By Nurah Tape – The Palestine Chronicle 
UNRWA officials in the Gaza Strip have reiterated the catastrophic situation in the besieged enclave saying the only certainty “is that tomorrow will be worse than today.”
“To describe the situation here, it’s just catastrophic,” Louise Wateridge, Senior Communications Officer, for UNRWA in Gaza said during a press briefing on Monday.
“The last couple of weeks we have had relentless forced displacement orders in the middle area, in the southern area and also in the Northern Gaza Strip, she added, “and what we’re seeing here is hundreds of thousands of people forced to move on a daily basis.”
"The space that people have been confined to is so minimal. There are tanks in areas that used to be designated as safe areas."@UNWateridge explains that, while people in #Gaza keep fleeing carrying what they can & mostly moving by foot, there is nowhere safe in the #GazaStrip pic.twitter.com/I7lNbdkxnh
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) August 27, 2024
Wateridge explained that the situation has really changed over the last few weeks and months.
“What we’re seeing now is families, mothers, children dragging their belongings. Most people are moving by foot (as) there’s very limited access to any kind of vehicles for this kind of displacement now and people just don’t know where to go,” she stated.
The UNRWA official stressed that the conditions were “dire”.
‘Packed Shelter to Shelter’
She said, “If you see the humanitarian area – if you see the Khan Yunis, al-Masawi area – you can barely even see the sand on the floor anymore. It is just packed shelter to shelter. People are using the sand and building walls with the sand to stop the seawater coming into their makeshift shelters.”
Wateridge also pointed out that there are scorpions, mosquitoes, rats, mice, and snakes.
“Among the population who are living in these conditions, we’re seeing an increase in (the) spread of disease,” she said, drawing attention to the first case of polio in the Gaza Strip in the last 25 years.
“And this really just speaks to how dire the conditions here are,” the UN official added.
She said there was nowhere to find safety and access to humanitarian resources was limited because the aid operations were “also being displaced” within the evacuation orders.
“The humanitarian response here is being completely strangled,” Wateridge stressed.
‘Chaos and Fear’ – Israel Shrinks ‘Humanitarian Zone’ to 11 Percent of Gaza
Not Fit for Habitation
Sam Rose, Senior Deputy Field Director for UNRWA in Gaza, said “The humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk,” adding “It’s now about 11 per cent of the entire Gaza Strip, and this isn’t 11 per cent of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life.”
He added that “these are sand dunes…people are living cheek by jowl, doing whatever they can to get by.”
Rose said the streets are packed, “as people receive evacuation orders, they’re on the move.”
Families, he said, are faced with the dilemma of “Do they stay, do they wait or do they go?”
These are “impossible choices and essentially what’s happening is more families are being split as some safe parts and others try and find whatever it is that they can find to put up their meagre belongings.”
Rose explained the lack of access to aid, services, water and health care is “precisely” the circumstances under which polio has “recently reemerged in Gaza.”
Spread of Polio Feared
He feared that it “could spread very rapidly” as “it’s really that perfect storm of conditions that have created the environment in which polio can occur.”
“Malnourished children, (a) decimated health sector, very poor water and sanitation … people living amid lakes of sewage,” the UNRWA official added.
These are the “eventualities that we as an international Community have been warning about for so long are now,” he said.
Rose stressed that “the only thing we can say with any certain is that tomorrow will be worse than today…That’s the nature of the situation that unfortunately we we are dealing with here, and the people of Gaza the 2.1 million civilians are continuing to live through on a daily basis.”
‘Lift Blockade Immediately’ – HRW Warns Israeli Onslaught Fueling Polio Crisis in Gaza
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed last week that a 10-month-old baby had developed paralysis in one leg after contracting the Type 2 polio virus.
Human Rights Watch warned on Monday that if the Israeli government “continues to block urgent aid and destroy water and waste management infrastructure, it will facilitate the spread of a disease that has been nearly eradicated globally.”
Julia Bleckner, senior health and human rights researcher at HRW said “Israel’s partners should press the government to lift the blockade immediately and ensure unfettered humanitarian access in Gaza to enable the timely distribution of vaccines to contain the unfolding polio outbreak.”
UNICEF has said it was “bringing 1.2 million doses of polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV)” to Gaza.
“With WHO, UNRWA, and other partners, we plan to vaccinate more than 640,000 children,” the UN agency said on X.
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.
Staggering Death Toll
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 40,476 Palestinians have been killed, and 93,647 wounded. Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
Systematic Targeting of Residential Homes, Schools in Gaza – Israel’s Genocide Continues
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Nurah Tape is a South Africa-based journalist. She is an editor with The Palestine Chronicle.
