EDITORIAL: Qatar’s ruler was right to call the international community’s response to Israeli aggression in Gaza “shameful” as the IDF snaked its way into the south of the Gaza Strip to resume its hunt for Hamas. Speaking at the opening of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) meeting in Doha, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani blamed the world’s most powerful countries for allowing “this heinous crime to continue for two months, during which the systemic and deliberate killing of innocent civilians continues, including women and children”.
With the death toll crossing the 16,000 mark, and Israel opening a fresh front in the south, there is not enough space in the strip to keep civilians protected. Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called this “humanity’s darkest hour” because the number of people on the move from central and southern Gaza was “vastly increasing”. That means that even when they are supposedly fleeing the fighting they are still marching to their deaths because there is no way to keep them safe or protected.
“The situation is getting worse by the hour. There is intensified bombing going on all around, including here in the southern areas,” said its man on the ground. And already, in addition to the direct deaths and injuries from bombs and bullets, there are also thousands of cases of respiratory infections, diarrhoea, chicken pox, jaundice, meningitis, etc.
Separately, UNICEF has also come down hard on Israel because, contrary to the occupying power’s claims, the offensive has made it impossible to create any safe zones. “They are entirely, entirely absent. You cannot overstate this. These are tiny patches of barren land, or they are street corners, they are sidewalks,” said UNICEF’s spokesman, highlighting the cruelty of the invasion and how Israel is lying about protecting civilians.
This is, without a doubt, calculated collective punishment inflicted on the entire population of Gaza for voting Hamas into power all those years ago and standing behind its vision of ridding all areas of all occupying forces. And things are clearly going to get much worse. The bombing is going to continue, and it will get worse if IDF starts suffering on-ground casualties. Therefore, in addition to burying their dead, surviving Palestinians will remain exposed to the trauma of a shelterless existence for a while to come.
Their homes have been destroyed, markets razed to the ground, and now they must live in an even worse open-air concentration camp than before. Disease is widespread with very little humanitarian and medical supplies allowed in by the Israeli army. And in the few places that are considered somewhat safe, sanitary conditions are so poor that there is about one toilet for 500, sometimes 1,000, people.
There’s no doubt that the international community must, as the Qatari emir said, take responsibility for this grave miscarriage of justice. The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has made a rare move to formally warn the Security Council of a global threat from Gaza war by invoking article 99 of the UN Charter.
Shouldn’t the Muslim countries also do a little bit of soul searching? Are they really so limp and powerless that they can do no more than chant slogans and wave their fists in the air, even with blatant genocide on naked display?
Perhaps if they, for once, gathered the courage to take a firm stand, the international community they are so upset with, would also take more serious notice.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023