Good morning. Last night, Jason Burke reported new warnings that Israel’s campaign in Gaza could last for a year – and even if the intensity of the conflict diminishes, that promises an ever-worsening humanitarian catastrophe for Palestinian civilians.
What, exactly, does “humanitarian catastrophe” mean? Pictures and video tell part of the story, as do personal accounts and on-the-ground reporting. To understand the scale of the crisis, it’s also helpful to understand the numbers. Even then, we might struggle to grasp what they are telling us: a single figure, which could be subject to challenge, can end up confusing or incomprehensible, and stripped of the accumulated human experience that it seeks to represent.
Today’s newsletter is an attempt at summarising some of the most robust information available about what’s happened in Gaza since 7 October – and to make sense of the numbers through context and comparison. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Health inequality | More than 1 million people in England died prematurely in the decade after 2011 owing to a combination of poverty, austerity and Covid, according to new research by one of the UK’s leading public health experts. Sir Michael Marmot, who leads the Institute of Health Equity, called the findings evidence of “a shocking political failure”.
Conservatives | The Conservatives face defeat at the next election after leaving the country in a worse state than in 2010, a senior Tory MP has said. Danny Kruger, who was recorded making the comments at a private event in October, told the Guardian last night: “Either we remember the people we work for, or we face obliteration”.
Post Office | Victims of the Horizon scandal could be exonerated under plans being considered by the government, Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister’s intervention on Sunday follows an ITV drama highlighting the scandal of Post Office operators who were wrongly convicted because of faulty computer software in their branches.
US politics | The US defence secretary has said he takes “full responsibility” after he was hospitalised without the knowledge of his deputy or President Joe Biden, in a break from normal practice. Lloyd Austin was first admitted on 22 December for a day before returning to hospital last Monday, with Biden and other senior White House officials not becoming aware of his admission until Thursday.
Golden Globes | Last summer’s Barbenheimer phenomenon continued into the Golden Globes on Sunday night, with Barbie taking home best cinematic and box office achievement and Oppenheimer best drama. Oppenheimer led the way in the movie categories with five awards, while the last series Succession dominated the TV awards with four. See the red carpet fashion and a list of the winners.
In depth: The statistics that cut through the fog of war
The situation in Gaza over the last three months has been so chaotic that much of the data available comes with some sort of asterisk: it might be incomplete, or out of date, or drawn from a source that is claimed to be unreliable.
But on even the most frequently disputed point – casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health – there are few plausible critiques of the broad scale of what is being shown. And in many cases, the numbers published by the UN, independent aid agencies and others are likely to be at the low end of the possible range. So it is reasonable to view the picture presented by these sources as a conservative account of the situation, rather than conclude that the reality is hopelessly occluded by the fog of war.
Here are some details on specific aspects of the crisis.
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Deaths
Gaza’s ministry of health says that at least 22,835 Palestinians had been killed by yesterday, with another 58,416 reportedly injured. That figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but an estimated 70% are women and children. 7,000 more are reportedly missing and most are likely dead.
Israel’s final count for Hamas’s 7 October massacre is 1,139: 685 Israeli civilians, 373 members of the security forces, and 71 foreigners. Deaths in Israel since then bring the total to about 1,200. 36 of the victims were children. The Israeli military says that 174 soldiers have been killed in Gaza, and 1,023 injured.
Because Gaza’s ministry of health (MoH) is run by Hamas, the tally it provides has been repeatedly questioned by Israel. But last month, when the MoH figure stood at 15,899, a senior Israeli official confirmed a reported Israeli estimate of 5,000 dead Hamas militants and roughly twice as many civilians, giving a similar total of 15,000. (An IDF spokesperson called that ratio of two civilians to one combatant “tremendously positive”.) The MoH’s track record across multiple conflicts is broadly consistent with other sources: for example, after a short war between Israel and Hamas in 2014, it gave a figure of 2,310 dead, while the UN later arrived at an estimate of 2,251 and Israel put it at 2,125.
The 22,835 dead represent about one in a hundred of Gaza’s total population. They have been killed at a rate of just under 250 a day (an average that has come down a bit in the last few weeks). It is not known exactly how many of those killed were combatants, but Israel’s own ratio would suggest that on average, more than 160 civilians have died each day.
That is a much faster rate than in other broadly comparable recent conflicts. The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Raqqa killed 20 civilians a day during a four-month offensive, the BBC reported, while the nine-month battle for Mosul between US-backed Iraqi forces and IS killed fewer than 40 civilians a day.
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Internal displacement
Because of the scale of the crisis, it is hard to maintain precise figures. But by the end of the year, the UN Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, estimated that 1.9 million people had been internally displaced by the war in Gaza – nearly 85% of the population.
Many have been forced to move multiple times as the focus of the IDF campaign shifts. About 1.4 million people are sheltering in UNRWA facilities, with most of the rest staying with friends, family, or strangers, or sleeping rough. About a million people – half of Gaza’s population – are now living in and around the southern border settlement of Rafah. About 280,000 lived there before the war began. The Council on Foreign Relations estimated that by early December, only about 1,100 people had been allowed to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing to Egypt.
To rank the situation in Gaza among the world’s most pressing refugee crises may be moot – but the numbers do suggest that the crisis there bears comparison to those in Sudan and Syria. In Sudan, the International Organisation for Migration says that just under 6 million of a population of 48 million have been displaced by the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces, which started in April – a much lower percentage of the whole population, but a much higher raw number. The biggest refugee crisis of recent years is the one that unfolded during Syria’s civil war: of a pre-war population of 22 million, 14 million have been forced to flee their homes over 12 years, and 6.8 million remain internally displaced with millions more abroad.
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Destruction
Figures from the government media office in Gaza cited by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimate that about 65,000 residential units have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Another 290,000 have been damaged. That means that about half a million people have no home to return to.
Analysis of satellite data cited by the Associated Press suggests that about two-thirds of all structures in the north of Gaza have been destroyed, and about a quarter in the southern Khan Younis area. Across the whole territory, about 33% of buildings have been destroyed. The AP said that the rate of devastation was worse than either the razing of Aleppo in Syria or Russia’s bombing of Mariupol.
That is a reflection of the intensity of the IDF campaign. Data from conflict-tracking group Airwars suggests that the US-led coalition against IS in Iraq carried out 15,000 strikes between 2014 and 2017; the Israeli military has carried out 22,000 in Gaza in less than three months.
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Critical infrastructure
While 500,000 people have no home to return to, many more will remain displaced because of the scale of the devastation of Gaza’s crucial public facilities. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 23 of 36 hospitals had been rendered completely inoperable by 3 January, with a previous count of 3,500 beds down to 1,400 by 10 December amid vastly increased need.
Gaza’s education system has also been severely compromised: 104 schools have either been destroyed or sustained major damage. In total, about 70% of school buildings have been damaged – and those still standing are largely being used to shelter internally displaced people.
Meanwhile, water production stood at 7% of the pre-war supply on 30 December, and there is only one shower for every 4,500 people and one toilet for every 220. Those conditions make the spread of disease a very urgent problem: for example, the WHO said on 21 December that more than 100,000 cases of diarrhoea had been reported since mid-October, half of them among children under the age of five. That is 25 times the pre-conflict rate. The WHO says that it expects the number of deaths from disease to eventually outstrip those killed directly by military action.
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Humanitarian aid
For two weeks at the beginning of the war, no humanitarian assistance – including food – was allowed into Gaza at all. The flow of aid has gradually increased as the war has gone on, according to figures shared by UNRWA: there were 20 trucks a day in the last 10 days of October, 85 a day in November, and 104 a day in December. But that is still way down on the pre-conflict level of 500 trucks a day.
Humanitarian aid is meanwhile far harder to distribute because of the damage caused by Israel’s bombardment – and 142 UNRWA workers have been killed, while 128 of the organisation’s buildings have been damaged. The World Food Program (WFP) says that about one in four households are already at risk of starvation, and the entire population is facing food shortages that could lead to malnutrition.
Arif Husain, the WFP’s chief economist, told the New Yorker that famine would follow within six months unless conditions changed. “I’ve been to all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of crises,” he said. “And, for me, this is unprecedented.” There are about 700,000 people in the world currently facing catastrophic hunger, he added; 577,000 of them are in Gaza.
What else we’ve been reading
John Harris uses his column to tell the enraging story of England’s special needs crisis through one father’s struggle to get help for his children. Recent coverage of councils’ financial woes has pinned the blame on “golden tickets” for too many families with education, health and care plans; the result, Harris argues, will be “more kids stuck at home and families locked into despair”. Archie
Rebecca Nicholson spoke to veteran actor Willem Dafoe about how the industry has changed since he started his career in 1977, the many animals on his small farm and his role in new film Poor Things. Nimo
For Saturday magazine, Julian Borger told the remarkable story of his great-aunt Malci’s part in the Austrian resistance to the Nazis – a tale all the more remarkable for having been hidden for decades. Archie
After he had a stroke, Fanny Johnstone’s father developed vascular dementia. Johnstone has written movingly about what she learned over the period that she, along with her mother and husband, became his carer. Her surprising conclusion: “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Nimo
Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day? Joel Snape tries to find out. Nimo
Sport
Football | Liverpool scored two late goals to punish a wasteful Arsenal side at the Emirates and progress to the fourth round of the FA Cup. Elsewhere in the competition on Sunday, Bristol City forced a replay against West Ham with a 1-1 draw, Blackpool drew 2-2 with Nottingham Forest, and Manchester City beat Huddersfield 5-0.
Tennis | Rafael Nadal has announced that he is withdrawing from the Australian Open after an MRI scan revealed that he had a micro tear on a muscle at the Brisbane International. The 37-year-old former world No 1 had only recently made his comeback from a yearlong injury absence.
Football | Star forward Sam Kerr has become the latest Women’s Super League player to suffer an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and will miss the remainder of the domestic season, her club, Chelsea, announced on Sunday. Sophie Downey’s analysis notes that women are far more likely than men to suffer the devastating injury for reasons that are not fully understood, with 13 Women’s Super League players currently recovering from the problem.
The front pages
Our Guardian print splash for Monday is “Top Tory says party faces ‘obliteration’ in election”. “Post Office victims ‘will get justice’” says the Metro, while the Daily Mail has “Time to deliver on Post Office payouts”. “Khan bows to unions over tube strikes” – that’s the Daily Telegraph, while the Times leads with “Mental ill health driving surge in disability claims”. “Esther’s plea to nation – sign petition for ‘patients like me’” – the Daily Express campaigns for assisted dying. “Together we must end this horror now” – the actor Idris Elba writes a “knife crime plea” in the Daily Mirror. “Ministers urged to act as flood risk lingers for thousands” reports the i, and the top story in the Financial Times today is “Investigators probe Boeing safety after mid-air crisis”.
Today in Focus
Culture 2024: what to watch and listen to this year
Culture critics Peter Bradshaw, Tshepo Mokoena and Gwilym Mumford look ahead to the best of the year in film, TV and music
Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Viche is a sugar cane-based alcoholic drink that has been produced by African-Colombian communities for about 300 years. It also has medicinal purposes and is used as a pick-me-up instead of coffee. Now it is being used to fight the threat of armed gangs recruiting young people in Colombia.
On 15 January, a three-month ceasefire negotiated between armed groups by the Colombian president comes to an end. This creates a renewed risk for young people, particularly African-Colombian youth, becoming entangled with organised crime. Community leaders from Triana are hoping that viche production will create jobs and opportunities. Doña Gloria, master viche maker and leader of the Association of Black and Indigenous Peasant Women of Buenaventura, helps communities develop business strategies for commercialising the drink, enabling them to revitalise local economies. “For us, viche is a distillate of wisdom, ancestry and culture,” says Gloria.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
