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By Juan Cole for Informed Comment
The Israeli authorities are still not permitting journalists into Gaza, even months after a supposed ceasefire. The big Western news corporations are taking this prohibition as an excuse not to report on Gaza, since they don’t trust brown Arab stringers inside the Strip. In contrast, Al Jazeera English reports daily on the situation, and it can be watched on YouTube, or its own smartphone or Firestick app. The UN also issues reports based on communications from their staff on the ground.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that “UNICEF noted that children continue to be affected by airstrikes and the disruption of essential services, with 37 children reported killed since the beginning of the year . . . between 28 January and 11 February 2026, 109 Palestinians were killed, 252 were injured, and 10 bodies were recovered from under the rubble . . .”
The Israelis are still bombing the bejesus out of Gaza on a daily basis. People in the Middle East joke darkly that their definition of a cease fire is, you cease, we fire.
The health care situation is dire.
Here is an interview with a British physician who has gone to Gaza as a volunteer 40 times and is in close contact with current volunteers there. He reports that because of a lack of medicine, gruesome situations are unfolding, such as fungus eating people’s faces.
Here is the computer-generated transcript of the interview, which I had ChatGPT clean up for readability:
The partial reopening of the Rafah crossing in the far south of the Gaza Strip, bordering on Egypt, has resulted in a tiny number of medical evacuees being allowed to leave. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports, “Between 2 and 10 February, the UN and partners supported the medical evacuation of 142 patients, alongside companions, including 91 patients (64 per cent) via Rafah Crossing and 51 patients (36 per cent) via Kerem Shalom Crossing. During the same period, UN teams in Gaza received 223 Palestinian returnees.”
OCHA continues, “At the current pace, Save the Children estimates that evacuating those in need could take over a year. Thousands of patients remain without access to specialized treatment unavailable in Gaza, and more than 18,500 people, including 4,000 children, remain in urgent need of medical evacuation.”
The UN points out that staff shortages and damage to infrastructure continue to leave the Gaza health system in ruins.
The Israeli authorities deliberately destroyed all the universities and medical schools in the Gaza Strip, even though these were not military targets. It also destroyed or degraded most medical facilities. The medical students who had been about to get their MDs haven’t been graduated because their universities lie in rubble. The UNDP and the remnants of the local universities (the people are still there even if the buildings are not) are supporting 470 nearly-finished medical students to complete their training and get certified.
The conditions in the strip remain unsanitary. People are living in tents with no sewage. 77% of water samples come back contaminated, including with fecal matter. Hepatitis A outbreaks are widespread, with nearly 6,000 cases reported in 2025, and the situation actually worsened after the so-called ceasefire. OCHA says, “In addition, over 496,000 cases of acute watery diarrhoea were reported, of which about 47 per cent were among children under five.” The rate doubled in 2025 over 2024. Diarrhea doesn’t sound dangerous, but it is a killer of infants. Those nearly 250,000 children under 5 who contracted it almost certainly experienced a big spike in deaths.
It should be remembered that this humanitarian disaster is not “war.” There is no war. It is Israeli policy to impose unlivable conditions on the people of Gaza, in hopes of thinning their ranks. It is deliberate genocide.
Juan Cole
Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation From the Persian and Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires. His latest book is Peace Movements in Islam. His award-winning blog is Informed Comment. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha and of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
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