|  | | with Sammy Westfall |
Dear readers, The newsletter is going on a brief break. We thank you for your loyal readership and spirited feedback, and wish you happy holidays and all the best for the new year. Look for us on Jan. 3! Best wishes, Ishaan, Adam and Sammy |
| Members of a Sudanese family who fled the conflict in the Darfur region sit beside their belongings while waiting to be registered by the United Nations refugee agency after crossing into Chad in July. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters) |
Readers of Today’s WorldView may agree that it’s been a grim year. In Ukraine, a grinding counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion lurched into a bleak stalemate. In the Middle East, a decades-old conflict exploded into an unprecedented, high-intensity war in the Gaza Strip. The bulk of the territory’s inhabitants have been driven from their homes, some 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in a matter of weeks, and a quarter of Gaza’s population is “starving,” according to the United Nations, which warned Thursday that the risk of famine in the territory is “increasing each day.” “It doesn’t get any worse,” Arif Husain, chief economist for the United Nations World Food Program, told reporters. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.” While these two wars consumed the attention of major global news outlets (and this daily newsletter) for much of 2023, other crises smoldered on. In Sudan and Myanmar, ruinous civil wars, marked by myriad atrocities and reports of war crimes, are collapsing already dysfunctional states and provoking spiraling humanitarian crises. Over a wide swath of sub-Saharan Africa, coups and power grabs roiled the region. Social instability and post-pandemic economic pressures fueled surges in migration across the world. 2023 will probably be the hottest year on record, with heat waves scourging every continent, accompanied by other extreme climactic events. Droughts and floods were both more acute — the most viscerally shocking moment came arguably in September, when heavy rains led to the failure of dams and flash floods that killed more than 11,000 in northeastern Libya. “This disaster is of mythic proportions,” a Libyan health official told my colleagues at the time. In the face of such calamity, one would hope that the new year would bring better news. But, as your humble harbinger of bad tidings, I have to apologize: There’s a lot that can go wrong in 2024, and many crises that will get worse. The war in Gaza is reaching a dangerous tipping point. While Israeli officials vow a long campaign, the current fighting is pushing Gaza’s 2.2 million people to the brink. The territory is the deadliest place in the world to be a civilian. Before Oct. 7, when the militant group Hamas launched its strike on southern Israel, 80 percent of Gaza’s population required humanitarian assistance. Now, everyone does, and barely a trickle of what’s needed is getting into the besieged territory. Aid organizations and myriad world leaders are calling for a cease-fire and a surge of relief aid into Gaza. But absent a cessation of hostilities, the war could convulse the region, bringing in anti-Israel factions based in Lebanon and Syria, and spawning an unprecedented flow of Palestinian refugees into Egypt. In its annual “emergency watch list” published this month, the International Rescue Committee ranked the conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as the second most glaring crisis to watch in 2024. The first was the far-less-discussed civil war in Sudan, where eight months of fighting between the country’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have left more than half the country in need of humanitarian aid and forced some 6 million people from their homes. Some 19 million children are without education as the conflict has shuttered thousands of schools. “Sudan has become the world’s largest displacement crisis,” the IRC’s Elshafie Mohamed Ahmed said in the report. “The ability to deliver aid is hindered by the lack of humanitarian access and funds. The ethnic, tribal and regional polarization of the current war is further threatening the limited access currently available.” Africa is home to the bulk of the other potential hot spots, as listed by the IRC. Three “coup belt” nations in West Africa — the junta-led states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — are all in the rankings. The Burkinabe military is floundering in the face of a surge in Islamist militancy, with renegade factions controlling more than half the country. In Mali and Niger, where similar dynamics are on show, growing food insecurity and the drying up of foreign aid are plunging millions toward greater peril. The IRC’s 10 “watch list” nations account for 86 percent of all people in humanitarian need globally. Lurking behind the political instability consuming these societies is the specter of a warming planet, as droughts and other climate shocks affect some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. “What were once separate circles of crisis are now a Venn diagram with an expanding intersection,” wrote IRC President David Miliband. “Three decades ago, 44% of conflicts happened in climate-vulnerable states. Now that figure is 67%.” The Biden administration has most successfully held the line in shoring up Western support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. But its scope for action will be constrained in a divisive election year, and even Washington’s capacity to fund Kyiv is in doubt — let alone its ability to get its arms around myriad crises elsewhere, from Somalia to Afghanistan to gang-dominated Haiti, teetering on the verge of state collapse. In Asia, an election in Taiwan may be marked by new provocations from China at a time when the Biden administration is trying to bring some stability to its relationship with Beijing. But the biggest conflagration could take place in Myanmar, where the ruling junta is reeling from an offensive launched by a coalition of rebel militias and seeing mounting desertion in its ranks. The current trajectory, however, “does not point towards a near-term regime collapse on the battlefield, absent unforeseen developments,” noted Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Myanmar is instead headed towards a new phase of the conflict, marked by a weakened but still dangerous regime, more intense violence and greater uncertainty.” |
| People playing in the Danube at extremely low water level. Budapest, Hungary, 2022. (Andras Zoltai) |
Drainage at River Körös. Hungary is a country of runoff waters, since water management is designed for the rapid drainage of floods and inland waters. Szarvas, Hungary, 2022. (András Zoltai) |
Shepherd watching his animals at a small artificial pond. Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 2022. (Andras Zoltai) |
Hungarian photographer András Zoltai grew up near Hungary’s second biggest river, the Tisza. His childhood was shaped by the presence of the river and thermal springs around his hometown of Szentes. Now, through his photographs, he is exploring the fragile relationship between humans and water through the lens of climate change, Post photo editor Kenneth Dickerman writes. |
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A Post analysis of open-source visuals and satellite imagery sheds light on the Israel Defense Forces’ claims about Hamas's use of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (Ronen Zvulun, Reuters/The Washington Post) |
• Weeks before Israel sent troops into al-Shifa Hospital, its spokesman began building a public case: That five hospital buildings were directly involved in Hamas activities; that the buildings sat atop underground tunnels that were used by militants to direct rocket attacks and command fighters; and that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards. After storming the complex on Nov. 15, the IDF released a series of photographs and videos that it said proved its central point. But the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center, according to a Washington Post analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and all of the publicly released IDF materials. That raises critical questions, legal and humanitarian experts say, about whether the civilian harm caused by Israel’s military operations against the hospital — encircling, besieging and ultimately raiding the facility and the tunnel beneath it — were proportionate to the assessed threat. |
| By Joanna Slater and Hazem Balousha | | |
By Alexa Juliana Ard and Brian Monroe | | |
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| By Suzy Hansen | The New York Times | | |
By The Washington Post Editorial Board | | |
By Andrew Calis | The Atlantic | | |
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| The UNRWA logistical base in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Dec. 18. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) |
For Palestinians in Gaza, there’s nowhere left to go. They were already packed tightly before the war, hemmed in by a years-long Israeli and Egyptian blockade. During the current conflict, few parts of the enclave have been spared bombardment, and Israel’s often haphazard and confusing evacuation orders have pushed the displaced into ever-shrinking “safe” areas. Almost 1.9 million people, 85 percent of Gaza’s population, have now been forced from their homes. Rafah, which makes up just 17 percent of Gaza’s area, has become the epicenter for displacement. Before the war, Rafah was home to 280,000 people. But population density has increased fourfold as more than 1 million people — about half of Gaza’s population — have poured into Rafah, according to the United Nations. |
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Rafah’s al-Quds School is overwhelmed with families, said Muhammad Issa, who is in charge of the shelter. The school, which normally accommodates 1,000 students, is now hosting three times as many people. Conditions are desperate. About 70 women and children sleep in each of the school’s 27 classrooms, Issa said. Men sleep in the outdoor courtyard. Touma called it a “super crisis moment.” The agency planned to host 150,000 people in 56 shelters in a worst-case conflict scenario; now, it’s supporting nearly 1.4 million in 155 shelters, according to UNRWA media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna. At some shelters, 1,000 people share one toilet, he said. The wait is hours. For a shower, which 5,000 people share, “you have to wait days,” Abu Hasna said. There are lines for water “everywhere” in the Strip, he added. And days-long lines for flour too. |
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At a U.N. Logistics base in Rafah currently housing 30,000 people, Ahmed Ismail, 38, said that under the pressures of overuse, sewage from the bathrooms flows into the tent he shares with his wife, two daughters and two sons. Rather than waiting hours for the toilet, they relieve themselves in buckets and plastic bags. They shower every week or so. The Ismail family walked to Rafah from Jabalya — a 23-mile journey — after their neighborhood was bombed. Severe overcrowding is leading to outbreaks of disease and infection — hepatitis, skin and respiratory illnesses — as people share tight spaces and resources. It’s made all the worse by the collapsed medical system incapable of treating them. Saif al-Din Muhammad Qadouha, 45, is living in a tent with 11 family members in Rafah. Their home north of Gaza City was destroyed. His son and others in the family now have hepatitis C. Qadouha is worried that his family will pass on the infection to others crammed in their shelter. “I didn’t lose my children to missiles, but now I’m watching them die of disease,” he said. – Júlia Ledur, Aaron Steckelberg, Sammy Westfall, Loay Ayyoub and Hajar Harb Read more: How Israel pushed over a million Palestinians into a tiny corner of Gaza |
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By Emily Rauhala and Beatriz Ríos |
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