Gaza. Oh Gazans. The world watches on in real time as thousands of deadly Israeli missiles directly and deliberately target civilian homes, schools, hospitals and tents in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women, children and the elderly, since Hamas fighters launched an attack on Israel early last month.
Many thousands more—over 27,000 people at the last count—have been critically injured. More than 1 million people have been uprooted from their homes with practically nowhere to go, their only undoing being born Palestinian and living in Palestine. By last Saturday, more 100 employees of the United Nations (UN) have been killed by those Israeli attacks.
As we write, four hospitals in northern Gaza are under the most horrific siege in what news media have described as a “day of war against the hospitals”. Among them is Gaza’s largest medical facility, Al- Shifa Hospital, where thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from Israeli attacks, not to mention the thousands of patients wounded from those same attacks. The siege on this hospital is particularly extreme as water, electricity, fuel and vital medical supplies such as oxygen have been cut off, as Israeli troops and snipers encircle the hospital. As a result, all medical operations have been suspended and doctors watch their critically ill patients die.
“We’re minutes away from death, whole world standing by”, Al Shifa’s Medical Director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told Al Jazeera yesterday. He also said that the hospital is “completely cut off” from the outside world, while “any moving person targeted” by Israeli forces in what other doctors described as a “war on patients”. “We cannot find a single bed to place victims on,” Abu Salmiya added. “We are taking difficult decisions between who to save and who to let die … as I speak to you, I am standing in front of 100 dead bodies.”
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Israel claims, without any evidence to the world, that Gaza hospitals are operational bases for Hamas fighters. But doctors in the hospitals and even international agencies who work daily in those hospitals have dismissed those claims as no more than fiction designed to justify Israel’s unjustifiable attacks.
Meanwhile, the whole Strip remains in a siege imposed and enforced by Israel and its military, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Gaza is deliberately deprived of water, electricity, fuel and food, medical supplies, and communications. One Palestinian child dies every ten minutes in Gaza, according the World Health Organization (WHO), from all the missile strikes and the siege on hospitals, schools and the city overall. Even those fleeing northern Gaza, in compliance with Israeli orders, have been targeted by IDF deliberate attacks.
This is just a snapshot of the horrors on the ground today. Yet, the world watches on as if there is no international law that governs conflicts. But as UN expert and special rapporteur, Balakrishnan Rajagopal said only days ago, “Carrying out hostilities with the knowledge that they will systematically destroy and damage civilian housing and infrastructure – rendering an entire city such as Gaza City uninhabitable for civilians – is a war crime”.
“When such acts are directed against a civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity”, Rajagopal added. These are sufficient bases for the so-called “World Leaders” to call for and enforce a ceasefire on Israel. Unfortunately, even to call for a ceasefire, or just to say that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been a problem for the leaders of the world.
So far, neither the call for a “humanitarian ceasefire”, nor even the new term “humanitarian pause” has made much headway within the international system, nor by the Western leaders who continue to support Israeli extremism, even as their own citizens pour onto the streets in thousands in support of ceasefire.
But the world cannot continue to watch on as Israel kills and maim Palestinians at will in the name of its “right to defend itself”, which for all intents and purposes now means the right to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli war on Gaza today simply represents nothing short of the world’s moral bankruptcy. But it cannot continue. The world must muster the moral courage to say enough now. The more innocent Palestinians are killed, the greater the danger for enduring peace, even for Israel itself. As General Charles Q. Brown Jr, the U.S chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned lately, Israeli bombs on Gazan civilians will only produce more Hamas members, but not only in Palestine but also across the region.
Moreover, the conflict has the real potentials to escalate beyond Israel and Palestine to Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, not to mention regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Already indications for this have spiked in the last week, making even more urgent the need to enforce a ceasefire right now.
UN Security Council can, and must live up to its responsibilities. The Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference, meeting at the weekend, must use all resources available to them to ensure a ceasefire.
Above all the U.S and European powers, whose weapons manufacturing companies and governments supply nearly 90% of Israeli stockpile, must compel Israel to end its killing of innocent civilians forthwith. French President, Emmanuel Macron has finally found his moral voice and called for a ceasefire, saying Israel cannot continue to kill babies, ladies and the elderly. The U.S and other Western powers must follow his lead.
Beyond the ceasefire, a permanent solution that works for the security of all in the region must follow from the ashes of today’s conflict. This Israeli attack on Gaza is not the first, but it can, and must be the last.
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