"In 2022, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits of people through their border. The 144,899 exits recorded during the year are 44 per cent more than in 2021, representing the highest figure since 2014."
That's 6.6% of the gaza population travelling out of gaza per year, higher than the percent of Indians who travel abroad each year. This statistic also doesn't reflect the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year.
The "open air prison" is a lie. You can impute whatever motive you want to them leaving. I'm sure escaping Hamas persecution was a part of it for many of them. Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing and the "mowing the lawn" narrative is propaganda.
> In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’
That's an editorial sentence; I was quoting a fact. The same fact appears in numerous other sources and gives lie to the open-air prison idea. Sorry you don't like that fact.
You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure, but you have yet to provide a single source that supports it. You made that calculation yourself, based on a statistic that you already admitted doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and doesn't correspond to the relevant statistic for India. Given how many times I've raised this issue to your attention, I would say you are now intentionally misleading people.
"You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure"
This is simply false. I have acknowledged your correction twice. It's more accurate to say that there have been more than 500,000 exits from Gaza in 2022, which as a percent of the population is approximately 25%, though this surely includes people who exited multiple times. In the same year, India recorded 22.6 million exits from a population of 1.4 billion, which is less than 2%. Given that there were 500k recorded exits, it wasn't an open-air prison. QED.
The acknowledgments.
"Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084323
"My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times."
Also, this is data you appear to have been totally unaware of (as evidenced by your skepticism and repeated demand for sources), so it is you who should acknowledge you were wrong and stop spreading misinformation.
Yes, you acknowledged the correction elsewhere. However, when questioned about the 6.6% figure by another user, you literally just replied "I was quoting a fact". Perhaps you meant the fact about the number of exits to Egypt, but to me, that appears highly misleading, perhaps intentionally so.
I think oscaracso makes a very good point as well. In a country as vast as India, you can find almost anything you need without leaving its borders. Less so with Gaza.
So in other words you said I didn't acknowledge the correction, but I did acknowledge it, twice. I then modified it to point out that there were 500k exits from gaza out of a population of 2 million, something I'm glad you now don't dispute, because it gives lie to the whole "open-air prison" narrative.
No, that's not what I said. Once again, you are not being careful with your words, and as a result what you say has only a tenuous relationship to the truth. Yes, you acknowledged your mistake, yet you still insisted upon that incorrect figure later, to a different person in a different subthread.
As for the 500k figure, I'm not interested in disputing it since it's just as irrelevant as your 6.6% figure, for reasons I've already mentioned. But since you insist, I'll list them out again:
1. That figure is listing total exits, not distinct exiting individuals. Since most of those exits were made by workers and traders (who might cross very frequently, maybe daily), there is good reason to believe that the number of distinct exiting individuals is vastly lower. For example, if everyone crossing was a daily trader, the true number of exiting individuals would be smaller by a factor of 365. Of course, not everyone making the crossing is a worker or trader, only most of them, and we don't know how often they cross.
2. That figure does not distinguish exits by Palestinians, Israelis, or other citizens, so it has no bearing on whether Palestinians are trapped in Gaza or not. Many Israeli workers also cross into and out of Gaza constantly.
3. This figure is from before October 7, and movement is more restricted now. But, since you are focusing on the use of the term "open-air prison" before the massacre, I won't count that against you.
By the way, I certainly don't insist on calling Gaza an "open-air prison", that's far too imprecise for me. I simply object to the way that you misinterpret facts to support your argument.
> 2. That figure does not distinguish exits by Palestinians, Israelis, or other citizens, so it has no bearing on whether Palestinians are trapped in Gaza or not. Many Israeli workers also cross into and out of Gaza constantly.
I don't believe Israelis entered Gaza in 2022. In fact, cases where mentally ill Israelis entered Gaza ended in them being held as hostages by Hamas
Look, I can see we're straying from a discussion of facts to a discussion of what people said, which is not productive. I'm glad you now know that there were >500,000 exits per year from Gaza to Israel and Egypt in 2022, and don't dispute that figure. You're reduced now to accepting that figure, and trying to find a large and arbitrary number to divide it by. Fine by me. Whatever you divide it by, there were logged exits, so it wasn't a prison. In fact, many of the people who exited Gaza to Israel are known to have mapped the kibbutzim for Hamas's attack.
Similarly, I'm glad you now know that there are somewhere between 100 and 180 births per day in Gaza, depending on the month and source you trust. (I did provide 2025 data, you just overlooked it.) Whichever figure you choose--100 births/day or 180 births/day--you're now reduced to accepting that there were tens of thousands of births in Gaza, something you hadn't even considered before. And I know you didn't consider this before given how incredulous you were of this basic fact that you asked for sources multiple times. You also have no counter-proposal or alternative source on how many births there were. But it doesn't matter to me.
When it comes to the death count, you need this to remain higher than the official health ministry count (which includes natural deaths and has other problems), so you offer the widely debunked theory that there are thousands of nameless, faceless, odorless bodies under the rubble - something for which there is no primary evidence. Your skepticism goes in one direction. Exercise for you: try treating the pro-palestinian narrative with that attitude and see how far you get.
For my own part, I used to lead pro-palestine rallies, and at the beginning of the war I even paid to help smuggle a Gazan out through one of the Rafah crossings some commenters here say don't exist, but then I tried to... y'know... apply equal skepticism to both sides.
>For my own part, I used to lead pro-palestine rallies, and at the beginning of the war I even paid to help smuggle a Gazan out through one of the Rafah crossings
No you didn’t. Or you’re saying you cared enough to hold rallies but now you just so happened to have developed “skepticism” once Israel started the genocide. And now you parrot hasbara talking points. Yeah nah.
Israel started the genocide not later than 1968. Pretending that the genocide is a novel phenomenon starting after the Oct. 7 attacks is a propaganda point actively pushed by those under the sway of Iranian propaganda that is designed to align with and subtly reinforce, among those not already aligned with the Palestinian cause, Israeli propaganda that what is described as genocide is a response to the Oct. 7 attacks, because Iran's interest is not in ending the genocide, but in ensuring that it continues while leveraging it for propaganda cover for its own geopolitical interests in the region.
There is an old Jewish saying: the antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.
Whether or not I was part of the pro Palestine movement is completely irrelevant to the thread and I have no obligation to prove it to you. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter to me and iota. But tell you what, if we can put some stakes on this (e.g. $10k if I have the goods), I'll do it for money. I'll be happy to donate to your $ to the idf.
>There is an old Jewish saying: the antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.
Whether or not I was part of the pro Palestine movement is completely irrelevant to the thread and I have no obligation to prove it to you. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter to me and iota. But tell you what, if we can put some stakes on this (e.g. $10k if I have the goods), I'll do it for money. I'll be happy to donate to your $ to the idf.
If it is irrelevant, why did you bring it up? It is obvious you are lying, like you have been in every other post in this thread.
And you had to fall back to the usual baseless accusations of antisemitism. Typical hasbara troll.
Nice one, but will you put your money where your mouth is?
The fact that I led pro Palestine rallies is irrelevant to the central point we're discussing, which is whether Gaza was an open air prison and whether the was a genocide. It's relevant to my own personal journey from the pro Palestine movement, which I left because of people like you.
It's interesting that the article directly contradicts your own takeaway:
"In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’"
Additionally, that's 144,899 exits, not 144,899 distinct people exiting, nor is it even 144,899 exits made by Palestinians. So your interpretation is multiply incorrect.
Would you like to clarify what you mean by "Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing"?
Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year.
(The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)
What I mean when I say that Israel persecution wasn't really a thing is that the men with guns in Gaza were Hamas, not the idf. If you were shot in the knee or thrown off a building for being queer, it was Hamas that was persecuting you, not the idf.
I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information.
Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits issued, since those are ostensibly required to leave. The article does say 18,000 permits were issued to workers and traders in 2022, but since it doesn't include permits to other civilians, nor does it mention the expiration period for these permits, I won't commit the intellectually dishonest act of trying to turn that into a percentage.
As for your claim about Israeli persecution, that's trivially false. There are too many instances of Palestinians being shot by IDF forces to list here, but there are casualty databases freely available online. Yes, Hamas persecutes Palestinians as well, I'm not defending them.
Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.
In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.
Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.
The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.
Yes, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but you have provided no evidence with which to obtain even a ballpark estimate. I don't think the real figure would be "slightly lower" than 6.6%, I think it would be much lower, since many of those exiting Gaza would be e.g. truck drivers who make the trip constantly. As for the "secret Gazan escape tunnels", while some Hamas tunnels may exist connecting Rafah and Egypt, I can find no evidence that these are trafficked by civilians. Of course, I don't know how much lower than 6.6% the real figure is, and neither do you, that's the point. The real problem here is that you presented that figure as an absolute certainty, without any evidence to back it up.
Secondly, when people refer to Gaza as an "open air prison" they are employing metaphor. I have never understood it to mean that literally no one leaves, and I don't think any reasonable person understands it that way.
Finally, you have provided more figures about Gazan deaths. Would you care to provide a source for those figures? Even if they are accurate (and so far, none of your figures have been accurate) they still contradict your previous post, that the "only men with guns in Gaza are Hamas". The point of my questioning was to arrive upon a common definition for the word "persecution". Your offered definition was indeed trivially false, since you just admitted that the IDF shot innocent civilians in that time frame. Perhaps you would like to amend your statement and pick a definition more suitable for your arguments, such as Amnesty International's definition. In that case, I offer this report detailing the many ways Palestinians were persecuted under Israel's rule prior to October 7: <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>
We were debating whether Gaza was an open-air prison. My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times. You have not yet acknowledged the >400,000 crossings from Gaza to Israel, and you put in scare quotes the "secret Gazan escape tunnels."
But these tunnels weren't secret and they did exist.
"To mitigate the impact of the blockade on Gaza, a tunnel economy evolved and
peaked between 2007 and 2013, with more than 1,532 underground tunnels running under the 12 km border between Gaza and Egypt. "
That's just one source and likely an underestimate on the number of tunnels. You claim you were unable to find the easily-findable stats on the birth-rate in Gaza; this should be an easy one for you as there are multiple documentaries about these tunnels you can find freely on youtube, and you can see video evidence of the tunnels.
I am glad you now say that when people refer to Gaza as an open-air prison, they don't actually mean what they say, but are instead referring to a situation where there were hundreds of thousands (indeed more than half a million) documented exits each year between Egypt and Israel; to a place where the men with guns patrolling the prison were Hamas, not the IDF; to a place where if you were going to get killed, your killers were most likely to be Hamas, not the IDF.
Likewise, I appreciate you acknowledging that this is a special kind of genocide where the population hasn't really been reduced much.
And I also appreciate your deep skepticism of everything I say, despite the many credible sources I provide, and your complete failure to provide any primary evidence for your claims of tons of nameless, faceless, odorless corpses under rubble; your evidence-free claims that people born in Gaza today have a low chance of living; and your prediction that if you give Israel 10 more years, it will eradicate the population of Gaza. I look at population charts; this will be an interesting one to watch - care to make a bet on polymarket with me?
You forgot the rest of the quote:
“ While the tunnels prevented the complete collapse of Gaza's economy, they were unsustainable, informal, uncontrolled and unregulated by governments on either side of the border. They were closed by mid-2013.”
I did not forget the rest of the quote; I omitted it because it turns out that was wrong. Tunnels existed from Rafah to Egypt right up to 10/7. There are videos of Egyptian and israeli authorities destroying them post 10/7.
You deliberately left it out because it invalidated your point. Even if Israel wasn’t lying about tunnels, they weren’t moving the amount of people you claimed. So your point was bogus.
What do you mean? There is photographic and video evidence of Israel destroying the tunnels after it established the Philadelphia corridor. CGI?
Also, let's pretend the tunnels didn't exist (they did). How in the world would that invalidate my point that Gaza wasn't an open air prison because there were more than 500k documented exits in 2022?
> (The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)
That is what you said. That report didn't support that claim. Which was obvious if you read the part you omitted. Which is why you didn't bother to quote it. It is the second article you linked where you deliberately misrepresented the data. Like your claim of 500k people exiting, when that article said 83% are laborers who go to Israel and back. You realize prisons allow work release too, right?
> There is photographic and video evidence of Israel destroying
There is plenty of video evidence of Israel destroying pretty much everything in Gaza. They have claimed many things, most of them not true. Like those supposedly hidden Hamas C&C facilities in the basements of hospitals (they weren't there, Israel just wanted to destroy the health system).
