▲ At least 16,500 children have died under Israel’s arsenal since October 7, 2023. The image, after this week’s attacks in Gaza.Photo Afp
From the Editorial
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, October 6, 2024, p. 16
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) assured that for the past 12 months, Israel has been waging a genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gazaand they have murdered almost 42 thousand people and forced more than 2 million into famine, half of them are children who have nowhere to flee or hide.
In addition, some 2 million Palestinians (of the 2.4 million inhabitants), 90 percent of the population of the strip, have been forced to move. again and again towards smaller and smaller areas.
Israel has devastated most of the territory, leaving entire neighborhoods destroyed and the north of the enclave depopulated, including Gaza City; It has systematically destroyed the health system, civil infrastructure, schools, universities, libraries, museums and other cultural and heritage sites, in addition to desecrating cemeteries.
While since the start of the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel has imprisoned nearly a million Palestinians through a military court system that human rights groups have condemned as unfair, as of October 2023 Tel Aviv holds thousands of Gazans captive and under torture, as documented by the United Nations (UN), human rights groups and journalists.
The IMEU maintains that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is being armed, financed and diplomatically protected by the United States government, in violation of its own law, international law and against the opinion of the majority of Americans.
It also criticizes President Joe Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s far-right government and its campaign in Gaza and has emboldened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading to a spiraling campaign of massive attacks in Lebanon, threatening to provoke a major conflagration. in the region and beyond: the Israeli army has killed more than 2,000 Lebanese in the last two weeks, including at least 87 children.
In addition, it has forced a million people to leave their homes. The report further notes that, as world attention focuses on Gaza, Israel launched a massive wave of violence and repression against Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinians to drive them from their homes.
Between October 2023 and September 2024, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed at least 693 Palestinians in the reoccupied West Bank, 158 children among them.
At the same time, between October 2023 and August 2024, the UN recorded approximately 1,250 Israeli settler hostilities in the West Bank, which have claimed the lives of 243 Palestinians – including at least 38 children – and this violence forced more than 1,000 600 Palestinians to leave their homes.
The France 24 television network published figures for a year of unprecedented destruction in recent history, following the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. Here are some relevant data:
dead
Almost 42 thousand people killed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army.
Every day, approximately 115 people have died in Gaza due to the war, five people every hour.
Injured
At least 96 thousand inhabitants injured in Gaza, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, many of them with serious injuries.
Every day, 10 children have lost limbs since the start of the war, Save The Children estimated in January.
In one year, 6 percent of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured, according to the World Health Organization.
Missing
10,000 people remain under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, although Oxfam (an international confederation of humanitarian aid institutions) published a report on October 1 showing that almost 20,000 people have not been identified, missing or buried under rubble.
Truncated childhoods
More than 16,500 children were murdered in these 12 months in the Palestinian enclave, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The figures, however, vary. Oxfam assures that there would be 11,000 dead children – not counting those who still remain under the rubble. Likewise, more than 25 thousand children have lost one of their parents or have been orphaned.
Violence against women
It is estimated that around 10,000 Palestinian women have been murdered, according to UN Women. About 60 percent of the victims in Gaza are women and children. At least 19,000 have been injured and it is estimated that 37 mothers are murdered every day in Gaza.
The UN estimates that in October 2023 there were at least 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. Now, every 24 hours there are 183 births, many of them in precarious conditions. By September, the UN estimates that almost 937,000 were forced to leave their homes and about 3,000 were widowed.
Hunger
The humanitarian situation in Gaza reached alarming levels. In May, the UN stated that the enclave was in a unprecedented emergency. According to the analysis of the IPC (Integrated Food Security Classification), 96 percent of the population is today on the brink of famine.
Hospitals, schools and civil infrastructure, in ruins
Health facilities have suffered enormous damage, only 17 of the 36 hospitals in the strip are partially functioning, indicates a report by Doctors Without Borders.
Nearly 85 percent of Gaza school buildings damaged by Israeli strikesreports a statistic made by Al Jazeera.
In July, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that more than 560 schools were attacked or directly damaged by Israel.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (Unrwa) warns that, as a result of the war, the education of children and young people would be delayed by up to five years.
In addition, Oxfam reports, civil infrastructure was completely destroyed or severely damaged, including around 68 percent of farmland and roads.
Al Jazeera – citing data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the WHO and the Palestinian government – found that more than half of Gaza’s homes were damaged or destroyed.
Preliminarily, the military campaign in Gaza has led to the highest daily death rate of the 21st century.
