11.07.2024

Counting the dead

As the genocidal assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza continues, Israel is doing its damnedest to downplay the death toll. But, says, Ian Spencer, if anything, the figures issued by the Gaza health ministry are an underestimate

On July 8, the Israeli military invited reporters into Rafah, the first time international media visited the city since it was invaded 10 months ago.

Rafah’s recorded history dates to 1303 BCE. Israel, which has long tried to efface Palestinian history, has worked hard to bomb Gaza back in time. In reducing it to rubble, the Israel Defence Forces have not only obliterated its history, but targeted contemporary culture and civilisation, as schools and medical facilities have been destroyed. The IDF’s targets also include civilians, journalists, medical personnel and children.

On July 6, 16 were killed by an air strike on a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), the majority of whom were children. On the same day, five journalists were killed. On July 7, a school sheltering displaced persons was targeted by an air strike, killing four Palestinians. The day before, a UN-run school for displaced Palestinians was targeted, killing 16 and wounding dozens. In central Gaza, the IDF struck a residential building in the al-Zawayda area, killing six people. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the dead included two children.¹ Five children were among nine killed after an air strike on Bureij refugee camp on July 9.

Palestinians are being killed directly by the IDF at about 40 a day, but that leaves aside those dying from malnutrition and disease. The UN estimates that about 50,000 Palestinians remain in Rafah, which sheltered more than 1.5 million people displaced in the earlier phase of the war. The Gaza Strip was one of the most densely populated places on earth before the war. Now this population has been displaced into ever more densely packed areas, hardly different from ghettos or concentration camps. Gaza City was ordered to evacuate again on July 9, but to where? Everyone in Gaza knows that there is nowhere safe.

At the time of writing, at least 38,193 have been killed and 87,903 wounded since October 7. Unsurprisingly, Israel has disputed these figures. It has used the fact that over 10,000 of the dead have not been identified and in many cases are unidentifiable, in order to question the overall numbers. Israel tries to say that the figures must necessarily be inflated, as they are largely compiled by the “Hamas-controlled ministry of health”, as if that rendered them inherently unreliable. This strategy has been embraced by the US Congress which voted 269:144 for an amendment that would bar the State Department from using the Gaza health ministry’s count. As for the BBC, whenever it reports the death toll, it adds the caveat that “Hamas is officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government”.

Credible

All this is despite the fact that the Israeli intelligence services regard the Palestinian ministry’s figures as “credible”.² There is no doubt that the systematic targeting by Israel of health facilities has made it more difficult to accurately calculate the numbers of dead and wounded. However, the highly respected medical journal, The Lancet, which has previously accepted the veracity of the health ministry’s figures, has responded, pointing out that, given the number of buildings reduced to rubble, the dead still underneath the destruction is likely to exceed 10,000. Moreover, there is good evidence that the ministry of health estimates remain frighteningly accurate.

Indirect deaths are likely to increase in the coming months and years, even if the war ended today. These are due to starvation, trauma, communicable and non-communicable diseases - especially considering the ferocity of this war, with its destruction of healthcare infrastructure, severe shortages of food, water and shelter. and the loss of funding to Unrwa, which is one of the few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.

According to The Lancet, in recent conflicts, indirect deaths

range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported,³ it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7.9% of the total population of the Gaza Strip. A report from February 7 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58,260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85,750 deaths (if both occurred) by August 6 2024.⁴

One of the lead authors of this research is Martin McKee - a member of the editorial board of the International Advisory Committee of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research.

Around 75% of the Gazan population has been internally displaced and 1.1 million people face catastrophic food insecurity - ‘level 5’, as defined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.⁵ Throughout the conflict, Israel has issued orders for the entire population to evacuate areas to supposedly ‘safe’ locations, only for those to be attacked too. The deliveries of aid, particularly food and water have also been deliberately disrupted. Where aid lorries have been allowed through, such as at the Kerem Shalom crossing, the IDF has tried to argue that the food shortages are the result of aid agencies not properly distributing the supplies or because Hamas had looted them, which the organisation denies.⁶

The problem with such a blatantly dishonest account is that it ignores the fact that the targeting of aid agencies has been a deliberate policy by the IDF, including the killing of Médecins Sans Frontières volunteers. Unrwa itself has been targeted by the IDF and had 193 of its staff killed and 188 of its installations damaged, leading to the deaths of at least 520 Palestinians, who were taking shelter in them. Unrwa’s funding was also reduced, following a campaign of disinformation by Israel about the involvement of its staff in the events of October 7.⁷ The countries that have been the quickest to reduce funding, such as the US and UK, are also directly complicit in Israel’s genocide by the supply of weapons, intelligence and both military and logistical support to the IDF.

Despite all of this, some aid is clearly getting through. Northern Gaza has seen an increase in food and repairs to water and sanitation infrastructure, although even there around 20% of the population are still classified as suffering catastrophic food shortages.⁸ In the meantime, a malnourished population, particularly children, will remain extremely susceptible to death from water-born disease, typically causing diarrhoea leading to dehydration. Around 67% of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed.

Propaganda

The regular contact between ‘Genocide Joe’ and Benjamin Netanyahu seems calculated not to hinder Biden’s re-election by ensuring that the sight of starving children does not prick too many consciences. While it is highly questionable that Netanyahu would choose a Biden presidency over a Trump one, the Biden administration’s squeamishness at the sight of starving children is not matched by the sight of them being killed in air strikes with US-supplied ordinance.

If Biden’s tenuous grasp on power can explain the pressure on Netanyahu to ameliorate the food shortage, the same cannot be said of the approach to Israel of Sir ‘Kid Starver’. The former human rights lawyer and one-time member of Socialist Alternatives had no qualms before the UK election in defending Israel’s ‘right’ to restrict food and water to the civilian population of Gaza, as well as to engage in what is clearly collective punishment, at best.

The manifest absurdity of the UK voting system has delivered Starmer a ‘loveless landslide’, with just 35% of the vote. However, the fact that Gaza played a prominent part in the election of five independents, and possibly four Green Party MPs, did not stop Netanyahu being high up on Starmer’s ‘to do’ list, when it came to phoning national heads. What it might have done is to make it likely that the UK government will drop its challenge to the International Criminal Court over its issue of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Not that this will make the slightest difference to the people of Gaza. Netanyahu is not going anywhere soon.

The suggestion in The Guardian that Starmer has spoken with the Israeli PM about the “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza is a piece of political theatre, from a man who has unashamedly described himself as a “Zionist”.⁹ I suspect Starmer’s overture to Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas about the “undeniable right to a Palestinian state” is the beginning of an attempt to regain support lost from the Muslim community in last week’s election. Then there is the small matter of Britian being held to be complicit in genocide by the ICC, given the UK reticence to prevent arms sales to Israel and the failure to even call for a ceasefire before the election.

The UK is now one of the few countries that has refused to restore funding to the Unrwa. Labour’s new foreign secretary, David Lammy, a trained lawyer, has allegedly said of the publication of official advice about the legality of arms sales to Israel that he would “look at the legal assessments”, adding: “I will begin that process, of course, as soon as I’m able to.”¹⁰ I suppose that is the advantage of a legal education.

Most people would just say that selling arms to a country that is using them against an occupied civilian population and inflicting tens of thousands of fatalities and injuries was wrong and stop it immediately. But then, most people are not the same as those who head client states of the USA - Starmer and Lammy will do as they are told by the world hegemon.

While the UN also often defers to the USA, that does not stop some of its human rights experts from speaking truth to power. Ten independent UN experts on July 9 said that “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”¹¹ Naturally, Israel rejects this and points to repairs to the Gaza water desalination plant, which was destroyed by the IDF in the first place. It is like when a murderer gives you a plaster for one of your wounds, before stabbing you again.

No-one is fooled by the numbers game. A temporary slowing of the rate of mass murder does not stop it being genocide. Nor will it stop the pace of killing from being picked up later, when matters of political expediency are less pressing.