Israel turns Gaza into largest ghetto in modern history
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor writes on 29 September 2029:
Israel has transformed the Gaza Strip from the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’ into the largest ‘ghetto’ in history, with more than two million Palestinians isolated under the weight of an unprecedented double blockade. This combines military control over around 70 per cent of the enclave’s area, forcing residents into overcrowding and depriving them of their right to housing, with the closure of crossings to systematically control the entry of basic needs. As a result, residents are trapped in a depleted area without the minimum requirements for survival amid ongoing genocide.
The comprehensive and unlawful outer blockade, enforced by closing crossings, is tightening the noose around millions of forcibly displaced people in the Gaza Strip. It entrenches systematic deprivation by preventing the entry of life-saving supplies, including food, medicine, fuel, and shelter materials. This is part of a humanitarian restriction taking place alongside the widespread destruction of homes and health facilities, depriving residents of their most basic rights and their ability to endure or receive medical care.
As for the inner blockade, the area under unlawful Israeli military control and access restrictions has expanded to cover around 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip, extending beyond military positions behind the Yellow Line and deep into populated areas. This entrenches a policy of forced displacement, denying residents access to their lands, homes, and vital facilities while forcing them into suffocating overcrowding in an ever-shrinking area, without safe shelter or any guarantees of their right to return.
Describing Gaza as the “largest ghetto in history” reflects an unprecedented demographic and spatial reality. Israel is deliberately concentrating more than two million people in a depleted area covering less than 30 per cent of the Strip, creating a suffocating population density that is the highest in the world. Gaza’s enormous, isolated population, combined with military control of crossings and systematic deprivation of basic survival needs, creates isolation and mass destruction on a scale that makes it the largest and harshest ghetto of the modern era.
Israel is using starvation as a lethal weapon to destroy the population, in an ongoing violation and a fully constituted war crime. By deliberately obstructing food supplies and preventing fuel from entering, it has shut down desalination plants and water pumps, forcing hundreds of thousands to drink contaminated water.
This reality has led to the spread of infectious and skin diseases, as well as acute malnutrition among displaced people living without even the most basic conditions for hygiene and shelter. According to official data, 460 Palestinians, including 164 children, have died from starvation. Dozens more died in similar circumstances but went unrecorded amid the Strip’s comprehensive collapse of its health and institutional systems.