No end in sight for Israel-gaza war
This weekend marks six months since the day Hamas militants stormed Israeli border fences and launched an unprecedented attack on communities there.
The horror of the assault was unquestionable. I spoke to people whose family members were trapped in a safe room in a kibbutz near the Gazan border for 36 hours – who heard atrocities committed outside of their home and ultimately lost a close family member. Other stories, of the young people kidnapped from a music festival and taken to Gaza, where some of them are still being held, are every parent’s nightmare.
However, few could have anticipated the scale of the retaliatory attacks Israel has since carried out in Gaza.
The territory has essentially been decimated. Buildings have been reduced to rubble and it is estimated that just 300,000 people, out of a population of two million, have not been displaced from their homes. Many are living in the open air, or in tentlike temporary structures, the vast majority of them crushed into a tiny corner of Gaza near the Egyptian border, which is currently the subject of its own series of heavy bombardments by the Israeli military.
Huge amounts of aid has been unable to reach Gaza. Blocks on convoys travelling through the usual routes via Israel have meant Rafah, the border with Egypt, is the only possible way for humanitarian supplies to access the territory. Yet even there, there have been problems. This week’s attack on a convoy which killed seven staff from World Central Kitchen, a food aid charity providing hot meals for Gazan refugees, has made humanitarian organisations even more nervous. Now, they believe, they are not only operating in a dangerous zone, but they are potentially targets.
Israel has taken responsibility for the attacks, saying it was a “grave mistake”, however, some, including the charity itself, as well as research group Human Rights Watch, which said the hit “displays the characteristics of a precision airstrike”, have claimed the attack was planned.
Few believe there is an end in sight to this conflict. Attempts at brokering a ceasefire have been largely unsuccessful. A humanitarian “pause” at the end of last year was short lived and any more significant agreements between Gaza and Israel seem unlikely.
Israel has not yet achieved its aim – to stamp out Hamas in Gaza – and it will not stop until it feels it has done so. How the conflict can continue at this level is anyone’s guess. People are starving, hundreds are dying every day. Another six months is unsustainable.
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