Humanitarian Situation Update #194 | Gaza Strip

The Humanitarian Situation Update is issued by OCHA Occupied Palestinian Territory three times per week. The Gaza Strip is covered on Mondays and Fridays, and the West Bank is covered on Wednesdays. The next update will be issued on 24 July.

Key Highlights

• A new evacuation order by the Israeli military encompasses about 8.7 square kilometres in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis, decreasing the area of the zone by nearly 15 per cent.
• The Nasser Medical Complex faces a new mass casualty influx, amid a dire lack of blood units, medical supplies and hospital beds.
• Gaza is now surviving with only a fourth of the water supply available before the war, reports the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Cluster.
• Humanitarian aid workers operating in the Gaza Strip continue to face enormous risks; according to UNRWA, an aid convoy heading to Gaza city on 21 July came under fire.

Humanitarian Developments

• Israeli bombardment from the air, land, and sea continues to be reported across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction of houses and other civilian infrastructure. Ground incursions and heavy fighting also continue to be reported.
• Between the afternoons of 18 and 22 July, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 158 Palestinians were killed and 359 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 22 July 2024, at least 39,006 Palestinians were killed and 89,818 were injured, according to MoH in Gaza.
• The following are among the deadliest incidents reported between 18 and 20 July:
  • On 18 July, at about 21:10, five Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit near the entrance of Al Bureij Refugee Camp, in Deir al Balah.
  • On 19 July, at about 2:10, eight Palestinians were reportedly killed and 15 injured when a house was hit and an adjacent house damaged in Block C in An Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in Deir al Balah. An Nuseirat Refugee Camp has been reportedly witnessing intensive strikes, shelling and incursions over the past week.
  • On 19 July, at about 17:20, five Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit in New Camp of An Nuseirat, in Deir al Balah.
  • On 20 July, at about 1:00, eight Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential building was hit in Sheikh Radwan area, north of Gaza city.
  • On 20 July, at about 1:00, six Palestinians were reportedly killed when the vicinity of the Community College was hit in Gaza city.
  • On 20 July, at about 3:20, five Palestinians, including a journalist, his wife, mother and two of his children, were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit in Al Alami area in Jabalya camp, Gaza North.
• Between the afternoons of 19 and 22 July, no Israeli soldiers were reported killed in Gaza, according to the Israeli military. Between 7 October 2023 and 22 July 2024, according to the Israeli military and official Israeli sources cited in the media, over 1,526 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, the majority on 7 October and its immediate aftermath and including 326 soldiers killed in Gaza or along the border in Israel since the beginning of the ground operation. In addition, 2,147 soldiers were reported injured since the beginning of the ground operation. As of 22 July, it is estimated that 120 Israelis and foreign nationals remain captive in Gaza, including fatalities whose bodies are withheld. On 22 July, the Israeli military was cited by the media as concluding that two more hostages had died in captivity.
• On 22 July, the Israeli military ordered Palestinians residing in eastern and central Khan Younis to immediately evacuate westwards. The evacuation area encompasses areas already placed under evacuation orders on 1 July and newly designated areas, including 8.7 square kilometres in the eastern parts of the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Al Mawasi. The area of the “humanitarian zone” as designated by the Israeli military has thus decreased by 14.8 per cent, from 58.9 to 50.2 square kilometres. Initial reports indicate that families are currently moving towards areas in Deir al Balah and western Khan Younis. Both areas are already heavily overcrowded, have limited shelters and services available, and can barely accommodate the additional influx of displaced people. As of 22 July, nearly 83 per cent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as “no-go zones” by the Israeli military.
• Frequent evacuation orders and relentless hostilities continue to further devastate Gaza’s health system and make it increasingly difficult for repeatedly displaced populations to access essential services, particularly people suffering from chronic diseases. According to the MoH, while over 1,500 patients need kidney dialysis, only 60 hemodialysis machines are currently available across the Strip, of which 16 are in the Gaza and North Gaza governorates and 44 are in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, compared with 182 prior to the conflict. As a result, patients are undertaking only two dialysis sessions of two hours per week, instead of the required treatment of three four-hour sessions a week. Sexual and reproductive health services also continue to shrink. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that only eight of the 16 partially functioning hospitals and four field hospitals are now providing maternal services, with more than 500,000 women in reproductive age lacking access to antenatal and postnatal care, family planning and management of sexually transmitted infections. At the same time, numerous mass casualty events throughout the Strip are further stretching the already limited trauma and emergency response capacity.
• On 22 July, Nasser Medical Complex received dozens of casualties due to reported hostilities and strikes in Khan Younis; according to MoH, as of 19:20, the hospital received 70 fatalities and more than 200 injured people. The hospital, which was already overwhelmed before this latest mass casualty influx, has now issued a new call to people to urgently donate blood, warning that conditions are dire at the facility with patients lying on the floor amid a severe lack of bed capacity and medical supplies to treat them. Medical evacuations outside Gaza remain largely suspended since the closure of Rafah Crossing, with WHO continuing to urge the establishment of safe evacuation corridors to immediately enable an increasing number of critically ill and injured patients to access the lifesaving care they need.
• Humanitarian aid workers operating in the Gaza Strip continue to face enormous risks, including to their personal safety. This week, Project Hope reported that their team narrowly escaped the fallout of an Israeli airstrike within the “humanitarian zone” in Khan Younis on 16 July. A physician among the team that was heading home at the time of the strike said that a missile hit an area less than 40 metres away from them: “We witnessed blood and casualties in the streets, leading to intense fear among all of us. We cried from the shock of the scene, but thankfully we all managed to return home safely despite it. However, the trauma still lingers in our hearts – this is supposed to be a safe zone.” Also this week, UNRWA’s Commission General, Mr. Phillippe Lazarini, reported that Israeli forces shot at a UN convoy heading to Gaza city on 21 July following coordination with the Israeli authorities. No casualties were reported but one vehicle received at least five bullets and left the convoy, Mr. Lazarini added, noting that “the teams were traveling in clearly marked UN armoured cars and wearing UN vests.” Since October 2023, at least 278 aid workers were reported killed in Gaza, including 201 UN staff members.
• Persistent fuel shortages continue to undermine humanitarian operations and jeopardize the functioning of health, water, and food production facilities. Between 1 and 21 July, only about 2,165,590 litres of fuel entered Gaza, including 378,700 on 21 July alone. On average, this is about 103,000 litres of fuel per day, or a quarter of the 400,000 litres of fuel estimated by humanitarian actors to be needed per day to sustain humanitarian activities in Gaza.
• The Food Security Sector (FSS) reports that, out of 13 bakeries supported by humanitarian partners currently operational in the Strip, the six in northern Gaza (four in Gaza city and two in North Gaza) continue to receive only scarce fuel quantities, sufficient to keep them running for a few days at a time. Of the four bakeries in Gaza city, two had to temporarily cease operations between 8 and 19 July due to fighting and the lack of fuel. Moreover, according to FSS, the continued lack of commercial supplies in northern Gaza continues to exacerbate the food security situation in the area. This has resulted in a near total lack of protein sources such as meat and poultry on the local market, with only a few types of locally produced vegetables available at unaffordable prices. Hot meal production capacity is also insufficient in Gaza and North Gaza governorates to support tens of thousands of newly displaced people, following the latest evacuation orders issued by Israeli forces, while the lack of cooking gas has forced families to rely on burning wood and plastic from furniture and waste to cook, hindering proper food preparation and exacerbating health, protection and environmental risks. In central and southern Gaza, some community kitchens are similarly facing shortages of food supplies due to the limited and irregular flow of humanitarian cargo entering through the Kerem Shalom Crossing and there are seven functioning bakeries, all in Deir al Balah as the five bakeries in Rafah have remained closed due to ongoing hostilities. Overall, as of mid-July, about 630,000 cooked meals prepared in 180 kitchens were provided daily by FSS partners to families across the Strip, including about 20,000 meals in northern Gaza and 610,000 meals in central and southern Gaza. In addition, FSS partners continue to distribute food rations and are working to bring in gluten-free flour to respond to the needs of hundreds of people with celiac disease and other medical conditions associated with gluten.
• According to the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) Cluster, the Al Muntar water pipeline from Israel to northern Gaza resumed operations on 20 July, following multiple rounds of maintenance. The line had been out of service since 1 July and, during this period, only 15 per cent of Gaza city had water flow, down from 40 per cent when the line was operational, the Municipality of Gaza reported. Moreover, with UNICEF support, the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility installed a solar-powered mobile desalination plant at the Aklock School shelter in Deir al Balah to provide 16 cubic metres of drinking water per day to about 3,200 households. Notwithstanding these improvements, the WASH Cluster reports that the lack of electricity, damage to infrastructure, and shortages of fuel, spare parts and chlorine continue to hamper water production, purification, and sewage pumping. For example, at present, the Gaza central seawater desalination plant in Deir al Balah produces only 3,000 cubic metres per day, down from 6,000 cubic metres per day prior to October 2023. Overall, between 8 and 21 July, the daily average water supply in Gaza was about 90,000 cubic metres, or about a quarter of water supply prior to the war.
• A new report by PAX, an international NGO, highlights the growing public health risks of solid waste exposure in Gaza due to the collapse of the waste management system and blocked access to designated landfills by Israeli forces. Relying on satellite imagery and open-source investigative techniques, the report’s researchers identified 225 waste disposal sites and informal landfills, including 14 UN-designated emergency landfills, noting that the real number is much higher given that smaller, continuously emerging garbage sites are often not visible on satellite imagery. The researchers shared the findings of their visualization and quantification of informal solid waste dumps with relevant UN agencies to enable priority setting for waste collection programmes, inform future remote sensing analyses of potential contamination of soil and groundwater sources, and contribute to environmental health analyses concerning the spread of communicable diseases. The report especially highlighted the potential medical threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), whereby patients in conflict areas fail to respond to antibiotic treatments, which health experts have linked to the degradation and damage of water and wastewater treatment infrastructure as well as to heavy-metal exposure including munition remnants. The environmental consequences of the crisis are also enormous, according to the report, as they can render Gaza wholly uninhabitable and cause grave ecosystem and public health problems in the overall region due to the contamination of agricultural lands and the aquifer and the possible penetration of toxic substances into the food chain. The report presents a number of short-term and long-term recommendations for policymakers, including, for example, renewed calls on Israel to allow access to the designated landfill sites, replication of UNDP clean-up initiatives using mobile crashers that can both collect and repurpose rubble and waste for use in future projects, and introducing climate mitigation and resilience policies in the post-war reconstruction waste management regime.

Funding

• As of 19 July, Member States have disbursed about $1.45 billion out of $3.42 billion (42 per cent) requested to meet the most critical needs of 2.3 million* people in Gaza and 800,000 people in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between January and December 2024. On 10 July, the Humanitarian Coordinator Muhannad Hadi stated that “more funding is urgently needed – as is a safe, enabling environment inside Gaza. Increased funding now will enable the humanitarian community to scale up operations as soon as conditions permit. For funding analysis, please see the Flash Appeal Financial Tracking dashboard. (*2.3 million reflects the projected population of the Gaza Strip upon issuance of the Flash Appeal in April 2024. As of July 2024, the UN estimates that about 2.1 million people remain in the Gaza Strip, and it will be using this updated number for programmatic purposes.)
• The occupied Palestinian territory Humanitarian Fund (oPt HF) has 111 ongoing projects, for a total of $88 million, addressing urgent needs in the Gaza Strip (89 per cent) and the West Bank (11 per cent). Of the total, 63 projects are being implemented by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), 34 by national NGOs and 14 by UN agencies. Since 7 October, the oPt HF has mobilized over $112 million from Member States and private donors to support urgent humanitarian and life-saving programmes across the OPT. Of total funding, 89 per cent has been allocated to projects in Gaza. A summary of the oPt HF activities and challenges in June 2024 is available through this link and the 2023 Annual Report of the oPt HF can be accessed here. Private donations are collected directly through the oPt HF.

* Asterisks indicate that a figure, sentence, or section has been rectified, added, or retracted after the initial publication of this update.