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Originally Posted by Edward64
So believe he was referring to Gaza city and not the Gaza strip as a whole. If I was in Gaza city, I would leave for smaller towns/villages or countryside.
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What countryside? Gaza strip is incredibly densely populated. There is nothing that can be properly described as countryside. If it were ranked as a country, it would be the third-most densely populated in the world at an estimated 6500 per square kilometer. To put that in perspective, it's 175 times the population density of the United States. Bangladesh is 6th on that metric, and often rightfully cited as an example of incredible poverty and dense urban squalor. The population density in the Gaza strip is more than 5 times that of Bangladesh. It is almost 2.4 million people living in an area about twice the size of Washington D.C.
The people in Gaza City can, and I'm sure some will, try to leave the city. But there's not much of anywhere for them to go, and meanwhile that won't exactly be a popular decision among many of the others there. They will be going to other areas short on basic needs that can't hande them, esp. in the required numbers.
In terms of going to the West Bank ... how? The short border with Egypt is not an open border, and every other direction is cut off by Israel via every potential method of travel. Gaza has been called an open-air prison for a reason; freedom of travel out of the strip does not exist for the people there. Trying to sneak past the barriers results in being shot on sight.
I was more referring to what Bishop said, but there's nowhere the people in Gaza can go. They could hand over every hostage they have, abandon Gaza City to the extent that is even possible tomorrow, and they are still screwed. They have no reasonable alternative that they can even try in terms of improving their situation that I can see. I'm not justifying the violence of course, I'm just more referring back to this just being a horrible situation all the way around.