A recent joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call, revealed that civilians account for 83 percent of the death toll in Gaza. In 2024, UNICEF compared the number of known child amputees in Ukraine after two years of war with the number of known child amputees in Gaza after two months. The numbers are stunning: In Ukraine: 30 cases, in Gaza: 1,000. Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history. Of all the markers in this horrific war, this may be the most monstrous.
These statistics are as grim as the relentless stream of ghastly images coming daily from Gaza, and yet, they only tell part of the story. In their forthcoming book, Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, editors Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro present 20 contributions from a wide range of Palestinian perspectives -- poets and writers, doctors and academics, artists and organizers. Some of the contributors are more widely known than others, but all offer a unique perspective on the world's first live-streamed genocide. Israel's political and military leaders, along with their allies in Europe and the United States, continue to dispute the term genocide and spout the standard diplomatic euphemisms. In the view of Amnesty International however, there is no disputing the facts on the ground: Israel has imposed conditions of life calculated to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza through three patterns of events. First, by deliberately destroying critical infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; second, by repeated waves of mass displacement; and third by blocking delivery of life-saving supplies, food, and other humanitarian aid.
In the short term, the world's attention must be focused on stopping the carnage. But it's not too early to begin thinking of the aftermath. If -- and it's a big if -- Israel allows Palestinians to return to their homes, how can they possibly recover from the absolute devastation, miles and miles of rubble and twisted iron and decimated infrastructure? By the close of June 2024, more than 70 percent of farmland in Gaza had been destroyed. Likewise for livestock, greenhouses, seed banks, and olive groves. Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan is a pediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor who has been visiting the West Bank and Gaza Strip for ten years. In her essay, she observes that rebuilding Gaza might be possible, but only if there's international will along with political and financial support. What countries will step up to provide such support and how long will they be willing to sustain it? Who will coordinate the logistics and administration of what will be a daunting reconstruction effort?
Before any rebuilding can even begin, tons of rubble, unexploded munitions, toxins, and carcinogens must be removed from the land and groundwater, a process that could take decades. It's estimated that the number of trucks and heavy machinery needed for this effort could emit as much as 55,500 tons of carbon dioxide. On top of everything else the Palestinians have suffered for the past 20 months, polluted air, water, and land must be added to the ledger.
This anthology is unsettling and disturbing, and nonetheless it's an important piece of remembrance. The world will do its best to forget the failure of governments, the impotence of international law, and the complicity of the West. The contributors bear witness to unspeakable brutality and callousness and disregard for human life. Yet somehow, as the writer Eman Basher notes in her essay, Gaza is a place where hope is the ultimate act of defiance.