed, while testimonies from inside describe streets full of desperate people, overcrowded shelters and schools, and hospitals overwhelmed by the wounded and displaced. It…
People queue for water in Gaza
People in the Gaza Strip are now difficult to reach, as the internet has barely functioned since Israel bombed the telecommunications infrastructure, and there is almost no electricity left, meaning people often cannot charge their mobile phones. On Saturday evening, SPIEGEL received several messages from the coastal strip, and they sounded dramatic.
“The streets are full of desperate people who do not know where to go. The schools that have been turned into emergency shelters are completely overcrowded,” reported a local SPIEGEL staff member whose name we are not publishing for her protection. She said it was difficult to find food and drinking water. She had visited Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which was operating at the limits of its capacity — and displaced people had settled there on the floor in search of safe refuge. “They are sitting tightly packed together and sharing what little food they have.”
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Israel had called on people in the north of the Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes, but this affects more than one million people, around half the residents of the small coastal strip, where there is no safe place left. Hospitals are also supposed to be evacuated. The World Health Organization said that was impossible and amounted to a death sentence for seriously ill people who could not be evacuated.
## Convoy apparently hit
A convoy of people fleeing was hit by an explosion, according to a report by the BBC and the Washington Post, which local sources also confirm. Dozens of people are said to have died in the attack. Responsibility has not yet been clarified; according to the BBC, the Israeli army announced an investigation. It in turn accuses Hamas of erecting roadblocks to prevent people from fleeing. “I met people who had evacuated their homes and wanted to flee south, and then turned back because it was too dangerous,” the SPIEGEL staff member reports. “They said, if we die, then at least in our homes.”
Palestinians search for victims in the rubble
A local contact who had fled with his family to the southern town of Khan Younis and also does not wish to be quoted described scenes of people fleeing that, he said, reminded him of accounts of the “Nakba,” as Palestinians call their trauma of flight after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war: “We saw long convoys of cars and transport vehicles carrying women and children, some luggage, and mattresses. It was sad and terrible.”
## “The situation is insane”
Journalist Shams Odeh told SPIEGEL: “In Gaza City, people are living in darkness and fear. And waiting for it finally to stop. The situation is insane. People are hoping for a ceasefire. Gaza is a ghost place. In Gaza City, many have fled to the south. There are no people on the streets, no cars, no lights, nothing. If fuel from Egypt does not arrive by tomorrow at the latest, the hospitals will have no electricity.”
Analyst Omar Shaban of the independent think tank PalThink in Gaza, who regularly works as a writer for foundations and international media, issued an urgent appeal for help. The Gaza Strip was experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented since 1967. He said 2,300 dead had been counted, but hundreds were still buried under the rubble. In a single week, hospitals had admitted about 8,000 wounded, roughly as many as during the 51-day war in 2014. Medical teams were no longer able to function.
It was impossible, Shaban writes, for two million people to live in less than one-third of the area of the Gaza Strip. “The decision to impose a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, cut off electricity, stop fuel, and ban infant formula and medicines threatens to turn the entire Gaza Strip into a real grave,” Shaban warned. “Those who do not die in the bombardment will starve and die of thirst.” In a statement to journalists, Shaban called for an immediate 48-hour humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further loss of life, “today.”
Text © DER SPIEGEL — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source