"We don't need a heat wave to suffer."
Gaza: where even soap is weaponized.
We, humanitarians, were begging the Israelis to just let in soap. Soap can decrease the spread of disease by 40%. It’s August of 2024. It’s sweltering hot, same temperatures London and other cities are now being subjected to, only it’s Gaza so most of the population is in tents where its even more boiling than the outside, there is no electricity to power a fan, no cold drinks, not even enough fresh clean water to stay properly hydrated.
Trash piles are already taller than most of the people forced to scavenge through them, all sorts of diseases are spreading like Hepatitis A (its horrid, I’ve had it), diarrhea (the number one killer of children under the age of 5), and any number of skin and other infections.
I had visited one of the wards in Nassir hospital that was stuffed with beds and flimsy mattresses on the floor, where children covered in this horrific skin disease called impetigo howled as their blisters pussed and oozed. Impetigo is relatively easy to treat. Wash with soap, apply a topical cream. Neither was available.
Snipper of a video from that Aug 2024 trip:
People were mixing salt with a few drops of lemon and sand from the beach to do dishes and try to clean off.
I remember thinking back then that Israel did not need to drop anymore bombs to kill people, the conditions they had imposed on Gaza, the sheer deprivation would exterminate the population on its own. Slowly, painfully and methodically.
Watch my interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during that time where I state as much:
After I left Gaza, I got on a call with some members of the Biden administration’s Gaza team. I figured if we can simplify it all down to a bar of soap maybe the needle would move. Maybe they would be willing to get the Israelis to just let in soap. I have to say I have never in my life briefed people less interested in what I had to say. Not even the perfunctory grunt of “oh that’s terrible.”
The sense was, and still is, that the US is not even willing to yield a modicum of the pressure it can put on Israel. Not even for something as simple as a bar of soap.
The UN independent commission of inquiry found that Israel is deliberately targeting children in ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The report was released last week, and it’s a really tough read. Of the many testimonies shared is a story of a five year old boy who was treated by a doctor who had to reinsert his intestines by using diapers and tape.
I found myself thinking back on all the ways that children die or suffer needlessly due to deprivation. A little girl I met that was lying in the ICU. The hospital, Aqsa, did not have any pediatric tracheostomy tubes. I won’t go into the details of how, but I got three in. THREE. When, if, this little girl woke up she was going to find out that she was an orphan.
I also find myself thinking about all the different ways that deprivation kills, especially the young whose bodies are still growing, who cannot fight the infection or disease.
Last year there was a spike in what’s called Guillan Barre Syndrome. Its terrifying, you wake up basically paralyzed, unable to move your legs and then it spreads to your arms and in extreme cases even further.
GBS is when your immune system attacks the nerves, usually following a bacterial or viral infection. It starts off with the voluntary nervous system – ie the muscles you move on your own and can turn deadly if it attacks your involuntary ones for example your diaphragm. We had a boy, Souhaib in our INARA clinic who came in with GBS. He had been discharged from the hospital after weeks with no improvement. After months of physical therapy, by some miracle, he was able to walk again. Many cases remain with partial paralysis. GBS is treatable if medication is administered within a month of symptoms. In Gaza there was no medication.
Deprivation is a crushing weapon, killing slower than the bombs, killing not just physically but psychologically. There are still not enough hygiene items. Trash and filth is piled as high as a one to two story building. There is a rat and mouse infestation spreading even more disease. There’s still a severe shortage in medicine, medical equipment, everything.
I was just messaging with Yousra, INARA’s Gaza program coordinator. We’re already seeing an increase in heat rashes and skin infections at our clinic and, as she pointed out, the next two months are going to be much worse as temperatures rise. Life hasn’t gotten “better” in Gaza.
“Everyone around me is suffering.” Yousra messaged. “Our life is impossible to explain. No one can understand it, no one can understand how hard it is.”
“We don’t need a heat wave to suffer” she writes.
Prologue: After four trips into Gaza in 2024, Israel denied me entry five times in a row. I still have an ongoing appeal to reverse that.
I was recently discussing Gaza, the UN report, and more along side Dr Seema Jilani, one of the most extraordinary humans I have met; pediatrician, humanitarian, beautiful writer and INARA board member on another equally brilliant foreign policy analyst and former Pentagon Middle East advisor, Jasmine el-Gamal’s podcast. You can listen to our conversation with The View From Here
THE ESSENCE OF CHILDHOOD HAS BEEN DESTROYED
Episode Description:
What does it look like when a childhood is stolen?
A new UN report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, documenting what it describes as the destruction of childhood through death, injury, displacement and psychological trauma. The report has already become deeply politicised, with supporters and critics fiercely debating its findings.
But beyond the politics are the children themselves.
In this episode of The View From Here, Jasmine El-Gamal speaks with humanitarian Arwa Damon, founder of INARA, and pediatrician Dr. Seema Jilani, two women who have spent years caring for children in war zones, including Gaza.
Together they discuss what they witnessed on the ground, how Gaza compares with other conflicts they’ve worked in, what prolonged war does to childhood, and why so many people have become desensitized to images of suffering. They also reflect on the challenge of bearing witness, whether testimony can still change minds, and what they wish every policymaker—and every one of us—could understand about the daily lives of children living through war.
Ya know, I remember begging the Israeli's to let in saline in 2012-2013 during that operation. Coordinating with UNRWA Amman and Gaza, I remember the negotiations and conversations then. Its tragic that these issues continue.
Good grief.