WHAT is happening in Gaza today, unfolding over several months, is unacceptable and a violation of the most basic right of any people to live and survive in their own land.
In terms of the number of people who have already been killed as a result of direct and indirect impacts of the violence and aggression against them by Israeli forces for nearly 20 months, seen as a percentage of the total population, this already represents perhaps the highest conflict-related mortality rate of the 21st century so far. This has taken place without any effective protection steps from either the United Nations or the various big powers, some of whom, like the United States and Germany, have been the leading suppliers of weapons of mass destruction to Israel.
Apart from such mass murder being inflicted on the people of Gaza, another issue of great concern relates to the various aspects of the aggression making the region increasingly uninhabitable now as well as in the longer term, threatening the survival base of the people.
For human existence, clean water is needed daily for drinking and numerous other purposes. This is being denied as a result of the various direct and indirect impacts of Israeli aggression against the people. This denial of water can itself prove life-threatening.
Food is another basic necessity. This too has been repeatedly denied to people, not just as a result of war but also by deliberate obstruction of relief supplies. Several humanitarian organisations have reported acute famine conditions from time to time. In addition to denying the supply of basic food materials, the conditions needed for cooking food properly are also being denied to the people.
Availability of essential medicines and medical care constitutes another basic need and a survival need for many people. However, the existing hospitals, medical facilities and even medical personnel have been targeted in a big way in the course of the Israeli aggression.
Housing is another basic need. However, most houses in Gaza have been destroyed or badly damaged in the relentless bombing. Many people have remained buried under rubble, a reality too painful to even imagine. Even shelter camps in which homeless and displaced people seek shelter have not been spared. Even when they are already homeless, people can be ordered at any time to shift from one place to another in entirely arbitrary and disruptive ways. The acute distress and difficulties caused by this can be imagined, considering that some family members may already be ill or injured, or disabled at the time of shifting.
For people to survive, it is necessary to have some means of livelihood. This has been increasingly denied and disrupted, whether in the form of farming or orchards, fishing or safe transport to the area of work, availability of regular wage work or proper jobs, disruption of trade and marketing, destruction of educational or medical facilities, for a very extended period.
When livelihoods are disrupted, humanitarian aid and relief supplies provide the most important avenue for meeting the basic needs of the people. While the world is quite willing to supply them, they often cannot reach the people who need them the most due to too many restrictions and obstructions placed by the Israeli authorities.
Any community needs relatively safe and clean conditions to live. However, increasingly in Gaza, the surroundings have unexploded munitions, dangerous materials, air conditions harmful to health and the absence of basic sanitation facilities. All this threatens basic survival conditions.
Even in conditions of temporary collapse of survival conditions, people can still manage to live for some time if there are hopes of improving conditions based on assurances by world leaders that corrective steps or remedial actions are being taken very soon. The people of Gaza have been waiting endlessly for such assurances from world leaders. Instead, what they sometimes hear only reduces their hopes for effective remedial actions. Some top leaders, like President Donald Trump, have actually made statements that more or less amount to the displacement and shift of people to other areas. The various actions of the forces of aggression and their suppliers or supporters to render the region uninhabitable are likely to be related to the objective of displacing people, whether or not this objective succeeds.
Hence, what we see in Gaza is a combination of two factors. Firstly, an unacceptably large number of people are getting killed and seriously injured by bombings and ground-level aggression and this is already the highest number in any 21st century conflict when seen as a percentage of the total population (this can be called mass murder). Secondly, there are several forms of aggression which amount to making a region uninhabitable by destroying the basic conditions of survival. These two conditions can jointly be described as ‘Mass Murder and Making a Region Uninhabitable (MMMARU in short).
What is more, this inhuman strategy is being pursued against the people with the most right to this land. Another highly unethical and dangerous aspect of this tragedy is that this is being pursued in an area that is known for a highly dense population. The density of population in Gaza, in terms of people living per square km, is about 250 times more than the world average. In Gaza, the population density in 2023 was 15,609, while the world average is about 63 people living on land.
While the life-sustaining conditions for people of Gaza are being relentlessly destroyed and disrupted, it must be remembered that at the same time life-protecting conditions for various other life-forms, including domesticated animals as well as wild life are also being destroyed in the form of bombings, presence of toxic and dangerous substances and pollutants in land, water and air, destruction of trees and crops, shortage of water, food and fodder as well as other factors.
It must be said that the conflict and aggression-related, or MMMARU-related threats to life exist here on top of the widely prevalent threats of recent times, like climate change, which too are aggravated by the conflict conditions.
It is clear therefore that the UN and the international community, including the world’s most senior statesmen and diplomats, must very soon announce an initiative for providing immediate safety and relief to the people of Gaza as well as to ensure their longer-term habitation in Gaza in conditions of safety and ability to meet their basic needs in sustainable ways. This should not be delayed any longer. It is already very late, but it is never too late for such urgently needed initiatives.
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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
