How Israel is turning Gaza into a hellscape ruled by tanks and criminal gangs

If there was an image from 2024 that captured the year’s news, it was this one: Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, in a white lab coat, picking his way through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran - the last surviving major medical facility in northern Gaza - towards two Israeli tanks, their gun barrels aimed at him.

The past year has been dominated by the death and destruction Israel has wrought throughout the tiny enclave. 

It has been marked by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians - the deaths we know about - and the maiming of at least 100,000 more; the starvation of the entire population; the levelling of the urban and agricultural landscape; and the systematic erasure of Gaza’s hospitals and health sector, including the killing, mass arrest and torture of Palestinian medics. 

2024 was dominated, too, by a growing consensus from international legal and human rights authorities that all this amounts to genocide. 

Here was an image, from the very final days of the year, that said it all. It showed a lone doctor - one who had risked his life to keep his hospital operational as it was besieged by Israeli forces, battered by Israeli shells and drones, and had its staff picked off by Israeli snipers - bravely heading towards his, and his people’s, exterminators. 

Read more:  How Israel is turning Gaza into a hellscape ruled by tanks and criminal gangs