The bodies of 50 people, including 19 children, killed by the war in Gaza have been laid to rest after they were recovered from under rubble in recent days, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said. The dead were pulled from debris while Israeli restrictions kept heavy machinery, spare parts, lubricants and other critical supplies out of the territory, and kept access blocked to vast areas. The machinery of war doesn’t stop at the blast. It keeps working through the paperwork, the checkpoints, and the deliberate shortage of tools needed to dig people out.
The State Monopoly on Survival
The UN agency that coordinates humanitarian efforts, OCHA, said it continues to receive reports of Palestinian civilians, including children, who have been killed, injured or otherwise harmed by Israeli air strikes, shelling and gunfire. Dujarric attributed the toll in part to the overcrowded conditions in Gaza. He reiterated UN calls for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, saying they “should never be targeted or used for military purposes.” The language is tidy. The bodies are not.
Israeli fire killed five people in Gaza, according to medics. That figure sits beside the larger count of 50 bodies recovered from under rubble, a grim ledger of what happens when civilians are trapped between bombardment and the slow violence of blocked aid, blocked equipment and blocked movement. The territory’s residents are left to absorb the consequences while the institutions that manage the crisis issue statements about protection.
The NGO Mirage
Compounding the crisis, humanitarian partners working to provide protection from the elements reported that 94 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents require shelter and basic household assistance, and more than four out of five families face critical or catastrophic living conditions. Dujarric said lack of fuel, energy supplies and essential household items was affecting the ability of residents to sleep, cook, wash, store food and water, maintain adequate lighting, and cope with extremes of heat and cold. This is what “humanitarian response” looks like when the response itself is throttled by the same state restrictions that produced the emergency.
OCHA estimates nearly two-thirds of families are living in tents or makeshift shelters designed only for short-term use, which deteriorate rapidly in harsh weather. More than 70 percent of families experienced flooding last winter, and humanitarian partners are racing to secure adequate shelter ahead of the cold and rainy season, Dujarric said. But ongoing restrictions on the entry of materials and equipment to Gaza, combined with aid-funding shortfalls, have kept the level of the humanitarian response far below what is needed. The system can count the suffering. It can’t, or won’t, remove the barriers that keep it going.
Partners involved in providing shelter estimate $562 million is required for the emergency response, including $165 million to address the most acute cases. Just over a quarter of that amount has been secured so far, Dujarric said. The gap is not abstract. It’s the difference between a tent that holds and one that collapses in the rain.
Rubble, Rats, and Restricted Access
Separately, the UN Development Programme said this week that since May it has been expanding, with the support of humanitarian partners, pest-control activities to more than 3,000 displacement sites, markets and hospitals across Gaza. Humanitarians said sustained access to the supplies required for the control of rats and other rodents remains critical, along with the heavy machinery, lubricants and other equipment needed to remove trash amid a continuing vermin infestation, Dujarric added. Even the cleanup is rationed. Even the rats get a policy framework.
The same apparatus that speaks in the language of relief also records the limits of its own reach: restricted access, shortfalls in funding, and supplies held back from a population already living in tents, makeshift shelters and rubble. The result is a territory where children are counted among the dead, families are left without basic household goods, and the work of recovery is stalled by the rules of power.