Gaza is on the verge of a wider COVID-19 outbreak. Cases are increasing by the hour. COVID-19 will be the final straw to an already aggravating situation. Here's why COVID-19 outbreak in Gaza is an exceptionally disastrous nightmare:

1/1 POPULATION DENSITY

The Gaza Strip is a very small geographic territory. The total area of the Strip is 140 mi². The Gaza Strip is just 24 miles long on the coastline, and at its narrowest is just 3 miles, an hour walk. Yet it's currently home to 2,200,000 Palestinians.

1/2 Before 1948, the Gaza District "was 38 times its size today, and as the largest district in Mandatory Palestine it consisted of around 90 villages and towns."

Left: map of Gaza pre-48 sub-district | Right (in red): map of entire pre-48 Gaza District
https://antipodeonline.org/2020/08/24/gaza-as-site-and-method/

1/3 As a result of the Nakba, the Gaza District's area was reduced to what is today the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of refugees still live after they were expelled from their towns and villages just across the separations fence with Israel.

1/4 The Gaza Strip is home to 8 major refugee camps:

1. Beach camp: 85,628 refugees living on 0.2 mi²
2. Bureij camp: 43,330 refugees
3. Deir El-Balah Camp: 25,569 refugees
4. Jabalia Camp: 113,990 refugees living on 0.54 mi²
5. Khan Younis Camp: refugees 87,816
source: unrwa

6. Maghazi camp: 31,329 refugees living on 0.2 mi²
7. Nuseirat camp: 80,194 refugees
8. Rafah camp: 125,304 refugees

1/5 In addition to over-crowded refugee camps, the cities, towns, and villages of the Gaza also suffer from over-crowdedness, an ever-shrinking green and agricultural areas, and endless urban expansion within a very limited geographic space.

https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/shelter 

1/6 This makes social distancing practically impossible, especially in refugee camps where large numbers of people live in close proximity to each other.

2/1 NO ELECTRCITY & CLEAN WATER

In the past few weeks, electricity allocations were reduced to two to four hours a day. I really struggle when I try to explain this to folks who never experienced electricity shortages in their lives. https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/electricity

2/2 In the summer the high temperature in Gaza can reach 95 °F with high humidity. This means people can't turn on fans or ACs, that's why they like to leave their houses which are made of concrete which absorbs heat during daytime and release it overnight.

2/3 To avoid the blazing heat, people sleep on the floor because the tiles tend to be the coolest part of their houses.

2/4 That's why the beach is people's only place to escape the blazing hear the crowded neighborhoods. Now the beach will not be accessible.

2/5 Imagine what happens to toddlers, babies, old people, sick people, who have can't have a fan or an AC on during the entire summer. Imagine having kids who can't play on the street and have to stay at home for hours in darkness.

2/6 What makes the electricity crisis cruel, especially now with the lockdown, is people's inability to use their refrigerators to store food and to cool water. That's why people in Gaza buy perishable items on a daily-basis only when they need them. https://www.facebook.com/oxfamOPTI/photos/a.639370296087749/3457149634309787/

2/7 People also need electricity to pump water into their private tanks placed on the roofs of their houses or apartment buildings and to pump drinking water into their special containers. 96% of Gaza’s water supply isn’t fit for human consumption. https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/water-and-sanitation

2/8 With four hours of electricity a day and no reliable internet connection it is impossible for students to do remote learning. Gaza doesn't have the resources or the capacity to provide this option. This means students won't be able to resume school in the coming months.

2/9 To deal with the electricity crisis, people in Gaza use private or shared generators that are not fully safe. One of my professors in college lost two of his kids after a generator exploded, and of course many died because of fires due to candles.

3/1 NO MONEY

Unemployment rates in Gaza reached 45.5% this year. Youth unemployment is more than 70% (out of ever 100 working young person only 30 have work). In many sectors, people work on a daily-basis, which will be a disaster now with the lockdown.
https://gisha.org/updates/11275#:~:text=The%20first%20quarter%20of%202020%20saw%20another%20rise%20in%20Gaza%27s,first%20three%20months%20of%202020.

3/2 For those who work in the public or private sectors, online shopping and deliveries are not available options, and people need physical cash for most of their purchases. This makes it harder for people to sustain a strict lockdown. https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/employment

4/1 CRUMBLING HEALTHCARE

Gaza’s healthcare system is not equipped for a COVID-19 breakout. It has a total number of 2,895 hospital beds, or 1.3 beds per thousand people. It has just 50 to 60 ventilators for adults. https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/health-care

4/2 The health system is further aggravated by the electricity and water crises and the emigration of many Palestinian health professionals due to Gaza’s economic crisis. More than 35,000 Palestinians have left the strip since 2018 alone, among them dozens of doctors and nurses.

4/3 Access to nearby hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is not always guaranteed and can take long times due to Israel's policies. Even before COVID-19, cancer patients were dying in Gaza while waiting for permits. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190206-who-palestinian-cancer-patients-in-gaza-wait-months-for-israel-permits/ https://www.gazaunlocked.org/issue/movement 

This is just a brief glimpse of what life under lockdown in Gaza due to COVID-19 looks like. I didn't mention the ongoing bombing, the collective trauma and fear, and the social impact of lockdown in terms of domestic violence and home instability.

Violence in Gaza doesn't start and end with each military operation. Violence creeps on every detail of people's lives, when they are unable to turn a fan on, when kids sleep on the floor escaping to escape heat, when cancer patients die from waiting for permits..

This makes the passage of time in Gaza a violent event. With every moment that passes people experience violence. So when we complain about having to wear masks or not being able to go to our favorite fast food place, let's stop and think about those who are actually suffering!