“No place under heaven”: genocide in Gaza
JVL Introduction
It is terrifying to see how inured the world has become to the suffering and slaughter in Gaza.
Israeli public opinion, in the main, just does not want to know. That’s why the work of Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem is so important.
It called out the genocide in stark terms in a report – “Our” Genocide – in July 2025 and continues to do its utmost to ensure that a hostile Israeli public cannot just look away.
So its latest report, “No Place Under Heaven”: Forced displacement in the Gaza Strip, 2023-2025 matters.
We repost B’Tselem’s brief summary included in a recent mailing on 8th January and link to the full report.
RK
Dear friends,
Even after the “ceasefire” agreement was signed nearly three months ago, Israel continues to kill Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip, systematically demolishes buildings and infrastructure and restricts the entry of humanitarian aid.
Since the start of the “ceasefire” on 10 October 2025, Israel has killed 422 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Winter rains are flooding tent camps in displacement sites across Gaza, where nearly 1.5 million people are crowded together, leaving entire families without any shelter from the harsh winter conditions and without basic necessities. The combination of cold, flooding and the destruction of sewage and water infrastructure as a result of Israel’s genocidal assault is creating an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Thousands of distress calls have been reported to the Civil Defense emergency hotline across the Strip. Seventeen people were killed when buildings collapsed during the storm, and three children died of hypothermia, including a two-week-old infant.
While tens of thousands of people are waiting for medical evacuation, in recent months Israel has allowed the evacuation of only 260 patients out of Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel is preventing the entry of medical teams into the Gaza Strip and denying residents access to treatment. Despite an increase in the amount of food entering Gaza, and as prices remain beyond reach for most residents, an estimated 1.6 million people are expected to suffer from acute hunger in 2026.
As of last Friday, Israel has barred staff from 37 humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip. This is another step in a long list of restrictions and obstacles imposed on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in violation of the commitments Israel undertook as part of the agreement. This is a direct continuation of an Israeli policy aimed at maintaining inhuman conditions in the Strip, while deliberately harming a civilian population under blockade and attack.
This month, we released our report No Place Under Heaven: Forced displacement in the Gaza Strip, 2023–2025. Since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip. As of early January 2026, the assault has claimed the lives of more than 71,391 people and left some 171,279 injured. These figures are an underestimation given the widespread destruction and the collapse of the healthcare system.
A central tool serving the genocide in Gaza has been the forced displacement of approximately 1.9 million people (90% of the population), who have been repeatedly pushed into ever-shrinking, overcrowded areas lacking the infrastructure required to meet even the most basic needs of IDPs.
Even now, Israel continues to hold most of the territory of the Gaza Strip and systematically prevents IDPs from returning to the areas from which they were pushed out. Turning millions of people into destitute IDPs, while systematically bombing the so-called “safe zones” to which they were ordered to evacuate, is not a byproduct of the fighting. It is a deliberate Israeli attempt to shatter the family unit, unravel the social fabric and undermine Palestinians’ ability to survive as a group in the Gaza Strip.
I don’t think the world has become inured to the sufferings of the Palestinians – it’s more a case of not being able so far to stop it and being short of new ideas to try. Thousands – millions? – of us across the world have tried everything we could to stop our governments helping Israel to continue its genocide. A lot has been done … but not enough to remove the power imbalance between Israel and its allies and those trying to protect the Palestinians and build a just, sustainable peace with a free Palestinian state on its 1967 borders with Israel.
We need to hope somehow a better future can be built. In that spirit, I see some signs of hope in NATO countries (and others) confronting Trump over his attempts to take over Greenland with complete disregard for the wishes of the Greenlanders, international law and the USA’s treaty obligations. That fightback against Trump looks like being successful.
The fight itself will disincline Western governments from going along with USA leadership as they have habitually done. Which means they’ll take a fresh look at the harms policies supporting Israel are doing them.
There are close parallels between the proposed US takeover of Greenland by force and the actual oppressive occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel since its founding. Western governments may NOW feel more uncomfortable about the hypocrisy and probable unlawfulness of their own behaviour towards Israel, Palestine and the UCJ and ICC.
I don’t think they are at all bothered about Gaza, as they should have acted immediately to stop Israel’s assaults, of even the previous attacks in the noughties. Instead of Trump’s absurd plan and Board, which is nothing but a real estate grab to build Trumps Riviera, which all countries should boycott, there should an urgent task force sent by warships, fully equipped with aid to takeover the opening of all crossings into Gaza by land, sea and air, and the entire removal of Israeli troops from the territory, and the freeing of all NGO agencies that were banned including UNICEF, to seriously deliver shelter, medical teams and supplies and earth moving equipment to bring relief to the starving and displaced population of Gaza, especially for the mothers and children and the elderly and disabled. All this can easily be done as a first step. And then teams sent to the West Bank to halt the terrorist settlers from their rampaging and theft, and rounding them up and putting them on ships bound for the US, and possibly into a huge detention centre in the most inhospitable areas of the Arizona desert where they can establish a colony for themselves as a pre cursor for all the war criminals in the government and military to be deported as well. Drastic action is needed.