More than 60% of housing in Gaza destroyed
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed tens of thousands, created a humanitarian catastrophe and raised the possibility of wider conflict across the Middle East.
Here are some facts about the territory:
What is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is located in the southeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea and is 45 kilometers (25 miles) long and 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide at its maximum. It is sandwiched between Israel to the north and east and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the south.
The Gaza Strip, formerly part of the British Mandate of Palestine, became a territory during Israel’s founding war in 1948, when invading Egyptian forces took control of it.
Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War. Palestinians have long sought a state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Who lives in Gaza?
Gaza has approximately 2.3 million Palestinians and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. About 1.7 million of them are refugees or descendants of refugees who were deported or fled their homes during the 1948 war.
Even before the latest war, some 81.5 percent of the population lived in poverty, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
How did we get here?
In 1987, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank launched the first uprising against Israeli occupation.
In 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a historic peace agreement with Israel, paving the way for limited Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The newly formed Palestinian Authority cracked down on opponents of the peace process, including the Islamist group Hamas.
Gaza was the scene of the second intifada that broke out in 2000 after peace talks failed. Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from the area in 2005 but continues to control its land and sea borders – transit to Egypt is prohibited.
In 2006, Hamas unexpectedly won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and took full control of the Gaza Strip, overthrowing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel and Egypt have tightened restrictions on the movement of people and goods at Gaza crossings.
Since then, Palestinian militants in Gaza have clashed with Israel many times, including a 50-day war in 2014. The conflict is dominated by Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli aerial and artillery strikes on the Gaza Strip.
The most recent war broke out on October 7, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping about 250, according to Israeli statistics.
How bad is the humanitarian situation?
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that as of April 4, 33,037 people had been confirmed dead and 75,668 injured in Israeli air and ground attacks, with thousands more yet to be found in the rubble. The ministry said about 40% of the victims were children.
UNRWA said that as of March 16, as many as 1.7 million people, or more than 75% of the population, had been displaced since October 7, some of them multiple times. More than 1 million displaced people live in Rafah, in the southernmost tip of Gaza, near the Egyptian border.
More than 60 percent of housing units were destroyed, as were 392 educational facilities, 123 ambulances and 184 mosques, the report said.
In October, the mains power supply was cut off.
Children in northern Gaza are dying of hunger, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 4, citing a WHO team’s visit to two hospitals.
The world hunger watchdog, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said on March 18 that famine in northern Gaza is imminent and could begin in May and spread throughout the enclave in July.
The report said that 70% of people in parts of northern Gaza are suffering from the most severe food shortages, more than three times the 20% famine threshold. A total of 1.1 million Gazans – about half the population – are experiencing “catastrophic” food shortages.
Western doctors who have visited the Palestinian enclave in recent months told a United Nations event on March 19 that Gaza’s health care system has essentially collapsed.
UNRWA said on February 22 that only 12 hospitals in Gaza were still partially operational, with more than 300,000 cases of acute respiratory infections and more than 200,000 cases of watery diarrhea reported.
The United Nations Satellite Center said on March 21 that satellite images analyzed by the center showed that 35% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or damaged during the Israeli offensive.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
