ALL of those committed to justice and peace have been watching in horror as daily reports of extreme hunger, starvation and the resultant deaths have emerged from Gaza. What is most shocking is that many people have been killed while trying to obtain essential food for themselves, their children and other family members.
While truckloads of food aid may be waiting just a few miles away without being allowed to reach the starving people and a splurge of luxury goods can be seen in nearby markets of the region, people of Gaza have continued to be deprived of the most basic needs of human survival.
Seeing such extreme distress the world waits for the latest round of ceasefire efforts (there have been so many), but it appears that some very powerful persons are just not sincere about this and so even when ceasefire has been reached it has not been durable.
It has been becoming clearer with the passage of time that the objective of Israel since October 2023 has been to make it more and more difficult for the people of Gaza to live in their homeland. A lot of aggression has been to make the land uninhabitable in the sense of basic living conditions no longer existing here. UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffith stated even earlier (in early 2024), “Gaza has simply become inhabitable. The people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence—while the world watches on.” Since then, the situation has worsened much further, with denial of food which can be made easily accessible leading to mass hunger and even starvation deaths.
In fact, even in some UN/UNCTAD documents going back to almost a decade, one can read references to Gaza being made uninhabitable, but this was more in the context of too many restrictions being imposed on the daily life of people, leading to Gaza also being called the biggest “open air jail” in the world.
In more recent times, the word ‘uninhabitable’ has taken a much more dreadful meaning here, due to the terrible harm inflicted also on basic life-giving conditions relating to air, water and soil.
At a time when the need is for urgent action worldwide to protect life-nurturing conditions, it is incredibly unfortunate that extreme aggressiveness has been used to do the reverse on a large-scale by inflicting many-sided harm on life-nurturing conditions so that a region like Gaza, already experiencing so much of human distress, becomes more and more uninhabitable within a short time.
Gaza has seen one of the heaviest bombings ever, with most of the structures destroyed or damaged, including houses, hospitals, schools and essential infrastructure related structures. While this itself makes the region highly uninhabitable in terms of basic needs not being met, in addition such massive bombing and collapse and damage of buildings resulting from this have released massive amounts of dust which is polluted in addition with various explosives. In fact white phosphorus with all its terrible health and injury impacts has been used even in urban areas or dense settlements, according to reports. Hence air-conditions are likely to remain very unhealthy for a considerable time due to this, as well as winds continuing to blow more and more polluted dust from fallen buildings and debris.
Even such a daily basic need as clean drinking water has been denied to a large number of people here. Water pollution has been a serious issue in Gaza for a considerable time. However, what is new is that saline sea water has been withdrawn in recent times on a big scale to flood the tunnels reportedly used by Hamas. The saline water is also polluted and harmful in other ways. It can harm soil, fresh water sources and buildings. This will pollute water sources further, and in addition the salt build-up is likely to become an additional reason for the increasing damage to buildings and their possible collapse over a period of time.
The damage caused to essential infrastructure needed to ensure supply of clean water and functioning of sanitation facilities has been extensive. When essential sanitation facilities do not exist or have been destroyed or disrupted, then this itself becomes an important cause of water pollution, all the more so in more densely populated areas.
Thus, while the possibility of disease increases due to breakdown of water and sanitation, hospitals have been destroyed or made non-functional or are functioning at much below their capacity. Health personnel have been killed and harmed on a scale seldom seen elsewhere (in terms of deaths per 100,000 population).
The disruption of already precarious electricity generation and supply facilities is another serious problem, which also accentuates other problems of daily life.
People need reasonably satisfactory livelihoods but the base of sustainable livelihoods has been destroyed in several significant ways including the destruction of orchards of olives and other trees, increasing disruption of cultivation and harvesting
in recent times and this becoming impossible at times (as the harvesting times almost coincided with the mass displacement of people), increasing disruption or denial of fishing, increasing pollution of sea-water, too many restrictions placed on people, increasing difficulties in migrating and returning.
Resources for meeting the needs of people could have been found on the basis of even restricted use of gas and oil resources and a fair sharing of this, but the people of Gaza have also been deprived of this. Already perhaps the worst hunger and starvation conditions exist in Gaza, with most people being deprived of essential food.
These shocking facts of Gaza being turned increasingly into an uninhabitable region raise serious questions about the motives of Israel’s extreme aggression, particularly as there have been several reports about the possibilities of sending a large number of people of Gaza to distant areas as part of a programme of ‘voluntary displacement’ to make way for tourism resorts and real estate deals. In any case, already a substantial number of people are forced to live away from their homes in a smaller concentrated area in temporary shelters and camps.
All this is deeply worrying, and this aggressive trend to turn an entire region uninhabitable should be stopped as early as possible by global opposition. In addition, efforts should be initiated to bring immediate peace, initiate an adequate and rehabilitation effort as well as equitable sharing of gas and natural resources of the region to strengthen the sustainable livelihood base in Gaza.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
