Mass casualty incidents caused by the Israeli military offensive in southern Gaza are becoming normalised in the west and leading to a sense of fatalism inside Gaza itself, according to Sam Rose, the director of planning for the Palestinian relief agency Unrwa.
He was speaking after an Unrwa school at Nuseirat was bombed by Israeli forces leaving at least 33 dead, including 12 women and children.
“When everyone is living in cramped, overcrowded conditions, we always said it would be inevitable that there would be incidents such as the one that happened overnight in the school in Nuseirat.”
Rose, who had just returned to London after five weeks in Gaza, said: “There were about 6,000 people sheltering in that school. There are rules of war that we call on all sides of the conflict to adhere to: to protect the inviolability of our installations. There are also principles of distinction, and of proportionality.
“People will have been sheltering in the courtyard of the school in the most desperate of conditions and there will have been no warning that this strike has taken place. It happened in the middle of the night about 2am.
“We’ve seen this time and time again, to the extent that it’s almost become normalised. In previous conflicts, single incidents like this would cause shock and outrage and would be remembered forever. Whereas it seems in this conflict it will be this one will be replaced by another in a few days’ time unless it all comes to an end. So, it almost becomes commonplace and mundane that these things are happening. We have normalised horror.”
Washington has said it expects Israel to be fully transparent in making information about the strike public.
“As a general matter, and as we’ve said before, Israel has a right to go after Hamas. But we’ve also been clear that Israel must take every precaution possible and do more to protect civilians,” a White House spokesperson said.
The movement of 1 million people in three weeks, as civilians attempt to escape fighting, has had “pretty dramatic humanitarian consequences”, according to Rose. He described the situation in some parts of Gaza as “largely out of control,” adding “we are trying to deliver aid in a war zone”.
Rose said on his last visit he was struck “by the sheer number of people with crutches and wheelchairs with missing limbs, with wounds”.
He said many Palestinians in Gaza have tried to compartmentalise their lives to shield themselves from the horror.
“There will be a psychological reckoning at some point” he predicted, pointing out some families had moved as many as 10 times since the conflict started after the invasion by Hamas into Israel on 7 October. “People’s requirement to adjust repeatedly to the realities of life in Gaza is something that no one should have to put up with,” he said.
Unrwa has about 300 schools in Gaza, but none of them have delivered education since 7 October, and have largely turned into refugee centres for those fleeing the fighting.
The schools attract refugees since they have solar panels, and desalination plants, making it possible to extract extra water. Many of the schools in Khan Younis evacuated during the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation in April are now receiving refugees from Rafah.
It is estimated that only 100,000 people remain in Rafah out of a prewar population of 270,000. At one point 1.4m refugees were in the area.
Describing the overnight departure of tens of thousands of refugees as the Israeli offensive on Rafah built up, he said: “Those that came to Rafah as refugees were the first to leave, followed by families that had lived in the town all their lives. We would basically see women and children sat on the side of the road with their belongings packed up neatly beside them, mattresses, bags of flour, jerry cans, book, clothes. The guys had gone on to pitch and find a plot of land or connections or whatever. And then they’d come back later. They’d hire a truck, and they’d bring the rest of the family but we saw lots of families, and mainly women and children, sit by the side of the road waiting for help.”
The amount of aid reaching Gaza through the one crossing open, Kerem Shalom, remained wholly inadequate, Rose said. He added that delivery of the aid is made more difficult by the fighting and large parts of the population are still on the move.
Israel, he said, seemed to have given priority to commercial trucks to use the crossing, and that meant much humanitarian aid in the form of medicines was being held up. He said that diplomatic pressure put on Israel to allow aid into Gaza appeared to have dissipated.
“What has happened in Gaza is that things have got incredibly bad incredibly quickly, so people have moved from relatively stable to phase five famine conditions in a short period of time.”
