Back in 2012, the United Nations predicted that the Gaza Strip would be “unlivable” by 2020 — not, of course, that it had been particularly livable at any point in recent history. Now under Israeli occupation for more than five decades — forget the withdrawal-that-wasn’t in 2005 — the tiny, severely overcrowded Palestinian coastal enclave has also endured a crippling blockade since 2007.
Unemployment and food insecurity are rampant, and 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is considered unsafe. Power cuts are continuous. Health care equipment and medicine are in short supply, and Palestinians requiring medical treatment outside Gaza are regularly denied permission to travel by Israeli authorities — who, it bears mentioning, are often directly responsible for the conditions necessitating treatment in the first place, as when the Israeli military maimed Palestinian protesters en masse in 2018–19. Nor is the dismal health care situation ameliorated by Israel’s habit of bombing hospitals and killing medical personnel.
What happens, then, when you add coronavirus to the whole mix? It seems we’re about to find out.
On March 22, Gaza confirmed its first two cases of COVID-19, prompting the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem to warn that the spread of the virus in the Strip “will be a massive disaster, resulting entirely from the unique conditions created by more than a decade of Israeli blockade.” Given that Gaza’s health care system is “already on the brink of collapse,” the group foresees a “nightmare scenario” — one that Israel “created and made no effort to prevent.”
The two initial coronavirus cases were Palestinians returning to Gaza from Pakistan. Seven more cases were subsequently reported among security guards stationed at the quarantine facility where the returnees were being held, and one additional case has now been confirmed.
Al Jazeera writes that Gaza’s two million residents have been “urged to take precautionary measures and to practice social distancing by staying home in a bid to halt the spread of the virus.” But how, pray tell, are people supposed to social distance in a space so jam-packed that there’s barely room to breathe? And what sort of psychological trauma will ensue when an already traumatized population is forced to self-imprison in the “world’s largest open-air prison”? READ MORE AT JACOBIN.