Question. How Israel Should Handle Gaza’s “Humanitarian Disaster” - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

In all the years of murderous conflict in Syria and Iraq, neither has experienced a humanitarian disaster in the form of a widespread crisis involving mass hunger and the spread of hunger-related diseases. Yet officials warn that such a crisis could unfold in Gaza. How likely is that prognosis? And if it does occur, what should Israel’s policy be?

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 741..
14 February '18..

Senior Israeli military officials are warning of an impending humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and many more officials – Israeli, European, and Palestinian – say the Gaza population will “explode” due to epidemics.

Really?

How come in all the years of the Syrian civil war, amid prolonged and incessant violence over seven years, there has not been a widespread humanitarian crisis in the form of mass hunger and the spread of hunger-related epidemics like typhoid?

How come in the two years of incessant war between ISIS and the allied coalition, the Russian air force, Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Iraqi army, during which ISIS ruled over five million people, including Mosul’s one million-strong population, there was no evidence of massive hunger and contagious disease?

How likely, then, is such a crisis to befall Gaza?

The most important factor behind real humanitarian crises – the specter of mass hunger and contagious disease – is first and foremost the breakdown of law and order, and violence between warring militias and gangs. This is what occurred in Darfur, Somalia, and the Central African Republic. In such a situation, the first to leave are the relief agencies. Then local medical staffs evacuate, along with local government officials and anyone professional who can make it out of the bedlam. The destitute are left to fend for themselves. Hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and local government offices are soon abandoned or become scenes of grisly shootouts and reprisals.

Nothing could be farther from such a reality than Gaza. Hamas, which is the main source of this fake news of an imminent humanitarian crisis, rules Gaza with an iron fist. Few developed democracies in the world can boast the low homicide rates prevailing in Gaza. Nor have there been reports of any closings of hospitals, municipalities, schools, universities, colleges, or dispensaries.

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