Real objective: Turning Gaza into a land incapable of living for its rightful residents, ousting them
In recent days, all those committed to justice and peace have watched in horror as daily reports of extreme hunger, starvation, and starvation deaths have come out of Gaza. Most shocking is that many people trying to obtain essential food for themselves, their children, and other family members have been killed in this effort.
While truckloads of food aid wait just a few miles away without being allowed to reach the starving population, and a splurge of luxury goods can be seen in nearby markets, the people of Gaza continue to be deprived of the most basic needs for 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 people are not sincere, and so even when a ceasefire has been reached, it has not been durable.
It has become clearer with the passage of time that Israel's objective 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 the aggression has been aimed at making the land uninhabitable by destroying basic living conditions. UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffith stated in early 2024, “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. The people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence—while the world watches on.” Since then, the situation has worsened much further, with the denial of easily accessible food leading to mass hunger and even starvation deaths.
In fact, even in some UN/UNCTAD documents going back almost a decade, one can read references to Gaza being made uninhabitable. However, this was more in the context of too many restrictions being imposed on people's daily lives, leading to Gaza also being called the world's biggest 'open-air jail.'
More recently, the word 'uninhabitable' has taken on a much more dreadful meaning due to the terrible harm inflicted on basic life-giving conditions related to air, water, and soil. At a time when the world needs to take urgent action to protect life-nurturing conditions, it is incredibly unfortunate that extreme aggression has been used to do the opposite on a large scale. This has inflicted multi-faceted harm on life-nurturing conditions so that a region like Gaza, already experiencing so much human distress, becomes more and more uninhabitable within a short time.
Gaza has seen one of the heaviest bombings ever, with most structures destroyed or damaged, including houses, hospitals, schools, and essential infrastructure. While this alone makes the region highly uninhabitable, such massive bombing has also released huge amounts of dust polluted with various explosives. According to reports, white phosphorus, with its terrible health and injury impacts, has been used even in urban areas and dense settlements. Therefore, air conditions are likely to remain very unhealthy for a considerable time due to this and the polluted dust from fallen buildings and debris.
Even such a basic daily need as clean drinking water has been denied to a large number of people. Water pollution has been a serious issue in Gaza for a considerable time. However, what is new is that saline seawater has been withdrawn on a large scale recently to flood tunnels reportedly used by Hamas. The saline water is also polluted and harmful in other ways. It can harm soil, freshwater sources, and buildings. This will pollute water sources further, and the salt buildup is likely to become an additional reason for the increasing damage to buildings and their possible collapse over time.
The damage caused to essential infrastructure needed to ensure the supply of clean water and the functioning of sanitation facilities has been extensive. When sanitation facilities do not exist or have been destroyed or disrupted, this becomes an important cause of water pollution, especially in more densely populated areas.
Thus, while the possibility of disease increases due to the breakdown of water and sanitation, hospitals have also been destroyed, made non-functional, or are operating 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 that also accentuates other problems of daily life. People need reasonably satisfactory livelihoods, but the foundation of sustainable livelihoods has been destroyed in several significant ways. This includes the destruction of olive and other tree orchards, the increasing disruption of cultivation and harvesting, which at times has become impossible (as harvesting times almost coincided with the mass displacement of people), increasing disruption or denial of fishing, increasing pollution of seawater, too many restrictions placed on people, and increasing difficulties in migrating and returning.
Resources to meet people's needs could have been found through the 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 deprived of essential food.
These shocking facts of Gaza being turned increasingly into an uninhabitable region raise serious questions about the motives behind Israel's extreme aggression, particularly as there have been several reports about the possibilities of sending a large number of people to distant areas as part of a program of ‘voluntary displacement’ to make way for tourism resorts and real estate deals. In any case, a substantial number of people are already forced to live away from their homes in a smaller, concentrated area in temporary shelters and camps.
All of this is deeply worrying, and this aggressive trend to turn an entire region uninhabitable should be stopped as soon as possible by global opposition. In addition, efforts should be initiated to bring about immediate peace, start an adequate rehabilitation effort, and ensure an equitable sharing of the gas and natural resources of the region to strengthen the sustainable livelihood base in Gaza.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders, and A Day in 2071
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