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…
Add to reading list
Listen to article (4 minutes)
4 min
More sharing options
People stand in Gaza waiting for water
People in the Gaza Strip are now very difficult to reach, as the internet has hardly functioned since Israel bombed the telecommunications infrastructure, and there is almost no electricity left, so people often cannot charge their mobile phones. On Saturday evening, SPIEGEL received some 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 converted into emergency shelters are completely overcrowded,” reported a local SPIEGEL staff member, whose name we are not publishing for her protection. It is difficult to find food and drinking water, she said. She had visited Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which is operating at the limit 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 the little food they have.”
Terror war against Israel: How Hamas breached Israel’s border barrierBy Alexander Sarovic
7 min
Add to reading list
opinion
opinion
•Personal impressions from Israel: I am afraid to close my eyes. Because the images immediately reappear
A personal account by Richard C. Schneider
4 min
Add to reading list
Israel’s search for Hamas hostages: Alive they are more valuable than deadAn analysis by Richard C. Schneider
5 min
Add to reading list
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 longer any safe place. Hospitals, too, are supposed to be evacuated. The World Health Organization said that this was impossible and amounted to a death sentence for seriously ill people who could not be evacuated.
## Convoy apparently hit
According to a report by the BBC and the Washington Post, a convoy of people fleeing was hit by an explosion, 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 setting up roadblocks to prevent people from fleeing. “I met people who had evacuated their homes and wanted to flee south, and then turned back again 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 likewise does not wish to be quoted by name, 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 in the streets, no cars, no lights, nothing. If fuel does not arrive from Egypt 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 an author for foundations and international media, issued an urgent call for help. The Gaza Strip is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented since 1967. A total of 2,300 dead had been counted, but hundreds were still buried under the rubble. In a single week, the hospitals had taken in around 8,000 injured people, about as many as during the 51-day war in 2014. Medical teams were no longer able to function.
It is impossible, Shaban writes, for two million people to live on 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 bombings 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