Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that he has ordered the military to begin preparations to facilitate the departure of large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza through land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.” The comments come in the wake of President Trump again advocating for the forcible transfer of some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza in a press conference on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in a social media post on Thursday, saying Gaza “would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting," after Palestinians had "already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region."
It remains unclear how Trump’s latest comments would affect negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire deal which have begun in Doha. Phase 1 of the deal, which came into effect last month, saw Israel halt its brutal military assault on Gaza and withdraw its troops to a designated “buffer zone.” However, sporadic Israeli attacks continue and dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since January 19 in violation of the agreement.
The official death toll by the ministry of health continues to rise every day for two other reasons: bodies retrieved from the rubble, and people who die of their wounds. The health ministry puts the number of confirmed dead at over 47,500—though it acknowledges this figure as a vast undercount as it only tallies the number of bodies brought to hospitals and morgues in Gaza that are recorded by the ministry. The official number of wounded is over 111,000 and people in Gaza continue to die from those wounds every day.
Throughout the past 15 months, the health care system in Gaza came under a severe and systematic attack by the Israeli military, with nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals completely destroyed or barely functioning. The World Health Organization estimates that 14,000 Palestinians need to be medically evacuated to receive treatment outside of Gaza, including 2,500 children who are at imminent risk of death.
To discuss the real death toll in Gaza, the complications around medical evacuations, the war’s effect on children, the importance of bearing witness, and much more, Drop Site News journalists Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain speak with two doctors who traveled to Gaza multiple times on medical missions to provide emergency health care during the war: Dr. Mimi Syed, an emergency medicine physician based in Olympia, Washington, who has completed two medical missions to Gaza, the last one ending on December 31; and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon based in California. He has provided medical care in conflict zones worldwide, including Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, and Zimbabwe. He was last in Gaza in April and is returning in March.
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