cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15001340
“Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba,” the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said recently. “After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler-colonial plan of colonizing Gaza.”
Human rights defenders have warned that Israel may ultimately seek to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza.
Yeah, that’s not their plan. There’s 1.42 million people in Rafah right now, which is 25 square miles. That gives it a population density of 56,800 per square mile, making it the 25th most densely populated city in the world - and with intact infrastructure enough for only a tiny fraction of that number.
So, Israel supposedly wants to move all these people to al-Mawasi. Now, al-Mawasi is barren, with; the last official count I could find said there were about 1500 people living there in a small Bedouin town. It’s also only about six square miles total.
Let’s say that Hamas is 10% of the population - I don’t think it is, but let’s use that number. That means there’s 1,278,000 innocent civilians they want to move to al-Mawasi. That would mean a population density of 213,000 per square mile. That would be twice the population density of Manila. And there is no infrastructure. They’re just taking a million people and throwing them into a barren desert next to the sea and saying, “Not our problem.” There’s no food, no water, no toilets, no shelter, no medical facilities, no electricity, no shelter from the heat - and no way to quickly make any of these things appear in enough quantity to matter.
The Palestinians are already on the verge of famine. This will make things worse, and disease is absolutely going to decimate the population. And then they’ll decide that al-Mawasi is hiding Hamas, and they’ll go after that as well.
Fuck Israel.
Decimation was the Roman practice of killing 1 out of every 10 mutinous/deserter (i.e., guilty of something) soldiers to punish an entire legion while still keeping it operational as a combat unit. Here we have the opposite. It is killing 9 innocents to get to also kill 1 additional (very hypothetically) guilty person.
This is the saddest “um ackchyually” I have ever written.
Shrewd analysis - thanks for sharing!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/middleeast/gaza-famine-world-food-programme-intl-hnk/index.html
Gaza is not that big. The situation is already horrific and it’s about to get so much worse.
It’s going to be a lot worse than mere “decimation”.
Thank you for your research.
I Just wanted to add that Northern Gaza, where the IDF physically controls all entrances, is officially in famine. Southern Gaza is fed by the entrance in Rafah.
The motive for taking Rafah could not be more clear. They intend to destroy the international aid supply line for southern Gaza. Moving so many people to a purposefully mismanaged IDP camp is just the cherry on top.