Two years after October 7, 2023, the Gaza Strip stands as a scar on the conscience of humanity — a living graveyard of shattered lives, silenced voices, and enduring resistance.

 

 

The Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated territories on Earth, has become the center of a human catastrophe unparalleled in modern history. What began in October 2023 as a massive Israeli bombing campaign has turned into a prolonged, systematic genocide against the Palestinian people.

After two years of Israeli genocidal war, the scale of destruction and human loss defies comprehension. More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 170,000 others injured, according to medical sources. The overwhelming majority of victims are women, children, and the elderly.

Thousands remain buried under the rubble, while hundreds of thousands endure starvation, disease, and displacement. Entire neighborhoods, towns, and refugee camps have been wiped off the map. Gaza has been transformed from a besieged enclave into a graveyard of humanity, with the world watching — and doing nothing.

The Engineered Collapse of Gaza’s Health System

The ongoing Israeli campaign has systematically targeted Gaza’s health infrastructure, a deliberate strategy aimed at dismantling the population’s ability to survive.

Before October 2023, Gaza had 36 hospitals and 97 primary health centers serving 2.3 million people. Two years later, 34 hospitals are completely or partially destroyed, and most clinics have ceased functioning.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) have documented over 400 direct attacks on hospitals, clinics, and ambulances. More than 150 ambulances have been destroyed or damaged.

The few remaining hospitals — Al-Shifa, Al-Ahli Baptist, Nasser, and European Gaza Hospital — operate under nightmarish conditions. Doctors perform surgery without anesthesia; electricity is available only a few hours a day; medical supplies are almost gone. Patients lie on blood-soaked floors while staff work under bombardment.

Medical workers themselves have become targets. Over 600 health personnel have been killed since the war began, including senior surgeons, nurses, and paramedics.

What Israel calls “collateral damage” has in fact become a calculated assault on the right to life, aimed at breaking the resilience of Gaza’s people by destroying their capacity to heal.

Starvation as a State Policy

Since early 2024, Israel has weaponized hunger on an industrial scale.

By August 2024, the UN-led Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza, confirming what Palestinians had long reported: deliberate starvation as a military tactic.

Over 500,000 Palestinians now live under Phase 5 conditions — catastrophic hunger levels marked by acute malnutrition, dehydration, and death. Another 1.07 million face emergency-level food insecurity.

At least 459 people, including 154 children, have died directly from starvation and malnutrition. UN agencies warn that the true number could be far higher, as many die unnoticed in isolated ruins or makeshift shelters.

Despite international outrage, Israel continues to block humanitarian aid, allowing only a trickle of convoys into the Strip. Even these limited deliveries are often bombed or looted by Israeli forces before reaching civilians.

The siege tightened further in March 2025, when crossings were completely sealed. Since then, no consistent humanitarian access has been allowed. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has described the situation as “beyond catastrophic”, calling the allowed quantities of aid “a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of need.”

For Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants, hunger has become a daily instrument of genocide — a method to erase life slowly, without the sound of explosions.

Mass Displacement and Forced Eviction: A New Nakba in Real Time

Gaza’s displacement crisis represents one of the largest forced population movements of the 21st century.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 1.9 million Palestinians — over 80% of Gaza’s population — have been displaced, many multiple times.

Since March 2025, following Israel’s renewed ground offensive, 1.2 million people were forced to flee Gaza City and its surrounding areas within days. Families carried what little they owned in plastic bags, walking for hours in scorching heat without water or safety.

88% of Gaza’s territory, approximately 317 square kilometers, is now under formal or informal evacuation orders. The majority of Gaza’s northern districts have been turned into uninhabitable zones, fenced off by military checkpoints and rubble.

In overcrowded shelters and tent camps, disease spreads rapidly. Waterborne illnesses, diarrhea, and respiratory infections have become rampant. Many families sleep under makeshift tarps, exposed to cold, wind, and rain.

This mass uprooting is not a side effect of war — it is the core of Israel’s strategy: to make Gaza unlivable and force Palestinians into permanent exile. It is ethnic cleansing repackaged as “security operations.”

Environmental Destruction: The Death of a Land

In September 2025, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report warning that Gaza’s ecological damage is so severe it may take decades to repair — if ever.

The report revealed catastrophic damage to Gaza’s environment: 97% of its tree crops and 95% of greenhouses have been destroyed, while 82% of seasonal crops have been lost. The territory’s only freshwater source, the aquifer, is severely polluted with seawater, sewage, and heavy metals, and coastal waters are contaminated by untreated waste and debris, making both agriculture and basic access to clean water nearly impossible.

Israel’s bombings have produced over 61 million tons of rubble, much of it laced with asbestos and toxic chemicals, turning neighborhoods into hazardous zones.

The air, soil, and water are now poisonous — an invisible war that will continue killing long after the bombs fall silent.

Experts warn that Gaza’s environmental collapse is a war crime against future generations, ensuring that life itself becomes unsustainable even if the fighting ends.

Education Under Fire: Erasing a Generation

The war has obliterated Gaza’s education system — a deliberate attempt to extinguish knowledge, culture, and memory.

According to the Ministry of Education, at least 179 public schools and over 100 UNRWA-run schools have been destroyed or severely damaged. Twenty universities have been targeted, and 60 higher education buildings lie in ruins.

Since October 2023, over 18,000 schoolchildren, along with 1,300 university students and 1,000 educators, have tragically lost their lives.

Nearly 630,000 students have been deprived of their right to education. Some schools that once sheltered displaced families have been bombed multiple times.

Despite these losses, the Palestinian Ministry of Education has continued organizing exams online and through community networks. In 2025, 27,000 high school students born in 2006 completed their graduation exams under siege conditions. Plans are underway to educate the next cohort, born in 2007 — a remarkable act of defiance against annihilation.

Education in Gaza has become an act of resistance — the refusal to surrender the future.

The Global Response: Condemnation Without Consequence

As Gaza enters its third year of genocide, international condemnation remains loud but powerless. Ceasefire resolutions are repeatedly vetoed by Western powers, particularly the United States, which continues to supply Israel with weapons and political cover.

European governments, while voicing “concern,” maintain diplomatic and trade ties that sustain the war machine.

The Arab and Muslim world, despite rhetorical solidarity, has failed to translate outrage into unified political or economic action.

Meanwhile, millions across the globe — from Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur to London, Johannesburg, and Santiago — continue to march in solidarity, demanding an end to the siege. Civil society, not governments, has become the true voice of humanity in this crisis.

The genocide in Gaza is not only a Palestinian tragedy — it is a mirror reflecting the moral collapse of the international system. The institutions created after World War II to prevent such atrocities — the UN, the ICC, the Geneva Conventions — have been rendered meaningless by their selective enforcement.

Gaza’s Endurance as the World’s Last Moral Beacon

After two years of relentless destruction, Gaza remains physically shattered but spiritually unbroken.

Its people, starved and bombed, continue to embody sumud — steadfastness — a quiet defiance that has outlasted armies, blockades, and betrayals.

Every child who draws the Palestinian flag in a tent school, every doctor who performs surgery by flashlight, every mother who refuses to leave her home in the ruins — they are the living symbols of a nation’s undying resistance.

Gaza’s suffering exposes not only the brutality of occupation but the hypocrisy of a world that preaches human rights while tolerating genocide. (ILKHA)