Gaza survives cornered between bombs, hunger and disease while fear of a major conflict in the Middle East grows

Two weeks after the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, the situation, far from stabilizing, is beginning to have worrying overtones: the conflict has jumped from the Gaza and Israel scene and extends to Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Tension is maximum in the Middle East and at the same time, the humanitarian crisis worsens dramatically.

The panorama in the 365 square kilometers that the Gaza Strip occupies is increasingly distressing: without electricity, drinking water and fuel for a few days, surviving in this area is increasingly complicated.. Hamas, which controls the Strip, assures that there are more than 4,600 dead and 14,000 injured, while the hospitals are overflowing: there is no anesthesia, no medicines or medical supplies, and the surgical operations are carried out with the flashlights of the soldiers' cell phones. sanitary. According to doctors in Gazan hospitals, only those injured who have a good chance of surviving are operated on.. The rest, they say, are abandoned to their fate.

In the streets the situation is no better. The UN itself has warned that outbreaks of chickenpox, scabies and diarrhea are occurring due to water scarcity, which forces Gazans to drink brackish water intended for agriculture, with the health risk that this entails.

While Israel insists on asking the civilian population to evacuate the area, Hamas assures that more than 40% of the homes in the Strip are totally or partially destroyed.

Humanitarian aid

The call for the arrival of humanitarian aid is desperate, despite the fact that this weekend, one of the key information points of this weekend in the area has been the Rafah crossing.

This border point opened Saturday and Sunday for a few hours for the passage of humanitarian aid bound for the Gaza Strip.. On Saturday there were 20 and on Sunday there were 17 trucks with basic necessities (water, medicines and food) for the civilian population.

In any case, from Gaza, international organizations, NGOs and the Palestinian government consider this aid largely insufficient, despite the fact that the United States is working at the diplomatic level so that the flow of these convoys increases in capacity and frequency.

military escalation

As for the military, Israel's ground offensive in the Strip is imminent, but while it arrives, the aviation relentlessly punishes its military objectives, which in an area as dense as Gaza, also include homes and public buildings.. The Israeli army itself confirmed this Sunday that it had increased pressure in Gaza, and announced the elimination of two senior Hamas officials, among other enemy casualties.

The terrorist group, for its part, assures that hostilities have already begun de facto inside the Strip, where, according to Israel, Hamas is holding 212 Israelis and foreigners hostage after its attack on the 7th, although Tel Aviv warns that the figure is not definitive.

But Israel cannot cope and the fronts are opening everywhere: hostilities have also occurred in the West Bank. Tel Aviv maintains that Hamas terrorists are also hiding in this area and has therefore launched airstrikes that, according to the Palestinian National Authority, have caused at least 90 deaths.

More worrying is the opening of the Lebanese front. The Shiite Hezbollah militia, in perpetual conflict with Israel, has taken advantage of the situation in Gaza to not only threaten with a total offensive if there is ground intervention in the Strip, but they have already launched dozens of attacks with rockets, missiles and mortars into the territory. Israeli.

For this reason, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the evacuation of numerous cities on the border with Lebanon.. Both the leader and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) themselves have warned Lebanon that its entry into the conflict could put “its sovereignty” at stake.. “They are not going to gain anything, but they can lose a lot,” an Israeli military spokesman warned this Sunday.

If the situation is complicated to the north, a little further east, in Syria, the outlook does not look good either: Syria denounces Israeli attacks on the airports of Damascus and Aleppo, with at least one dead. Israel considers that Syria is the gateway for weapons for Hamas from Iran, the main sponsor of terrorism in Palestine, and that is why it punishes these infrastructures.

As if that were not enough, this Sunday afternoon Israel admitted having fired “by mistake” with a tank at Egyptian military positions near the Rafah crossing, the only connection between Egypt and Gaza.. The consequences of this shooting in terms of lives or political repercussions are unknown for now.