The Inhumane Cost of Conflict

"Humanitarian aid to Gaza?"

"No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter  until the Israeli abductees are returned home."

Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister 

Many Gaza residents are suffering from long-term respiratory and eye issues due to using wood for cooking instead of scarce gas and electricity.   Photo: Fadi Thabet, Nuseirat

 

War is an unkind enemy of humanity. In Gaza, Palestinians suffer the impact of a war that the governing Hamas terrorists provoked. The savagery of the invasion of southern Israel by thousands of terrorists linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, lead by Hamas operatives was an exercise in unspeakable sadistic atrocities in the mass rape of girls and women, the  anguish they suffered through torture, the massacre of children, parents, the elderly,  and the abduction of infants, ailing men and women, held in Gaza to be used as trade pawns for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons.

Proof exists that civilian Palestinians followed the terrorists in their invasion to prey on civilians living in kibbutzim that had employed Palestinians from Gaza in farm labour. Trusted Palestinians who broke bread with their Israeli employers, and who in turn revealed to Hamas commanders planning the invasion, valuable details of the farming villages and their security protocols. Israeli hostages were held not only by Hamas terrorists, but by Palestinian civilians as well; mistreatment of the hostages was universal; humiliation, rape, deprivation of fresh air, of food and water.

Israeli children, women and men who were forced to live in tunnels, deprived of sunlight, of hygiene, of medicine for chronic health conditions, whom even the International Red Cross made no effort to make contact with. The threatened, abused and starved Israeli hostages served a purpose that the terrorists exploited; held in part by civilians working with Hamas, a significant number perished. Despite the Israel Defense Forces search for members of Hamas with the firm intention of permanently destroying the group's capacity to ever again prey on Israelis and Jews, missiles continue to rain down from Gaza to Israel.

 

Palestinians crowd around a bakery in Gaza. Photograph: Fatima Shbair/AP

 

How likely is it that any nation whose military is on the offensive would constrain their military targeting to protect civilians as Israel does? The civilian casualty rate in Gaza has been steep, as it has been in any conflict anywhere in the world. Hamas commanding elites made it clear in public fora that they have no intention of relenting in their goal of destroying Israel and murdering Jews; pledging to repeat the October 7, 2023 butchery over and over again until no Jews would be left. 

Gazans are now and have been for a year, living with major life inconveniences. Apart from the need to constantly move from one area in the Gaza Strip to another in advance of IDF planned attacks on Hamas infrastructure, their impermanence has necessitated that they live rough amongst destroyed and crumbling infrastructure  in many areas. There is a lack of potable running water, and no electricity. The lethal designs of Hamas created complete destruction, insecurity and the potential for death in the Gaza population, given the terrorist group's propensity to situate themselves and their weaponry in the midst of heavily populated areas.

 

Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza after the attacks by Hamas  Reuters

 

"Every night is a struggle for us", 36-year-old Abu Amra says, living in Deir al Balah, central Gaza where she now cooks over a fire and laundry is done by hand. Israel, pre-Oct 7 attack supplied Gaza with electricity. In the immediate aftermath of the atrocities, the electricity to Gaza via Israel was shut down. The Palestinian population of Gaza which, in the vast majority favours Hamas rule and approves of the attack, whose result is the reason they now suffer may or may not now regret that choice. More likely they credit Israel alone with their suffering.

The electricity infrastructure of Gaza suffered over the years as a result of previous conflicts that Hamas had been responsible for initiating. The funding that Hamas has received from humanitarian groups, the European Union, the United Nations and Western democracies in general  has not gone into upgrading the civil infrastructure of the Strip, much less its electricity and water grids. It was used instead to create the massive, sometimes-sophisticated tunnel system that runs under the territory.

And while there are many civilians in Gaza for whom life has become a misery of scarcity of everything one depends upon in life in the modern era, there are those among them who view the current situation as a splendid opportunity to become wealthy over those scarcities and the misery of their fellow citizens. Like 23-year-old Mohammed Samra who bought solar panels for a new family business in central Gaza where he charges one shekel to charge a cellphone.

Police officers keep guard at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip [File: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]