The Save the Children analysis comes as aid agencies scramble to fill the gaping funding gap of 60% of the total $2.6 billion needed to respond to the conflict.

Nearly 19,000 people have been killed and over 50,000 injured, according to the Ministry of Health, and the ongoing offensive continues to create hundreds, if not thousands, of casualties each day.

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People flee to the southern Gaza Strip along Salah al-Din Street, November 18, 2023.
© 2023 Adel Hana/AP Photo

On October 13, Israeli authorities ordered more than a million people in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes. Two months later, almost 1.9 million people – 85 percent of Gaza’s population – are displaced, nearly half crammed inside Rafah, the enclave’s southernmost governorate with a prewar population of 280,000.

People have told me it is almost impossible to walk through Rafah’s crowded streets to find food, water, and medication. Israeli authorities cut off basic services and most aid supplies following the October 7 Hamas-led attack in Israel that resulted in the killing of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to the Israeli government.

Most Gaza residents have fled – many multiple times – pursuant to Israeli orders, in search of safety. But there’s no safe place to go and no safe way to get there. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 19,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed since hostilities began, including in areas to which the Israeli military told them to flee.

On December 1, Israeli authorities published interactive maps designed to guide people to safety. One man sheltering in Rafah told me of his struggles to find electricity to charge his phone, let alone connect to the sporadically functioning internet, amid regular telecommunications blackouts.

International humanitarian law prohibits the forced displacement of civilians except temporarily, when required for their security or imperative military reasons. People must be allowed to return once hostilities have ended.

The Israeli military should not be taking actions that render return impossible, but there are signs it may be doing so.

Repeated attacks by the Israeli military have turned neighborhoods into rubble and, according to aid organizations, destroying or damaging the majority of homes in Gaza, risks making parts of Gaza unliveable for years to come. At least 340 schools and the majority of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged. Satellite imagery captured since Israeli forces took control of northern Gaza in mid-November shows farmland in northern Gaza has been razed, exacerbating food insecurity and the loss of livelihoods.

A minister in Israel’s security cabinet described the evacuation of northern Gaza as “rolling out Nakba 2023,” a reference to the expulsion and flight in 1948 of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what became Israel.

Forced displacement is a war crime, and it’s becoming more of a risk. The international community should warn the Israeli government against further actions making it difficult or impossible for displaced Palestinians to return home. 

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Women wait to watch an AFC Champions League soccer match at the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, Iran, October 3, 2023. 
© 2023 AP Photo

For the first time in years, Iranian female football fans were allowed to cheer for their favorite teams at the Tehran Football Derby – a match between famous rivals Esteghlal and Persepolis –on December 14 at the Azadi Stadium.

“Azadi” means freedom in Persian, but for nearly four decades, women and girls were banned from games in stadiums. They were threatened, detained, and even jailed for trying to cheer their favorite teams in person.

Since the current league began, Iranian authorities have allocated a limited number of seats to women. According to local papers, in this game 3,000 seats of the 87,000 seat stadium were allocated to women and girls in remote areas, an apparent cap on attendance.

Over the past four decades, Iranian authorities have banned girls and women from watching football and other sports in stadiums. While this ban is not a law, authorities regularly enforced it, claiming lack of proper infrastructure to segregate men and women. The ban has led to arrests, beatings, detention, and abuses against women and adolescent girls.

In September 2019, a female football fan, Sahar Khodayari, who became known as the “Blue Girl” for the color of her favorite team, was reportedly sentenced to jail for trying to enter a stadium. She died by self-immolation in front of Tehran’s revolutionary court.

In October 2019, after FIFA, football’s governing body, finally set a deadline for Iran to allow women and girls stadium access, the government permitted a limited number to attend a World Cup qualifier match. Since then, the Iranian government has used various tactics to restrict the number of women and girls at stadiums.

For more than 15 years, Iranian women campaigned against the stadium ban. They also called out FIFA’s failure to use its influence on the Iranian Federation to end the discriminatory ban.

The cause was eventually adopted by athletes and male sports fans. In a popular 2022 video circulated on social media, male football fans in Iran’s Isfahan football stadium sang together, “There is no difference between men and women. We all love football.”

This win for female fans may be small, and does not begin to address the mountain of abuse and discrimination women face daily in Iran. But this hard-fought achievement is only testament to the resilience of Iranian women and activists who have shown time again that they are essential stakeholders in the transition to a right-respecting society.