Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 2023. The Netanyahu government responded swiftly and indiscriminately. At least 1,400 people in Israel and 5,000 people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) have been killed. Most are civilians.
One of my students at the University of Washington has had their (fortunately unoccupied) family home destroyed by bombs. They have also lost friends and neighbors.
“Two-thirds of the Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees or their descendants from the 1948 war,” according to NPR.
Almost half of the 2,200,000 are under 18 years old (compared to 22% in US).
I am only now learning the extent of the deprivation — water, food, medical supplies, construction materials, ability to travel — that is life in the OPT.
Since 2007, Gaza has been under a strict land and sea blockade by Israel that prevents civilians, along with goods like food and medicine, from easily moving across the border, contributing to harsh economic conditions and high poverty levels.
For example, The Guardian reported in May that “Israelis, including those living in settlements, use three times as much water a day as West Bank Palestinians do, according to a new report from the Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem.” Israel has controlled Palestinian water since 1967.
In 2017, the last year before the water authority stopped publishing detailed data on agricultural water allocations in the West Bank, Meshek Achiya received about 100,000 cubic metres of water, or 274 cubic metres a day (one cubic metre = 1,000 litres). Palestinians living in Area C use about 20 litres of water a day, as little as a fifth of the 50-100 litres a day minimum set by the World Health Organization.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has had the jurisdiction to investigate potential war crimes in Israel and Palestine since Palestine joined the court in 2015.
In 2021, the then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced the opening of an investigation into crimes alleged to have been committed since June 13 2014 in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the date when Palestine declared acceptance of ICC jurisdiction. Between then and early 2023, more than 3,000 people have been killed in Palestine, and more than 200 in Israel.
Amnesty International reports that Israeli authorities have “refuse[d] to cooperate with the investigation by the ICC [International Criminal Court] Office of the Prosecutor, despite a 2021 decision by the ICC to initiate an investigation into the situation in Palestine.”
Israeli troops killed well over 2,000 Palestinian civilians in the last three Gaza conflicts (2008-09, 2012, 2014) alone. Many of these attacks amount to violations of international humanitarian law due to a failure to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians. Some amount to war crimes, including the targeting of apparent civilian structures.
Vox has an excellent timeline of the 100+ year conflict in the region we know today as Israel and Palestine.
I developed a set of tables to summarize that 100+ years of history. It the Vox timeline supplemented by my curiosity, specifically about how Israel rations water to the OPT. I think it’s important to call out the fact that Israel is an occupying power.
Visit the tables at Wired Pen.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com