In both Israel and the Gaza Strip, economic conditions have worsened as food insecurity, water scarcity, and homelessness have become the order of the day, with the situation considered to be more terrible in Gaza.
Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages, of whom 105 have been released and several others killed.
Aiming to eliminate Hamas, Israel has carried out a relentless bombardment of Gaza, alongside a ground invasion, that has killed about 20,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
According to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Israeli authorities estimate that about 129 people remained captive in Gaza, including Israelis and foreign nationals, and added that on December 16, the body of a hostage was discovered in Gaza, according to Israeli officials.
The Ambassador of Israel in Nigeria, Michael Freeman, while responding to questions from our correspondent, reiterated that the Hamas group broke through Israel’s border from Gaza, and entered towns and villages.
“There, they slaughtered over 1,200 innocent men, women and children. They tortured children in front of their parents, tortured parents in front of their children, and brutalised, raped, and abused anyone that they could find, before systematically murdering them. Whole families were burnt alive, 340 young people were sadistically butchered at a music festival…”
He said Hamas also kidnapped 240 others in Gaza, including babies, children, and the elderly.
However, since Israel’s retaliation to the October 7 attack, houses have been reported to be reduced to rubble in Gaza while many civilians have fled the region.
While stating that about 5,431 were injured in Israel, the OCHA stated in its December 16 report that over 52,000 housing units had been destroyed in Gaza.
It said since October 7 and as of December 15, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency reported that at least 288 Internally Displaced Persons seeking refuge in its shelters had been killed and at least 998 injured.
“A total of 342 school buildings have sustained damage (about 70 per cent of all school buildings in Gaza). Seventy of the schools damaged are UNRWA schools, with at least 56 serving as shelters for the IDPs. Several schools, including UNRWA schools, have been directly hit by Israeli airstrikes or tank shells,” the report said.
The UN agency noted that areas encompassing nearly 30 per cent of the Gaza Strip (excluding the orders to evacuate the areas north of Wadi Gaza) had been marked for evacuation on the Israeli military’s online map that was launched on December 1.
“Since December 3, tens of thousands of IDPs, who have arrived in the Rafah governorate, continue to face extremely overcrowded conditions both inside and outside shelters. With an estimated fourfold increase in population density, exceeding 12,000 people per square kilometre, the Rafah governorate is now the most densely populated area within the Gaza Strip,” it said.
It however acknowledged that obtaining an accurate figure of the total number of IDPs remained challenging.
“According to the UNRWA, almost 1.9 million people in Gaza, or nearly 85 per cent of the population are estimated to be internally displaced, including people who have been displaced multiple times.
“Nearly 1.3 million of these IDPs are registered in 155 UNRWA facilities across Gaza, including more than 1.2 million in 98 UNRWA shelters in the Middle Area, Khan Younis, and Rafah governorates. The average number of the IDPs in the UNRWA shelters located in the middle and southern areas is about 12,400, more than four times their capacity,” OCHA stated.
Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was under siege by Israeli troops for a second day on December 18, a doctor told CNN.
One of the few partially functional hospitals in Gaza had been under siege by the Israeli military for a second consecutive day, the doctor said.
Four patients died at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Monday because they could not receive proper medical care due to the siege, and some 150 patients have been evacuated to the hospital’s courtyard, according to Dr. Fadel Naeem.
Naeem claimed that the Israeli army had “abducted” two surgeons from the hospital as well as “companions” of patients at the hospital who were blindfolded, stripped of their clothes, and interrogated.
Dozens of people taken from the hospital were still being held by the military, the doctor said.
Naeem also told CNN that Israeli tanks were stationed in Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City, less than 200 metres (656 feet) from the hospital, amid the ongoing fighting in the area.
Meanwhile, CNN noted that allegations of the abduction could not be substantiated yet.
The persistent attacks on hospitals have made healthcare provision worse and by extension, leave women, particularly pregnant women and nursing mothers, in pathetic situations.
According to the World Health Organisation, a woman, Susan, 20, gave birth to twin girls in Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza on October 13. “That was the last time she saw them. She fled as the hospital came under attack and was only able to see her babies again just two days ago. ‘This war must end,’ she sobbed,” the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean posted on X via @WHOEMRO on December 9.
A woman who was soon due to give birth also narrated her ordeal to UNICEF following attacks on healthcare facilities. “I will give birth soon but I do not know where to put my daughter whom I will give birth to,” said an expectant mother in Gaza, Aya, according to a post by @UNICEF on December 8.
“To provide mothers and children with the support they so desperately need, UNICEF continues to call for a humanitarian ceasefire,” the post added.
Since the start of the escalation on October 7, the UNOCHA noted there had been “large-scale grave violations against children.”
The spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund, Tess Ingram, told our correspondent via mail, “Thousands of children have died in a matter of weeks and, with the ongoing fighting, reportedly hundreds more children are being killed and injured every day. Our colleagues on the ground have met children who have lost limbs, their homes, or their families – sometimes all three.”
While responding to questions from concerning the fate of children amid the Israel-Hamas war, Ingram added that “the lack of lifesaving aid available to these children decreases their chances of surviving this horrific situation.”
According to UNICEF, water scarcity and unsafe sanitation “elevate the risk of disease, especially chronic diarrhoea among children.” The agency disclosed to our correspondent that the challenges confronting the vulnerable in the war regions include drinking water from brackish agricultural wells, which it said also “exposes communities to harmful chemicals and high saline content, particularly threatening to the health of vulnerable groups like newborns, children, and women.”
“Medical teams have already noted a rise in cases of acute respiratory disorders, diarrhoea, and hepatitis A, including among children under five years of age. Adding to these concerns is the discharge of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea, creating both environmental and public health hazards.” “We project that over the next few months, child wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition in children, could increase by nearly 30 per cent in Gaza,” UNICEF noted.
Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, calling it a “war crime” in a report released in December — a charge that an Israeli government spokesperson dismissed as “a lie.”
The Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir, told CNN that Israeli authorities “have for months been deliberately depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, intentionally destroying objects indispensable to survival, including bakeries, grain mills and water and sanitation facilities, and razing agricultural areas.”
Shakir told CNN, “World leaders should speak out and take urgent action to prevent further atrocities—the lives of hundreds of thousands hang in the balance.”
But Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy dismissed the watchdog’s claims on December 18, saying Hamas was to blame for any shortages in Gaza.
“This is a lie,” he said in response to a social media post from Shakir on X. “Israel has excess capacity to inspect more than twice as many aid trucks as are entering Gaza. We’re still pumping water into Gaza through two pipelines and have placed no restrictions on entry of food and water,” Levy said. “Direct your anger to Hamas, which hijacks aid.”
Some civilians in the war-torn zone who spoke to Human Rights Watch lamented how water and food scarcity was worsening their ordeal.
“I have to walk three kilometers to get one gallon (of water),” said 30-year-old Marwan, who fled to the south with his pregnant wife and two children on November 9. “And there is no food. If we can find food, it is canned food. Not all of us are eating well.”
“We don’t have enough of anything,” said 36-year-old Hana, who fled her home in the north to Khan Younis in the south with her father, his wife, and her brother on October 11.
Majed, 34, who fled with his wife and four surviving children to the south on or around November 10 told the watchdog, “There was no water – we were buying water, sometimes for $10 a cup. It wasn’t always drinkable. Sometimes, (the water we drank) was from the bathroom, and sometimes from the sea. The markets around the area were empty. There wasn’t even canned food.”
Taher, 32, also said, ‘‘The city was out of everything, of food and water. If you find canned food, the prices are so high. We decided to eat just once a day to survive. We were running out of money. We decided to just have the necessities, to have less of everything.”
The head of the World Health Organisation in December denounced “the effective destruction” of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of Gaza.
The WHO noted that at least eight patients had died.
Among the deceased patients was a nine-year-old child, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
His statement came as the Israeli army pulled out of the hospital after an operation lasting several days, claiming it had been used as a command and control centre by Hamas. Hamas has repeatedly denied such claims.
“@WHO is appalled by the effective destruction of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza over the last several days, rendering it non-functional and resulting in the death of at least eight patients,” Tedros wrote.
“Many health workers were reportedly detained, and WHO and partners are urgently seeking information on their status,” he added.
Israel’s representative to the United Nations posted to X accusing Tedros of making no mention of “Hamas entrenchment in hospitals”.
According to AFP, Israel said that before entering the hospital, it had negotiated safe passage for the evacuation of most of the hospital.
But the statement by Tedros added, “We learned that many patients had to self-evacuate at great risk to their health and safety, with ambulances unable to reach the facility.
“Of the deceased patients, several died due to lack of adequate health care, including a nine-year-old child.
“We are extremely concerned for the well-being of the internally displaced people who are reportedly sheltering in the hospital building.”
All healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip have been hit hard by the bombardments and ground invasion launched by Israel following Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, according to AFP.
Speaking on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the Palestinian Ambassador to Nigeria, Abu Shawesh, in an interview disclosed to our correspondent that “the issue here is not only the shortage of humanitarian aid, but to add insult to injury, Israel has not been permitting enough aid to enter Gaza in a sufficient amount, we all witnessed hundreds of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid waiting on the line for the Israeli permission to enter Gaza.”
Shawesh said, “Humanitarian aid requires a logistical chain to ensure efficient, timely, and equitable distribution and allocation. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Gaza. Mass destruction, communication breakdowns, physical barriers, and limited vehicle movement due to fuel shortages, as well as the killing of hundreds of experts of human relief workers, have disrupted organised distribution channels. These factors, along with others not listed here, make it nearly impossible for humanitarian aid to reach the people, especially in certain geographic locations.”
According to the envoy, more than 80% of the citizens have been internally and forcefully displaced, the health sector is on the brink of collapse, the water supply is nearly shut down. “The endless list of miserable situations has created needs that are beyond the capacity of any one government or state to handle alone. It requires collective cooperation from the international community.”
He alleged that the “ongoing piracy of Palestine’s tax revenues by Israel has pushed the Palestinian National Authority to the brink of financial bankruptcy. Less than 10 days ago, the PNA approached local banks to borrow a small sum of money to cover only 50% of last October’s salaries for its employees. Additionally, for nearly three years, the PNA government has only been able to pay 80% of the salaries. This is just the tip of the iceberg if we want to analyse the financial crisis that we face.” These details cannot be independently verified by .
“It has been said that the humanitarian crisis and catastrophic situation in Gaza cannot be handled by the Palestinian authority alone. Gaza is the crisis of humanity, as the UN Secretary-General called it before, and should be handled and tackled by the international community at large,” the ambassador added.
Speaking on the condition of women and children, Shawesh said the percentage of women among the Palestinian people is nearly 50% of the total population, while the percentage of children (boys and girls) is around 47 %.”
“After the recent Israeli military aggression, these two very weak categories were subjected to be the most affected part. Around 70% of the victims, including both deaths and injuries, were children and women.
“This is not the end of the tragedy. Both of them have special needs and require extra hygienic care. Unfortunately, due to the lack of water; and other women’s special needs, they are subject to many diseases, particularly dermal diseases,” he stated.
Calling on the international community, the envoy sought “Upholding and applying international law on an equal basis. Standing firmly and strongly, to implement the adapted resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly.”
“We call for the activation of Article Seven of the United Nations Charter. We call for the activation of many peaceful, legal, diplomatic, and non-violent tools that we can activate, such as boycotting the settlements, and this boycott extends to depriving settlers of entry to airports, countries, and education.
“Finally, the international community should stop treating Israel as a spoiled and grumpy teenager,” the embassy said.
The Israeli Embassy in Nigeria said Israel was doing all it could to protect civilians.
The Ambassador of Israel in Nigeria, Michael Freeman, when contacted, said, “Israel is going to extraordinary lengths to protect innocent civilians in Gaza. We have set up a safe zone in the Southern part of the Gaza Strip, have created and protected humanitarian corridors for civilians to travel to these safe zones and we have distributed millions of leaflets that have been dropped advising civilians where the safe zones and humanitarian corridors are. Further, we have made tens of thousands of individual phone calls to warn civilians of pending air strikes and battles.”
The envoy claimed that Hamas on the other hand deliberately placed civilians in harm’s way. “Hamas places its rockets, guns, fighters, and bases inside and under hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian spaces while at the same time, its fighters dress in civilian clothes and hide behind women and children,” he told The PUNCH in December. Hamas has repeatedly denied these allegations.
Freeman claimed the Hamas group had invested the money in building underground tunnels for their fighters, “(Hamas have built over 500km of tunnels in the Gaza strip – for comparison the London Underground has 400 km of tunnels) and built nothing for the Palestinians of Gaza.” These claims cannot be independently verified by .
When asked if there were plans by Israel to work with the international community in rebuilding damaged civilian infrastructures such as hospitals and schools caused by the war, the envoy said, “Once the war is over, there will need to be an international plan to (sic) rebuild damaged infrastructure.”
Speaking on hope for a ceasefire soon, Freeman’s response partly read, “That depends on Hamas. If Hamas releases all the hostages.” He said the war would end “when we return all of our hostages.”
The President of the International Human Rights and Dignity Defenders Forum, David Vine, in an interview with our correspondent, condemned the war between Israel and Hamas, lamenting how children and women are bearing the brunt.
Vine said, “(The war) is never a good one. It’s never a palatable one. It’s usually very difficult for (the damage) to be avoided especially in this case where many innocent women and children have fallen victims. It’s certainly condemnable. It has affected both sides because when they went after Israel during their festive period, they were not expecting the hit.
In it all, we’re not happy about it, we condemn it in totality. We wish the bigger international community would wade in to see how they can settle the war. In all of this, we want peace to reign. Israel should cease fire, they have to cease fire. We want peace.”
Amnesty International’s Nigeria Director, Isa Sanusi, disclosed to that the organisation “had done a lot on the situation in Gaza.” He disclosed this while responding to questions from our correspondent on the position of the organisation in the ongoing war as it relates to civilian casualties. He shared the organisation’s statement in reaction to the US veto of a UN Security Council draft resolution that called for a ceasefire in the war.
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard knocked the US for displaying “disregard for civilian suffering.” “By vetoing this resolution, the US has displayed a callous disregard for civilian suffering in the face of a staggering death toll, extensive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe happening in the occupied Gaza Strip,” Callamard was quoted as saying.
“There can be no justification for continuing to block meaningful action by the UN Security Council to stop massive civilian bloodshed,” the Secretary-General said.
