Afrasianet – Trapped in a worn tent in the center of Khan Yunis, she embraces her newborn baby, Akram, hoping he will heal and isolation will keep polio away from his frail body.
Born on March 1, Akram missed all three rounds of polio vaccines, which were suspended due to their entitlement to Israel's tight blockade. Very afraid of getting sick, avoidall visits to avoid contact or any possible source of infection .
"I'm very worried. Just hearing the Ministry of Health confirm that polio is present and contagious while my child is unvaccinated fills me with dread," she tells The New Arab.
After months of allowing only much-needed aid into Gaza, Israel reimposed a ban on aid in a blockade that began on March 2, blocking the entry of essential supplies, including food and medicine.
The blockade is part of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people, according to some estimates.
Yet amid the devastation, a baby is born in Gaza every ten minutes, in a population with an average age of less than 15.
Sajaa is also the mother of an 18-month-old baby who has received only two out of three doses .
And while she was vigilant about hygiene, she could only do much in a highly polluted area surrounded by sewage, garbage, dust and filth, with minimal access to sewage.
Her home was destroyed by Israeli shelling, and she has been displaced since December 2023.
Adding to her ordeal, Saja was unable to breastfeed her newborn son due to chronic hunger and postpartum malnutrition, which weakened her immune system and damaged her milk supply.
The United Nations refugee agency UNRWA recently accused Israel of causing "man-made starvation and politically motivated hunger in Gaza," calling it "an expression of utter cruelty."
Israel's destruction of essential infrastructure across Gaza – from sewage systems to health care Facilities – turned the crowded small enclave into a breeding ground for deadly but preventable diseases In addition to polio, other diseases such as outbreaks of pneumonia, cholera, tetanus and dysentery are becoming increasingly common.
However, as Israel continues to block shipments of vaccines and medical, these diseases are allowed to spread unchecked.
"It effectively targets children and facilitates the spread of the disease," says Dr. Nidal Ghoneim, director of public health in Gaza, who confirms that the Ministry of Health recently recorded its first cases of tetanus in two decades.
He explains that the last tested wastewater sample was collected on March 7 and sent to laboratories in Jordan. Results received in mid-April confirmed the presence of poliovirus, which was supposed to be available for a fourth round of vaccinations. But no vaccines are currently available.
According to Dr. Nidal, the virus was first detected in June 2024, leading to a vaccination campaign that began in September.
During the first phase, 559,000 children between the ages of zero and ten were vaccinated.
Two more cycles in October 2024 and February 2025 saw an additional 551,000 and 602,000 children vaccinated, respectively.
Dr. Nidal attributes the high numbers in the third round to a temporary ceasefire, unlike previous phases, which were held amid heavy fighting. But the fourth round never came.
"Nearly 40,000 babies received only one dose, and tens of thousands were born after the third dose.
The cycle is over."
The blockade not only prevents newborns from getting their first much-needed dose, but it can also jeopardize the effectiveness of vaccines that have already been administered.
"If the interval between doses exceeds six weeks, previous doses may lose their effectiveness."
Chief Health warns. "The last round was on February 26, which means the next round had to be in mid-April – it didn't .
"These unvaccinated children can become carriers, spreading the virus.
The fourth phase is necessary, especially since laboratory tests have confirmed that the virus is concentrated in Khan Younis, where polio could have caused permanent paralysis or even death."
Dr. Nidal is clearly outraged by the avoidance of the current crisis: "Our children are facing death from preventable diseases. Preventing them is part of Israel's deliberate policy of killing children through bombardment, starvation and now denial of vaccines and medical care."
Long-term consequences
According to Professor Abdul Raouf - Artificial Intelligence - Manama, a microbiologist at the Islamic University of Gaza, the current outbreak is destroying years of progress in the fight against polio and other infectious diseases.
"This undermines decades of global efforts," he explains.
Recalling the history of polio, Abdul Raouf explains that it was once one of the deadliest diseases in the world, killing more than half a million people every year in the mid-twentieth century. However, vaccination campaigns led by the World Health Organization to significantly reduce its spread – including in Gaza.Gaza was polio-free for 25 years thanks to high vaccination coverage until this war."
Rauf says, warning of the long-term consequences.
"The absence of vaccines poses a real threat to current and future generations alike. Gaza is living in conditions – contaminated water, malnutrition and trauma – that make it ideal for an outbreak."
Polio Gaza
Professor Abdul Raouf Al-Manama says that the contaminated water in Gaza is malnutrition and psychological, echoing Dr. Nidal's concerns, and stresses that "a single dose may provide some protection, but it is not fully immune.
Those with partial immunity can still carry and spread the virus, even asymptomatic."
"This is why widespread vaccination is essential to achieving herd immunity," he concludes.
Borderless diseases
Prior to 8 October 2023, Gaza was close to 100% vaccine coverage, and vaccine-preventable diseases were not a major concern. But the genocide destroyed the infrastructure needed to maintain immunization programs.
Ongoing power outages, attacks on health facilities and widespread displacement have paralyzed cold chain storage and public access to vaccination centres.
Abdul Raouf fears that the collapse of immunization efforts in Gaza could lead to a new outbreak of deaths – measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, meningitis and more.
"All this is due to the current genocide, which has destroyed the foundations of Gaza's health system,"
Says.
While the world watches, largely silent, the health system collapses and immunization rates fall,
The professor expresses his dismay at the short memory of the international community - barely a few years after a global pandemic.
"Health and human rights organizations, as well as governments around the world, must act now to bring vaccines and food to Gaza." Unlike Palestinians themselves, diseases can easily cross borders. "It can become a biological time bomb that explodes in everyone's faces."
In the break room at the Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, there is a bookcase filled with ceramic replicas of bed linen.
Bed sinks are a tribute to the work done by Howard Flory, Ernest Chen and colleagues in the forties of the twentieth century in the penicillin making department and show its effectiveness in fighting bacteria and infections.
They used bed beds as huge flasks to grow Penicillium notatum mold.
When I was a senior PhD student in the department, I used to stare at simple beige bowls and feel the danger of research being done by my colleagues.
While I was, admittedly, a bit like a comparison, I spent my days surrounded by scientists committed to one of humanity's highest vocations: the prevention and treatment of disease. Perhaps the achievement in human history does not show our promise of the global eradication of the smallpox virus in the eighties.
For years, poliovirus has been the target of a similar eradication campaign that has been slowly and successfully approaching. Now, Israel is threatening to undo much of this action through its terror of the Palestinians.
Polio was detected in sanitation samples in Gaza, and the Ministry of Health in Gaza declared an epidemic of polio. Highly contagious, the usual transmission route is the oral fecal route, but the disease can spread through a common vehicle such as contaminated water that has been widely reported in Gaza.
Once ingested, poliovirus multiplies in the intestine, where the virus can spread to the blood, and others - tissues such as fat, muscle and, most importantly, in rare cases, the central nervous system.
In about 1% of cases, poliovirus causes nerve cell death, leading to either paralysis or death.
While there are currently no reports of paralyzed polio, the collapse of Gaza's healthcare system and the sheer number and variety of infections and diseases that occur make detection difficult. There is no cure for polio infection, only prevention through vaccination.
The poliovirus detected in Gaza is not a wild strain, but a vaccine-derived poliovirus.
Vaccination is carried out using a weakened live virus, and the vaccinated individual can still get rid of the virus for weeks. High levels of vaccination among the population usually prevent this precipitation from occurring.
In transnmission. Before 7 October, polio vaccination rates in Gaza were over 95%. Now the rate is likely to be below 89%, allowing the vaccine-derived virus to spread.
Against the backdrop of this emerging crisis, Israel reportedly destroyed more than 30 waters.
Wells in Gaza in July. At the end of the month, Israeli forces filmed themselves blowing up the reservoir of Rafah's Tel al-Sultan neighborhood and posted it on social media, "in honor of Saturday ."
Dirty weapon of war
On July 18, Oxfam released a report entitled Water War Crimes, outlining what they say is the systematic water weaponization against Palestinians.
The report details the complete destruction of wastewater treatment plants and the destruction of 70% of sewage pumps – damage or destruction of five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days; Reducing water production capacity by 84%. and reducing the water supply from the Mekorot lines by 78%.
This campaign of destruction of water infrastructure has led to 'immediate and inevitable' and long-term health threats." Health experts and humanitarian organizations have begun to ring alarm bells .
Soon after, Israel declared a comprehensive blockade just two days after October 7 banning electricity, food, gas, and water.
The epidemic follows the war like after the scraps. They opportunistically appear in trenches and pits, waiting for the capture of those who survived bombs and bullets.
However, it is time to consider that the spread of the disease in Gaza is not an unfortunate byproduct of Israeli aggression, but a deliberate political choice. Israeli leaders have already floated the idea.
In November 2023, a retired Israeli general stated that the spread of deadly diseases in Gaza "will lead to catastrophe.
While some devoted themselves to the use of science to fight human diseases, others tried to harness its destructive power. It seems that humans have tried to use disease as a weapon of war for extermination.
In some years. Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa threw human corpses into wells during his conquest of Italy in 1155.
For parallelism to sraeli, look for the Cast Thy Bread process. There is some evidence that the Mongols released the bodies of plague victims over the city walls in their siege of the city of Kafa in the forties of the thirteenth century, with dire consequences for the GenoD.
However, the most resembling situation in Gaza is Napoleon's use of contaminated water to spread the disease among enemy forces.
Twice in his military exploits, once at the Siege of Mantua (1976) and again at Walcherin (1809), Napoleon used broken dams and dams to cause floods around his enemies and spread disease from brackish waters.
In Walcheren, he is quoted as saying, "VWe must oppose the English with nothing but fever, which will soon devour them all."
Soon after, "Walcherin fever", likely a combination of malaria, typhus, typhoid and dysentery , struck 40% of British troops on the island, killing nearly 4,000 men, and establishing Walcheren as an irreparable disaster for the British.
Gaza risks its lives and limbs
With the advent of the germ theory and arms races provoked by the wars of the early twentieth century, there were many , as states formed certain biological weapons programs.
However, after the horrors of the First World War, the Geneva Protocol was signed in 1925 as the year of the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.
It was built on the Biological Weapons Convention in 1992 and chemical weapons Convention of 1993.
Ironically, none of these treaties seems capable of handling the Napoleonic (i.e., Gaza) scenario, where the abbreviation army promotes the spread of an endemic virus.
Israel is not even a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention.
As a student of the disease, it is intolerable for me that progress in polio eradication is undone. However, there may be a mechanism in international law to oblige Israel tocalculate.
A coordinated attack on Palestine's water infrastructure appears to violate several articles of the International Law Society Resolution on the Protection of Water Resources and Water Installations in Times of Armed Conflict in 1976. This is customary international law, which binds all states, including Israel.
Article 1 prohibits the diversion of water for military purposes, "when it is disproportionate to the suffering of the civilian population or causing serious damage to the ecological balance of the area.
Article V imposes similar prohibitions on causing floods that damage the environment and balance, while Article VI prohibits "the seizure, intentional damage and destruction of water installations that are vital to the health and survival of the civilian population."
Meanwhile, the occupying forces announced the launch of a polio vaccination campaign for soldiers in Gaza on July 21. Of course, this campaign does not extend to civilians in Gaza.
They will have to rely on the World Health Organization (WHO), which has announced that it will send more than a million polio vaccines.
In short, Musa Abed, director of health care in Palestine, says the Ministry of Health announced that Israel does not allow vaccines to enter Gaza.
Until vaccines are allowed in, Israel's latest weapon of war will continue to spread without knowing the consequences for the wider region if it spreads abroad. Polio, a disease that was about to spread globally, would allow it to infect Gaza's children, stealing the use of bomb-sparing limbs.
says Alex Foley is a teacher and illustrator living in Brighton, UK. He has a research background in the molecular biology of health and disease. They are currently working to preserve fragile digital material related to mass atrocities in the MENA region.
In September, a highly revealing academic paper revealing earlier details of a covert operation by Zionist militias during the 1948 Nakba (or "catastrophe"), in which chemicals were used and biological weapons were used to poison Palestinians, intervening Arab armies, and citizens of neighboring countries suffering from typhoid, dysentery, malaria and other diseases.
By acting stealthily, Zionist militants poured huge amounts of infectious bacteria into wells and aqueducts supplying water to villages, towns and cities, in direct violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention and the Protocol, which strictly prohibits "the use of bacteriological methods of warfare."
The local epidemics brought about by this man-made catastrophe greatly helped in the forced invasion of Palestinian territory by armed Jewish militias whose seizure became permanent, while hindering the advance of Arab armies.
Biological warfare and the founding of Israel
The 1948 war has been well studied, its impact, and on top of it the permanent displacement of hundreds .
Thousands of Palestinians in the Nakba still hesitate today. However, the understanding of the conflict so far is incomplete.
Apart from vague references to the biological warfare campaign in the diaries and biographies of Zionist leaders and fighters from that era, and a 2003 academic article, about the use of these is illegal and the material has not been disclosed before.
In a ridiculous development of fate, the Zionist biological warfare blitzkrieg was successfully suppressed by such a large number.
Highly incriminating documents referring to the name of the operation — "Cast BreadYourself," a Bible quote from Ecclesiastes 11:1, where Jews are instructed to "throw your bread on the water, for after many days you will find it again" — bypassed government censorship without deportation.
It turns out that this gap in the historical record was intentionally created and preserved. Whereas, paper notes, this was noted in the memoirs of the first prime minister of Lsrael David Ben-Gurion days before the outbreak of war on May 15, 1948 praising a Zionist fighter who had recently spent several thousand
Dollars on "biological materials". However, this was censored by the Defense Department press when the volumes were published in 1982.
"Serious and efficient use"
This cover-up continues to this day, even in the newspaper itself. Authors - Benny Morris from Penn -Gurion University and Benjamin Z. Kedar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem seem to be making misinformation.
He downplays the importance of "Cast Yours Bread," citing the relatively few victims the effort produced as a sign of its "ineffectiveness."
Such an analysis excludes an obvious alternative explanation, namely that the relatively low death toll was actually intentional. This is due to the long-standing Zionist goal of seizing land allocated to the Arabs under the 1947 UN partition plan – under which Mandatory Palestine would be divided in half between separate Arab and Jewish states – and parts of neighboring Arab states, without mass slaughter and thus reasonably denied.
Confirming this theory, the paper reveals that the water supply to several Arab villages and towns has been destroyed.
Cities were targeted by Zionist militants even before the war, and biological warfare was among them.
Zionist fighters at that time were determined to permanently seize Palestinian land and expel the local population.
Take, for example, the Zionist poisoning of a vital aqueduct in Capri, a major source of water in neighboring areas .
Palestinian settlements, which the paper's authors call the "most dangerous and powerful use" of biology Weapons during the 1948 war, although they occurred before the conflict officially began.
Manufacturing epidemics and displacement
The historic northern city of Acre, classified by the United Nations as part of a future Arab state, relies heavily on the canal for water. Morris and Kedar say the morale of its residents was "already shaken" when local supplies were poisoned, due to the recent Zionist invasion of the nearby place Haifa is the capital of the region.
The fall of the city caused many of its inhabitants to flee and reside in Acre, which was cut away from other major regional centers and neighboring Lebanon.
The withdrawal of the British, who were supposed to defend the Arabs from the Zionist onslaught, led to a "decline" of spirituality among civilians. The outbreak of the typhus epidemic reduced them to a "state of severe distress," the mayor of the city was quoted as saying on May 3 of that year.
It advanced rapidly 13 days later, when Zionist forces attacked the city, issuing a brutal ultimatum unless the inhabitants of Acre surrendered without resistance: "We will destroy you to the last man and completely."
Hours later, local leaders surrendered, resulting in three-quarters of Acre's Arab population – 13,510 civilians – displaced forever.
The following month, a Zionist intelligence report concluded that artificially unleashing the pandemic contributed significantly in advance to the hasty collapse of Acre. The same review found that both typhus outbreaks and "panic caused by rumors of the spread of the disease" were similarly "likewise an exacerbating factor in the evacuation" of many Palestinian areas.
In addition to ensuring a low mortality rate, biological weapons have also carried out mass cleansing of Palestinians.
Targeting other Arabs
On 26 September, Zionist activists began a large-scale campaign of "harassment by all means" against soldiers and civilians throughout Palestine and on the territory of Arab states involved in the 1948 war.
The expulsion of the occupants of land allocated to Jews by the United Nations, the seizure of the West Bank, and ensuring that displaced refugees do not return to their homes are all goals of the Zionist project.
Zionist fighters directly targeted Arab soldiers with biological weapons Late in May of that year, the Egyptian foreign minister sent a telegram to the UN secretary-general announcing the latest incident, namely the arrest of two "Zionist agents who confessed to having been instructed to pollute the springs" from which Egyptian forces in Gaza derive water supplies.
The couple confessed to dropping typhoid spores and dysentery in nearby wells, and was found in possession of "several bottles containing liquid found to contain dysentery and typhoid spores," as well as "a canteen containing liquid containing a high concentration of typhoid and dysentery spores. Such high-level exposure did nothing to deter the execution of "Cast Thy Bread".
Indeed, beyond that the undermining of Maurice and Kedar's bleached narrative, and the targeting of neighboring Arab states continued until the latter stages of the war, when Zionist victory was inevitable. In the case of Lebanon, even before the start of the "harassment by all means" campaign, the Zionist
Operatives in Beirut were exploring potential targets for sabotage operations in Lebanon, including "bridges, railways, water and electricity sources." They were eager to throw the network further than "Cast Thy.
In late January 1949, two months before the country signed an armistice with the Zionists,
The militants were tasked with researching "water sources (and] central reservoirs" in Beirut, and "providing water pipeline maps" in major Lebanese and Syrian cities.
After the end of the 1948 war, the informal Zionist biological warfare unit became the Institute of Biological Research in Nice Ziona, IsraelEl Central.
Its first director was Alexander Keenan, a former militant who was closely involved in the planning and execution of the film "Cast Yours Bread". Obviously, the amazing work made him a prime candidate for research into future offensive biological warfare Strategies.
Warning of history?
Where Kennan's investigations led, and the biological and chemical scale of modern Israel a Israel today, is not certain – although the country is one of only 13 of the 184 regions recognized by the United Nations
It is not a signatory to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, and only one of four that will not be party to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Ominously, this may indicate that Israel's research in this area is ongoing. It may also serve as another logical reason to keep such a tight cover on "Cast Thy Bread" as the process remains infamous
The connection to the present, which the LSRAELI authorities wish to keep secret.
In November 1998, citing the British Sunday Times, citing Israeli military and Western intelligence sources stated that Tel Aviv was "working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs and not Jews," by "targeting victims by ethnic origin."
"In the development of the 'sweat bomb', Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying distinct genes that some Arabs carry, and then creating genetically modified bacteria or viruses."The newspaper claimed.
"The goal is to use the ability of viruses and certain bacteria to alter the DNA within their host Living cells. Scientists are trying to engineer killer microorganisms that attack only those that carry the distinctive genes."
The program is said to be based at a "biological institute" in Nice Luna, home of the institute For biological research. A scientist at the site was quoted as saying that his peers "succeeded in" Identify a specific characteristic in the genetic profile of some Arab societies, in particular Iraqi people," and that "the disease can be spread by spraying organisms into the air or putting them in the water supply."
Critics denounced the Times report at the time as a "bloody libel," a reference to the anti-Semitic myth that Jews kill young Christian boys in order to use their blood in religious rituals.
It is fitting, then, that when on May 27, 1948, Syria's representative to the United Nations read the Egyptian book, which contained a telegram sent to the Secretary-General of the Commission about the arrest of "Zionist agents" trying to poison.Accusing Jews of poisoning Christian wells."
According to the Palestine Chronicle, the recently discovered documents are one of many historical wars .
The crimes committed by the then emerging occupying power against the Palestinian people, yet many of the history of the Nakba remain secret and slowly renewed.
The idea that polio vaccines are part of a Western conspiracy in Pakistan was heightened when reports were published and it emerged that the CIA had orchestrated a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign aimed at identifying and eventually killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.