Orientalist Suponina assessed the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip

“The water will last for two to three days.”

There will be enough drinking water in the Gaza Strip for two to three days. This assessment of the situation in the Palestinian enclave after the start of the total blockade by Israel was given by orientalist and expert of the Russian Council on International Affairs Elena Suponina. They named three ways of salvation for civilians in Gaza: breaking through the closed cordon into Egypt, crossing the border with Israel and moving inside the strip. All options are from the “both worse” category.

Today, not even two, but almost three million people live in the Gaza Strip, Elena Suponina told MK. Where should these people go while the IDF is methodically bombarding the sector from the air? In general, there is nowhere to go, the expert believes. The evacuation corridor to Egypt has been cut off, the Egyptians have blocked the Rafah checkpoint.

– Dozens of Palestinians are breaking through the border into Israeli territory. Many people try to do this, but not everyone succeeds. Having broken through, they will then be able to reunite with relatives on the west bank of the Jordan River, says Elena Suponina.

The orientalist recalled that the Gaza Strip, whose area is 365 square meters. kilometers – this is a little more than Yaroslavl and less than Vladivostok. The population density there is gigantic. The official 2 million population is just the residents of Gaza itself. And there are also small villages and refugee settlements. Instead it runs up to 3 million.

– Egypt closed the Rafah crossing to curb the flow of refugees from Gaza. But people, maddened by air attacks, can break through the cordon and end up in Egypt, Suponina believes.

The expert named another option for “evacuation” – movement within the Gaza Strip itself. According to Suponina, due to the small territory and high density, almost all residents are, to one degree or another, familiar to each other, if not relatives. There is a good chance that a family from one part of the enclave, which was shelled by Israel, will be sheltered by someone in another part of the sector, which is still intact.

The current blockade of Gaza is not the first in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Elena Suponina emphasized.

– Gaza has been subjected to a humanitarian blockade several times over the past decades. For the last three or four years she has been weakening and then becoming stronger. Supplies of water, electricity, and food were subject to blockade. The relaxations were introduced as a result of successful negotiations, the orientalist explained.

Now the Palestinians living in Gaza have fallen into a trap, the expert is sure. All routes along which it is theoretically possible to leave the sector are extremely dangerous. The area around the checkpoint leading into Egypt is also being shelled.

– Based on the experience of previous waves of escalation, Palestinians are fleeing to schools, mosques and hospitals in the hope that Israel will not fire at them. But in fact, they are also bombing social infrastructure,” Elena Suponina complained.

As for reserves, according to the orientalist, the residents of Gaza are already running out of them.

– There are electric generators in the sector, but they are unlikely to last long. The water reserves will also be enough for two to three days,” the expert concluded.

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