Gaza: Where Humanity Is Under Siege
Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
(Mahmoud Darwish)
The war on Gaza, now stretching past eleven months, has revealed not only the brutality of a military superpower against a besieged population but also the moral bankruptcy of an international system that claims to safeguard human rights. Gaza today is not merely a warzone—it is the site of an unfolding genocide, prosecuted with impunity and tolerated by a complicit world.
The Human Toll
As of September 2025, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 41,000, according to United Nations and independent monitors. Nearly 70 percent of the dead are women and children. More than 95,000 have been injured, many permanently maimed. Yet numbers alone cannot convey the scale of devastation. Entire families have been erased from civil registries. The dead are often buried hastily in mass graves, without shrouds or farewells, because bombardment never ceases long enough to permit dignity in mourning.
The catastrophe is not confined to direct bombardment. At least 1.9 million people—over 85 percent of Gaza’s population—have been displaced, some multiple times, forced to flee from one devastated area to another. Starvation is rampant: the World Food Programme warns that nearly 500,000 Gazans are on the brink of famine, with children dying not from bombs but from hunger and untreated disease.
The World Health Organization reports that one in three children under five suffers from acute malnutrition, while hospitals lack even basic anesthetics. Doctors have performed amputations on children without pain relief. This deliberate deprivation of food, medicine, and water is not collateral damage but strategy—fitting the UN’s definition of genocide: “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”
Cities Reduced to Dust
The physical destruction of Gaza is staggering. Satellite imagery confirms that 65–70 percent of all housing units have been destroyed or damaged. Entire neighborhoods—Shuja’iyya, Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis, Rafah—have been reduced to rubble. What were once thriving communities are now wastelands of twisted steel and concrete.
Educational institutions have been devastated. More than 80 percent of schools are damaged or destroyed, robbing a generation of children of their future. Gaza’s universities—Al-Azhar, the Islamic University, and others—have been deliberately bombed, a calculated assault on knowledge and continuity. Religious sites have fared no better: mosques and churches alike have been targeted, obliterating spaces of both worship and refuge.
Infrastructure collapse has compounded suffering. Gaza’s sole power plant has been shut for months. Fuel is barred, leaving hospitals dependent on scarce generators. Drinking water is virtually inaccessible: over 90 percent of Gaza’s water supply is unfit for human consumption, forcing families to drink from contaminated sources. With sewage overflowing, outbreaks of hepatitis and cholera loom. Survival itself has become resistance.
A War Without Rules
Israel’s conduct in Gaza flagrantly violates international humanitarian law. The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on civilians and demand proportionality in the use of force. Yet Gaza has seen indiscriminate bombing of dense civilian areas, repeated strikes on hospitals, and the targeting of journalists and medics.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Gaza is the deadliest conflict for the press in modern history: over 160 journalists have been killed. Their crime was bearing witness. Medical workers fare no better. The Palestinian Red Crescent has reported dozens of paramedics killed in the line of duty, ambulances bombed while transporting the wounded.
Weapons used further underscore violations. Human Rights Watch has documented Israel’s use of white phosphorus in civilian areas—a weapon banned under international conventions when used indiscriminately. Reports also cite the testing of advanced U.S.-supplied weaponry in Gaza, reducing Palestinian lives to experimental collateral.
Global Complicity
If Gaza is bleeding, it is not only because of Israeli aggression but because of global complicity. The United States remains Israel’s primary enabler, funneling more than $18 billion in military aid in 2024 alone. Washington bypassed Congress to fast-track arms shipments even as evidence of war crimes mounted. European powers, too, have failed. Germany, France, and the UK issue hollow appeals for “restraint” while continuing arms sales and blocking tougher sanctions at the UN Security Council.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in January 2024, ruled that Israel faces a “plausible case of genocide” and ordered provisional measures to prevent further atrocities. Yet Israel dismissed the ruling outright. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened investigations, but its slow pace contrasts starkly with the urgency of the crisis. Justice delayed becomes justice denied.
Arab governments, meanwhile, stand exposed. While issuing condemnations, many quietly deepen security and trade ties with Israel. It is the Arab street, not its rulers, that rises in solidarity—from Cairo to Amman, Doha to Tunis—where millions continue to march despite repression.
The Global South and the Streets of the World
Outside the Arab world, the Global South has taken the lead. South Africa filed the genocide case at the ICJ, rekindling its historic role as a moral compass against apartheid. Bolivia, Colombia, and Brazil have severed or downgraded ties with Israel, citing crimes against humanity. In Asia, solidarity pulses across cities: from Jakarta to Seoul to Colombo, students and workers mobilize under the banner of Palestinian liberation.
In the West, ordinary people challenge the duplicity of their governments. London, Paris, Berlin, and New York have seen the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations in decades. Workers have refused to load arms shipments destined for Israel. Artists, academics, and athletes are joining the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, shaking cultural complicity.
These mobilizations matter. They fracture the narrative monopoly Israel once enjoyed and signal a growing legitimacy crisis for regimes that enable genocide.
Israel’s Own Unraveling
The war, intended to secure Israel’s safety, has instead deepened its internal and external crises. The economy reels under war spending, tourism has collapsed, and foreign investment hesitates. Israel faces rising isolation: cultural boycotts grow, diplomatic censures spread, and even its closest allies struggle to defend the indefensible.
Inside Israel, cracks widen. Thousands of reserve soldiers have refused service. Jewish voices worldwide increasingly dissociate, declaring, “Not in our name.” The myth of invulnerability through militarism collapses into an endless cycle of insecurity.
The Question of Palestine
At its root, Gaza’s devastation is not an aberration of war but the culmination of decades of dispossession. Since 1948, Palestinians have endured mass expulsion, occupation, and apartheid policies. The blockade of Gaza since 2007 turned the strip into what the UN once called “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The genocide is simply the most violent extension of that system.
Real peace cannot emerge from ceasefires or aid corridors alone. It requires dismantling the structures of apartheid, lifting the siege, ending occupation, and guaranteeing Palestinians their right to self-determination. Anything less is complicity in a cycle of oppression.
The Moral Imperative
Silence is complicity. Neutrality in the face of genocide is not moral restraint but moral failure. Every bomb dropped on Gaza is a test of our collective conscience. If international law cannot restrain power, it becomes meaningless. If human rights are applied selectively, they become hollow slogans. Palestine’s struggle belongs to the world.
Ghassan Kanafani, the Palestinian writer assassinated by Mossad in 1972, reminded us: “The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.”
His words remain urgent today. To stand with Gaza is to defend the very possibility of justice in our time. History will judge governments for their cowardice and betrayal. But it will also remember the millions in the streets, the voices of solidarity that defied censorship, and the insistence that Palestine will not be silenced.
Please read the articles from this issue of Palestine Updates and widely disseminate.
Ranjan Solomon
On behalf of MLN/Palestine Updates
Read full text: Palestine Updates 1066
