Food, water, sanitation and other basic needs are in unprecedented shortage for more than a million Palestinians who have fled the Gaza Strip to the southern city of Rafah of the territory, a UN special rapporteur told Anadolu.

"More than a million people are concentrated in Rafah, after fleeing other parts of Gaza. They are in dire need of basic necessities basics of life, whether food, water or sanitation, and the threat of disease exceeds anything we have seen in the conflicts of recent decades around the world, however severe they may have been. been these conflicts,” explained Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN special rapporteur on the right to housing. “There has never been a situation where a population was not even allowed to flee.”Mr. Rajagopal stressed that even Israel does not know where these people are supposed to go, recalling numerous statements from Israeli sources indicating "a desire to expel them entirely from Gaza." Pointing to serious allegations that senior Israeli officials and other leaders plan to eliminate the Palestinian population from Gaza, Mr. Rajagopal stressed that these allegations, considered by some as "ramblings of random people in Israel", cannot be ignored. "Unfortunately, everything we thought impossible becomes increasingly possible. We must judge Israel's actions not by what they say, but by what is actually happening. 

What is happening is that people have been displaced to several times and they were concentrated in Rafah. 

They are being bombed now." Noting that UN rapporteurs have written numerous reports on the "genocidal" dimension of Israeli attacks in Gaza, Mr. Rajagopal noted that they had mentioned a "serious risk of genocide" in their initial report. 

He added that they had issued another report which included the possibility of genocidal acts taking place, stating: "Since then, we have confirmed this fact. What is happening in Gaza constitutes genocide." Commenting on the affair of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Mr. Rajagopal said the interim decision of the highest court of the United Nations was that South Africa, which had filed the complaint, was "largely right" in his request. "The actions taken by Israel to create the conditions in which Gaza becomes uninhabitable for the population living there constitute, in my opinion, acts of genocide, without question. 

Comparing the situation in Gaza to the Bosnian war of the 1990s, Mr. Rajagopal pointed out that the ICJ had also ruled that the massacre of Muslim Bosniaks by Serbian forces in Srebrenica had also constituted genocide. "During the Bosnian War, in the former Yugoslavia, and in this conflict, approximately 8 000 to 9,000 people were killed. If this is genocide, I find it hard to believe that what is happening in Gaza is not genocide." 

Israeli attacks have killed more than 28,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children. Focusing on the issue of Gaza, the special rapporteur said, represents a "complete failure" by the international community. 

The collective action mechanism is completely frozen and the international community 'did nothing."The Security Council or the United Nations General Assembly adopted very weak resolutions which were not implemented. 

Even formally, the International Court of Justice's ruling, while morally and symbolically important, did not order anything concrete that led to specific actions or inactions on the part of Israel. "Crucially, institutionally, I think the world has failed. 

It has failed Gaza. And once again, Israel has shown that it is protected by what I call institutionalized impunity. Israel seems to be protected regardless the transgression. Highlighting that many buildings were destroyed in Gaza following the attacks, Rajagopal said assessments based on satellite data and field reports show that more than 70 percent of homes in Gaza were destroyed or severely damaged, and rendered unusable. 

He added that data from areas such as Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip indicate that 82 to 84 percent of these areas may have been completely wiped out."

"We are talking about a very large level of destruction, the kind that we have not seen in other conflicts, such as in Mariupol, which was the city most seriously destroyed by Russian bombing in Ukraine , or by the conflicts in Syria."Mr. Rajagopal stressed that homes in Gaza were not only destroyed by bombings or heavy artillery attacks, but also by Israeli forces who moved into bombed areas and destroyed homes and public buildings. He stressed that the reconstruction of Gaza will be extremely difficult and will require years of sustained effort, drawing parallels with the reconstruction of other countries destroyed in conflicts. "I wonder how long it will take to clear the rubble in Gaza. The reconstruction of Rotterdam took almost twenty years. By the way, it was under ideal conditions, that is, we were ready to invest a lot, a lot of resources and time to rebuild the city.

"The second thing is more important: we must ensure that the conditions for lasting peace in the region are met before reconstruction can really take place. Otherwise, it is not possible to expect the reconstruction to progress significantly,” he concluded.

Association France Palestine Solidarité