On 7th October, Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. During the assault, the Palestinian militia group killed more than 1,400 people & took over 200 hostages, many of them Israeli civilians & foreigners.
Since then, the Israeli government & defence forces have continuously carried out retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip, which is home to 2 million Palestinian people.
According to the Palestine health ministry, over 8,500 people have been killed since the Israeli armies launched airstrikes & sent troops and tanks into Palestinian territory.
Since Israel’s declaration of war on the Gaza Strip, they have cut off food, water & electricity from the whole area. Shipments of fuel needed to generate power for hospitals, shelters, treatment stations & sewage systems have also been completely cut off by the Israeli government.
As a result, thousands of Palestinians & Gaza residents have been forced into distribution centres to take shelter from airstrikes & Israel Defence Force (IDF) members.
Over the last weekend, dozens of lorries carrying aid supplies entered Gaza from Egypt to provide support. However, Gaza previously normally received 500 lorry-loads of supplies in a day.
According to the UN, the majority of civilians now only have salty water to drink & have been forced to ration basic survival & hygiene supplies.
Death tolls from both sides have been rising quicker than any other previous clashes between Israel & Palestine. Since 2008 to September 2023, there have been 5,360 Palestinians killed in Gaza according to their government.
However, with the large scale escalation of the IDF, the conflict has seen a higher number of civilian casualties than ever. Over 8,000 Palestinians have been killed, 40% of whom are projected to have been children.
On 28th October, the IDF warned civilians in Gaza to flee south of the strip. However, the territory is difficult to cross, as there are only 2 roads connecting the north & the south, and air strikes have occurred every day since Israel declared a war.
Two-thirds of the population is thought to have moved south since the beginning of October. The UN has warned that if the 1.1M population of the north is forced to relocate, it will cause a “humanitarian disaster”.
Humanitarian NGO ‘Amnesty International’ has investigated the airstrikes launched by Israeli forces between 7th & 12th October. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 47 families (consisting of over 500 civilians) have been wiped out from the civil registry in Gaza.
According to reports by Palestine News & Information Agency, the number of “erased families” may have reached over 825 bloodlines by 28th October.
Furthermore, humanitarian organisation ‘Save the Children’ has estimated that the number of children killed in Gaza in just 3 weeks has surpassed the annual number of child fatalities across the world’s conflict zones since 2019.
According to Amnesty International, majority of the Israeli attacks have been “indiscriminate” & “unlawful”. The UN has stated that 42% of the residential housing areas have been bombed in Gaza, of which many residents have not been notified for evacuation before striking.
The organisation claims that “Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians & military objectives”.
On Monday, Israel’s Prime Minister rejected the call for a cease-fire & vowed to “fight until battle is won”, claiming that a cease-fire would “surrender [Israel] to Hamas”. The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in an emergency meeting yesterday that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life & death for millions”.
