The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman in Gaza, Chris Gunness, recently burst into tears when asked about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The international community must do the opposite. It must stand up to the challenge and rein in the combatants who appear indifferent to the catastrophe they have caused.
The war between Israel and Palestine’s Hamas militants in Gaza has displaced nearly 300,000 persons who are now huddled in 86 shelters. World leaders must design quick and effective strategies to provide succour and hope for them. Gaza is being destroyed. The world must move to save it. Clean water, food and drugs must be provided for the thousands of traumatized children and other vulnerable people in the conflict zone. To do all these, peace must be restored.
The horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas, which has claimed so many lives, must be stopped. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, had earlier said that there would be no ceasefire until Israel completes the destruction of the tunnels built by Hamas militants. Its siege on Gaza, which followed the kidnapping of three Israeli youths, has led to so much destruction that the United States and the rest of the world have a responsibility to call him to order. Hamas, on its part, had said that a ceasefire would be meaningless unless the siege on Gaza is lifted. Palestine must be prevailed upon by Iran and the Arab League to act in the best interest of its people.
The manifest powerlessness of the world to stop the war in Gaza is beginning to raise doubts about the integrity of the international system. A 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire earlier brokered by Egypt and the United States had collapsed in a matter of hours, resulting in more bloodshed on both sides.
What is needed now is not for the world to throw up its arms in despair but to work harder for a permanent resolution of the conflict. Every second this needless war continues means greater catastrophe.
The cost of this war is already horrendous: 1,441 Palestinians killed, 976 of them civilians and nearly half of them women and children. About 8,300 Palestinians have been wounded and 9,000 Palestinian homes destroyed. At least 24 medical facilities and more than 130 schools in Gaza have been damaged. The sole power plant in Gaza has had its fuel tank blown up. Israel, on its part, has lost 61 soldiers, two civilians and a Thai national working in Israel.
The war in Gaza started with the condemnable kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in Gaza, which led to an equally reprehensible retaliatory kidnap and murder of a Palestinian teenager. Palestine replied the killing of its national with the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, while Israel unleashed massive air strikes with extensive destruction of houses and killing of both civilians and militants in Gaza.
Israel’s right to defend itself is beyond question but it is not a licence to inflict so much destruction on Palestinians. Israel has apparently lost its sense of proportionality while Palestine cannot escape blame for its recklessness and manifest unwillingness to foresee the consequences of its decision to shoot rockets into Israel.
It is now moot to argue that going to war to avenge the murder of Israeli teenagers ought not to have been an option at all, and that given a little patience on the part of Israel, the murderers would have been apprehended and appropriately tried and punished.
But Israel has, for nearly a decade, been hyper-sensitive about its security and frustrated the peace efforts of some of the ablest diplomats. It is time for the world to compel Israel to realise the futility of maintaining a permanent state of war, and desist from its current bloody campaign in Gaza which the United Nations has rightly described as “a moral outrage.”
Mercifully, the recent declaration of a 7-hour humanitarian ceasefire in some parts of Gaza in response to the humongous suffering in the area should bring some respite for the suffering population in those areas. But, this is certainly not enough. A lot needs to be done to end the current hostilities. The Arab League, America and the European Union must go back to the drawing board and work on an arrangement for sustainable peace in Gaza. The world cannot give up on Israelis and Palestinians.
This is because, buried in the unending shedding of blood in Palestine and Israel, are the yearnings of millions of the ordinary people of the two countries who daily pray for peace and an end to the perpetual state of war.
The ball is now in the court of world public opinion to put pressure on both sides, especially the Israelis, whose sense of invincibility hastens their readiness to go to war. Might is not right, and excessive reliance on might, all too easily, leads to avoidable tragedies such as the current war in Gaza.
