Distributing food in Rafah last month (Picture: Laila Salah Kassab)
The over a million people squeezed into Rafah in the south of Gaza are living in a horrifying state of limbo, waiting to see if Israel will wage a full-scale bloody assault on the area.
“Things have completely gotten out of control. Nobody understands what is happening or what will happen here,” said Ibitsam, who lives in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza but has recently fled to Rafah.
“We are all desperate as negotiations failed and it feels like there isn’t hope of a ceasefire. My kids are constantly asking when they will go back to our house,” she told Socialist Worker.
“They dream of hot meals and warm blankets. They want for life to go back to how it was. They can’t really cope with this nightmare.”
The Israeli state has murdered more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October. Many more will be killed by the Israeli state’s intentional cutting off of aid and its targeting of hospitals.
The Shehab news agency said that, Mahmoud Fattouh, who was just two months old, died from malnutrition in al-Shifa hospital last Sunday.
A paramedic who treated the child said, “We saw a woman carrying her baby, screaming for help. Her pale baby seemed to be taking his last breath. We rushed him to hospital, and he was found to be suffering acute malnutrition.
“Medical staff rushed him into the ICU. The baby has not been fed any milk for days, as baby milk is totally absent in Gaza.”
Another baby, Muhammed Zayegh, also was reported to have died due to starvation. Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of paediatrics at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, explained that children are dying in “significant numbers” across Gaza due to “widespread malnutrition”.
‘There has to be resistance’—voice from West Bank
“The Israeli forces raid day and night,” Abdullah, a Palestinian living near the city of Salfit in the West Bank, told Socialist Worker last Sunday.
“There are air strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. Just last week, one hit a car, and at least two people died, and more were injured.
“The Israeli forces have put up more roadblocks and checkpoints. Soldiers have also set up more garrisons. It’s all to humiliate us and to make movement as difficult as possible.”
“Israeli settlers are also attacking us. My family knows someone who was picking olives on his land. A group of settlers came up to him with their guns. They told him ‘get off our land’ and he said he wouldn’t. They shot him in front of his wife and children,” Abdullah explained.
“They have started with Gaza, and now they want to do the same in the West Bank.”
He added that while repression against those speaking out is getting worse, he won’t be silenced. “We’re united here in the West Bank. We are strong. We have groups set up so we can warn each other about settler attacks or the state of the roads.”
Abdullah added that he doesn’t think diplomacy is going to stop Israel’s assaults. “We have tried to negotiate for a long time. But it’s not worked. Israel will not give in and neither will its backers, like the US.
“That means that we can’t give up. There can be no real peace without justice. So I say to those across the world—you have to resist. Mobilisation is very important. Without a mass movement there will be no change.”
