AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

A new study in the British medical journal The Lancet has concluded Israel’s war on Gaza killed far more Palestinians than initially reported. Researchers found there were over 75,000 violent deaths in the first 16 months of Israel’s assault, compared to the roughly 49,000 deaths reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry over that period. More than half of those killed in the Israeli strikes were women, seniors or children. This comes as Israel continues to carry out strikes inside Gaza despite the U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire that went into effect in October.

To talk more about all of this and more, we’re joined by Mosab Abu Toha, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet and author, awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for essays published in The New Yorker. His latest poetry book is Forest of Noise. He left Gaza with his family in 2023 after he was jailed and beaten by Israeli forces.

Mosab, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the state of Gaza, of the place where you lived your life until 2023, where it stands now as the U.S. and Israel says that the ceasefire is entering its second phase.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you, Amy, for having me.

I mean, I want to talk about the place where I grew up in. I mean, I was born in a refugee camp in Gaza. There were eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. Israel erased at least two of them. And I grew up in Beit Lahia. And yesterday Israel murdered a Palestinian woman named Basma Banat, 27 years old, in Beit Lahia, the city that was decimated by the Israeli terrorist attacks.

People are still living in the tents. I have family members, I have sisters in Gaza, who are living with their husbands and their children. And they are still living in tents in the streets or near the rubble of their houses. People do not have access to water. People do not have access to healthy food. I mean, it is true that some food trucks are entering, but those are not the essential food that people in Gaza need in order to survive the many months of the starvation in the Gaza Strip.

There are so many patients, Amy. And I’m sure that you reported on that. There are about 20,000 patients who need urgently to be evacuated. And Israel is allowing a trickle of that number. Among the 20,000, as reported by Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, there are about 4,500 cancer patients, there are 4,500 children, and there are about 10,000 wounded people who need to have complex surgeries. And meanwhile, while on the waitlist, more than 3,300 people died while they were in the Gaza Strip waiting for the border crossing, which Israel not only occupied but destroyed.

So, the situation in Gaza is so horrific. It’s still a genocide, ongoing. Since the so-called ceasefire went into effect, Israel killed over 642 people, including 197 children. Amy, that’s like killing 10 classroom students in a public school in the United States. And in general, Israel has killed, since the start of the so-called ceasefire, five people every day — an average of five people every day. As far as it goes to the trucks, if Israel — according to the Gaza Rights Center, Israel allowed only 43% of the trucks that were agreed upon in the so-called ceasefire, including only 15% of fuel trucks. So the situation is not improving to an extent where people can survive the ongoing genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain how it works when people are trying to leave for medical attention. Al Jazeera is reporting, “A Palestinian child died on Sunday while waiting for Israel to approve his exit from Gaza for medical treatment amid an ongoing healthcare crisis in the enclave, whose medical infrastructure has been destroyed by Israel’s genocidal war,” Al Jazeera writes. “Nidal Abu Rabeea’s family told Al Jazeera that they had medical referral documents approved to receive treatment abroad, but he was left waiting for 14 months to be allowed out of the enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians, most of whom are displaced.” If you can explain what’s going on, and especially at the Rafah border?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: This is so heartbreaking, because the child that you just mentioned, Abu Rabeea, he’s also from Beit Lahia, so I know that — I mean, I know members from that family. And, Amy, the problem is that these kids, you know, when they die, it’s not like they’re dying without anyone shouting and screaming in public that we need to evacuate this child or that man who has skin disease or has kidney failure or who is a cancer patient.

So, I don’t remember how many times I posted on social media, begging the entire world on my social media, on X, on Instagram, on Facebook, that this boy, this child, this woman, this mother, this grandfather needs to be evacuated immediately in order to survive. But I don’t remember anyone reaching out to me or even reaching out to the family who was begging, you know, to help them evacuate. But it never happened. And that child, I’m sure that, 100%, many people posted about him that he needs to be evacuated.

And by the way, Amy, an important point is that the stories of people dying in Gaza because they need immediate medical evacuation, it did not start in 2023. There are some cases from 2010, 2015, 2017 of people, because the border crossing was closed, because Israel was not giving security clearance to the families to go to the West Bank or some hospitals in Jerusalem. Many people died even before the genocide started in 2023. So this is not a new story for us. But now the numbers have been increased because of the larger number of people who need immediate medical evacuation.

And I would like to correct that this is — we should not, I think, call it “Rafah border crossing.” It’s no longer a border crossing; it is a military checkpoint. And if you’re following the news and listening to the stories of witnesses and victims, you will hear the stories of families returning to Gaza or leaving, and they have been subjected to harassment and abuse by the Israeli terrorist soldiers in Rafah.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response, Mosab, to Mike Huckabee’s recent comments, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Arab and Muslim nations are condemning those comments. He was speaking to the right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson.

MIKE HUCKABEE: This particular area that we’re talking about now, Israel, is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose. It was a people, a place and a purpose. We can look at it that way. Christian Zionism — I want to go back, because that’s where we started on this.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not going to let you off on this, because you have said it three times —

MIKE HUCKABEE: Go ahead. OK.

TUCKER CARLSON: — that God gave this land —

MIKE HUCKABEE: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: — to this people. And so it is entirely fair for me, with respect, to ask: What land are you talking about? Because I just read Genesis 15, as I have many times, and that land, I think it says from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is, once again, basically the entire Middle East.

MIKE HUCKABEE: It would be fine if they took it all.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Mosab Abu Toha, your response?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, I was confused, as I was. I mean, that interview was really shocking — or not shocking, because this is not the first time I heard him speaking, you know, extremist language and genocidal language, for me. But, I mean, maybe as a Palestinian, I sometimes found myself confused. I mean, is this an American ambassador to a country, or is it an official in that country? I mean, the language he was using is the language that even it’s more, for me sometimes — it’s more extreme than the language you hear from some Israelis who have been occupying our land and killing our people.

I mean, sometimes I wonder, you know, if there is something else in the Bible that talks about justice, about peace. I mean, there is Genesis, that they were quoting from, about giving our land, the land of my grandparents, to other people. And there is the Amalek. Is there something else in the Bible that you can quote from about mercy and love and justice for the people, for human beings?

And I remember hearing Tucker asking Mike Huckabee about doing DNA for Jewish people who are living in Israel, who are occupying our land. And I was wondering: Why don’t we do DNA for everyone on this Earth, you know, to prove that we are all the creatures of God? We are all the creatures of God.

I don’t — as a Palestinian, I don’t belong to anywhere else than Palestine. And I don’t want to go to any other place than Palestine. My grandparents, when they were living in Yaffa in 1948, before they were expelled, I mean, they didn’t know about the Bible. They didn’t — they were not born anywhere else. I mean, we are the original people of this land, and we do not know any place other than Palestine.

And I was also disappointed — maybe I should not — that in the interview, Tucker did not ask him, “What about the Palestinian people who are living there? I mean, are they foreign to the land? And how do we know if they were foreign to the land?” We were not talked about as people who existed. It seemed like there was a land, and there was a prophecy, and, OK, let’s apply this prophecy, and it’s like an empty land, and let’s just go back. It’s like a project of return as if nothing else existed on that land.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, President Trump hosted heads of state and other officials from nearly 50 countries for the inaugural meeting of the so-called Board of Peace. He was in Washington, D.C. He vowed to provide $10 billion in U.S. funds to the organization. Congress has not approved this. Among other key proposals is to turn Gaza into an upscale seaside resort with gleaming skyscrapers and entirely new cities. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has also described this. The pope has refused to join the Board of Peace. Israel has joined the Board of Peace, along with other countries. Your final thoughts on this?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. I mean, I have at least two pieces of advice. First of all, instead of starting a board of something, you should start a board of justice. I mean, who is going to bring justice to this family, Shaaban and Abu Shaaban family, I mean, two parents and their children? The youngest was 2 years old, as you see. Who’s going to bring justice to this family, and at least 4,000 children who were the only survivors of their families?

And the second advice I have is that there is something that’s called the United Nations, and that United Nations has many, many resolutions that condemn Israel and its occupation, that is demanding that Israel end its occupation of Palestine. How about we adhere to the resolutions and the international law when it comes to the Palestinian people?

And a maybe third piece of advice: Why would we have someone, a country, and someone who is accused — and it’s a documented thing, but at least he’s accused, and he has a warrant, an arrest warrant — for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity? How come you have him as a member of that Board of Peace? So, it is a joke, and I think it’s an embarrassment for the coming generations to read what was happening. I mean, what happened in Gaza is a disaster, it’s a genocide, but how the international leaders have been acting, how they were responding.

And I have a fourth piece of advice. Instead of raising money to rebuild Gaza, which is very good, I think it’s very important to stop sending bombs that are killing our families in Gaza and reducing the Palestinian people and their homes and towns and houses to rubble.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to get your final response to a DNC report that has not been released publicly, though it’s called an autopsy report of the Democratic National Committee about the 2024 election. It concluded Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s policy on Gaza, according to a report in Axios. The DNC report still hasn’t been released to the public. The Institute for Middle East Understanding, IMEU, is accusing the DNC of withholding the report in part because of its findings on Israel. Your final comment on this? I mean, you lived in Gaza your whole life.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You raised your family until 2023. But you’re here in the United States since 2023, '24, so you're really aware of the politics of this country and Kamala Harris’s loss, of course, meaning President Trump won.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I think, I mean, it is — I mean, those who have stayed silent — I mean, it’s not like the Democratic Party stayed silent. But, I mean, it’s not that they stayed silent, but they continued to justify Israel’s war crimes. I mean, the videos and the stories of the people in Gaza who have been dismembered and who — I mean, there are at least 10,000 people who still remain under the rubble of their homes. And we don’t hear anyone talking about recovering their bodies. That’s one point I wanted to talk about.

But there are videos of people burnt in their tents. There are videos of babies who were decapitated. These are not, you know, fairy tales. These are real videos and photos and witness accounts. And no one respected us to tell our stories like they were telling some fake stories from the Israelis on October 7.

So we didn’t hear about any stories from the Democratic Party to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people or to stop sending more and more bombs to the Israeli army, which they were using to carry out crimes against humanity. So I think it is a disgrace that this report is coming out now. I mean, it should have been very clear from day one that this is going to cause everyone a huge loss, but the hugest loss has been caused to us as Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet and author, awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for essays published in The New Yorker. His latest poetry book is Forest of Noise.

Coming up, the Winter Olympics have ended in Italy. We’ll speak to Jules Boykoff, author of six books on the Olympics. Stay with us.