Yesterday, I arrived back in the UK from a trip to Egypt to visit el-Arish, the city in the Sinai peninsula serving as a supply and logistics hub for the humanitarian aid effort to the Gaza Strip. Where to begin? How much is too much to share? How much is enough to make you really understand the horror that is happening in Gaza?
You may think you know how bad the situation in Gaza is already. Like me, you may have been rooted to the news feeds since 7 October, hoping beyond hope for the situation to improve for civilians, only to see things steadily getting worse.
As I boarded the plane to Egypt with fellow MPs – the International Development Committee regularly conducts fact-finding visits as part of its work in holding the UK government to account on aid matters – I really thought I knew what was happening in Gaza. I now know that I understood, maybe, 10% of how bad the situation is.
If they had seen worse hunger elsewhere, they had never seen a worse state of instability – societal breakdown and insecurity around aid provision – with the entire population locked into the territory and unable to leave.
“If there is a place on Earth that smells like hell, it’s Gaza. It’s apocalyptic.” This is what one senior aid worker for a major UN agency, whose name we are protecting for security reasons, said when we met him. He had left Gaza earlier that day and driven 12 hours to tell us what was really happening so we could report back to the UK in the hope of getting the violence to stop and being able to increase the amount of aid getting in.
Over the course of several days this week, we met countless other aid workers who told us the same thing: Gaza is the worst humanitarian situation they have ever seen.
This is the assessment of people who have spent their lives responding to famines, conflicts, and disasters. If they had seen worse hunger elsewhere, they had never seen a worse state of instability – societal breakdown and insecurity around aid provision – with the entire population locked into the territory and unable to leave.
One aid worker likened what’s happening in Gaza to the horrific Russian siege of Mariupol, Ukraine in 2022, which lasted for nearly three months. But even during the worst moments of that siege, the city’s borders were porous, people could get out, and food could get in. That can’t happen in Gaza, a place that was described as an open-air prison even prior to 7 October, and which has now been under siege for four and a half months.
Let me be clear: Gaza is now lawless. The Hamas-affiliated police have been killed. In the last couple of days, the World Food Programme has even been forced to stop trying to get aid into northern Gaza – which has suffered the most devastation and where the humanitarian suffering is the most extreme – as their workers are being attacked by a desperate populace.
People are increasingly desperate
I believe the few remaining UN agencies and international NGOs will have to withdraw because they can no longer even pretend to protect their staff from Israeli offensives and the growing social disorder. Then what? Hamas terrorists clearly do not care for the people of Gaza. UNRWA – the main social and humanitarian service provider during this crisis – has seen its funding suspended by the UK, the United States, and other major donors. The Israeli Defense Forces keep pushing further south.
“If Israel is at war with Hamas, not civilians, why aren’t the casualties men of fighting age?” a medic at el-Arish Hospital, where people who are fortunate enough to be evacuated from Gaza are taken for care, asked me.
He had a point. As I walked from ward to ward, the demographic of the patients reinforced his statement. The figures also back it up: Nearly 70% of the almost 30,000 dead are women and children, and 57% of those brought out of Gaza with war injuries are under 19 years old, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Health.
Many of the people sheltering in Rafah had already been forcibly displaced from Khan Younis. Now they are being told to go back after previously being told it wasn’t safe.
The killing of civilians must stop. International humanitarian law is very clear on the need for civilians, medical staff and institutions, and humanitarian workers to be protected. This is not happening in Gaza, and Israel needs to be held to account for it.
Things are about to get a lot worse.
Israel is now dropping leaflets in Rafah, the southernmost region of Gaza where two thirds of the enclave’s population – some 1.4 million people – have tried to seek shelter, telling them to move north to Khan Younis. Israel says it is preparing to ‘clear’ Hamas terrorists out of the last part of Gaza its ground invasion is yet to reach. Many of the people sheltering in Rafah had already been forcibly displaced from Khan Younis. Now they are being told to go back after previously being told it wasn’t safe.
Worse, there is talk that Israel is looking to make a ‘humanitarian camp’ on the beach in southern Gaza, effectively moving civilians into a smaller and smaller area with less and less infrastructure and room to shelter from the violence. The date Israel has floated for this ‘last push’ is 12 March, one of the first days of Ramadan.
Shama’s story
In el-Arish Hospital, I met Shama, a 27-year-old pharmacist from Gaza. She had had her leg amputated above the knee the day before. She was clearly emaciated, as were the majority of patients I saw. Shama said a home she was sheltering in while attempting to flee northern Gaza to the south had taken a direct hit at 3am. Her husband, his father, both her parents, and her three brothers were all killed in the Israeli attack.
Unless there is a lasting ceasefire, unless aid can flood into Gaza, unless homes, businesses, and infrastructure are rebuilt, what future does anyone in Gaza have?
I was told that families are now no longer living together, in the hope that at least a few members will survive such assaults. I was shown photos of her leg wound: It went from her right buttock down to her knee, and at least 50% of the flesh had been torn away. It had happened earlier in the conflict, and she had had no treatment and no painkillers until she got a medical transfer to Egypt a few days before I met her.
If this wasn't enough for a human to bear, she was shot three times in the immediate aftermath of the explosion while trying to escape. Doctors in el-Arish were not able to operate to remove a bullet in her vagina. So she is waiting to be airlifted to a hospital that can provide specialised care.
In fluent English, Shama thanked me for taking the time to come and visit and asked me to make sure people know what is happening in Gaza. She glanced to her right, and I followed her eyes. Sleeping peacefully on a pile of fluffy blankets was her nine-month-old son. She looked back at me and smiled. I couldn't meet her gaze.
That child had no idea of the loss, the horror, and the destruction his family and home are suffering. What future does he have? Unless there is a lasting ceasefire, unless aid can flood into Gaza, unless homes, businesses, and infrastructure are rebuilt, what future does anyone in Gaza have?
What I heard was not a war, it was two million stories of suffering. We can, and must, do more to end it once and for all.
