Southern Gaza could become more densely populated than Delhi

NEARLY 2M PEOPLE live in the 41km- (25 mile-) long, 10km-wide, sliver of land that is the Gaza Strip. Roughly two-thirds of it is urban. Under normal circumstances these built-up areas are home to around 8,000 people per square kilometre. That makes the urban areas roughly 30% more densely populated than London, or almost six-times as dense as Washington, DC.

What started as a horrific attack against civilians on October 7th—when Hamas militants murdered more than 1,300 Israelis—is already bringing more devastation to the strip. Israel has told Palestinians in the north to flee south of the Wadi Gaza riverbed, even as its missiles are hitting the territory. A ground invasion of the northern area may soon follow.

Gaza is small—if a car could travel at 100kph (62mph), it would take less than half an hour to travel the length of the strip. Only two roads, one coastal and the other inland, run the length of Gaza. Both have been damaged by Israel’s aerial bombardment. Authorities in Gaza said, on October 14th, that dozens of people had been killed by air strikes on vehicles moving south.

The evacuation is sure to worsen humanitarian conditions in the south as ever more people, with no guarantee of shelter, arrive there. Israel has already cut off supplies of food, water, medical supplies and fuel to the strip. Three-fifths of Gaza’s built-up land is in the northern evacuation zone: Gaza City alone contains around half of the northern area’s total population. Most of Gaza’s hospitals, already packed with patients injured during Israeli air strikes, are also in the north.

Were all of the 1m residents of northern Gaza to move into smaller built-up areas in the south, the population density in those places would reach an estimated 19,500 people per square kilometre. That would make the urban parts of southern Gaza more densely populated than Delhi in India, Alexandria in Egypt or Karachi in Pakistan, some of the most packed places on the planet. ■