Gaza 2023: One Year After the Devastating Conflict
A year ago, an unprecedented wave of terror swept through Gaza. The human toll was appalling: more than 41,802 Gazans lost their lives, including over 16,700 children, and approximately 96,844 were injured. Thousands of people lie under the rubble, their fate uncertain. This tragedy has transformed Gaza into a field of ruins, an open-air cemetery where innocent civilians have paid a high price.
The attacks carried out by Hamas, which caused the loss of 1,100 Israeli lives and the taking of nearly 250 hostages on 7 October 2023, are undeniably reprehensible. However, the Israeli response that followed, which consisted of annihilating a people and destroying the entire Gaza Strip, cannot be justified either morally or legally.
It is widely accepted that a genocide is underway in Gaza, with the goal of destroying the Palestinians as a whole. So much suffering, destruction, evacuations and forced displacements have been inflicted on the people of Gaza over the past year. Lives have been shattered, physical and mental injuries inflicted, homes reduced to ashes; civilians are left homeless, hopeless, abandoned by the world.
The United Nations has called Gaza “hell on earth,” a term that sums up the extreme violence of Israel’s campaign of punishment. 2,000-pound bombs have been dropped on civilian areas, hitting schools, hospitals, universities, bookstores, bakeries, mosques, churches, refugee camps, apartment buildings and even cemeteries. This destructive fury has reduced more buildings to ashes in northern Gaza than the Allies destroyed in Dresden during World War II.
Civilians fleeing their homes to supposedly safe areas have been targeted as they move. Deadly airstrikes have deliberately targeted areas designated as safe havens by the Israeli military. Gaza has become a death trap, deprived of all humanity, where children have been sacrificed, aid workers targeted, journalists executed.
Access to humanitarian aid has been hampered, food and water used as weapons of war. Famine looms in Gaza, children are dying of hunger. International aid efforts are blocked, diverted, sabotaged. Inaudible cries of distress echo in a deafening silence.
It is urgent that the world wakes up to this human tragedy perpetrated in Gaza. History must not only remember the number of victims, but also our complicit silence. It is our duty to defend justice, to protect the most vulnerable, to act with compassion and determination to ensure that such atrocities do not happen again.
Gaza 2023: A dark chapter in history that demands concrete action, unwavering solidarity, and an unwavering commitment to peace and justice. The world is watching, the world must act. The dignity of Palestinians and their right to life are inalienable. It is time to end this spiral of violence, rebuild hope where it has been destroyed, and build a future where peaceful coexistence prevails over hatred and destruction.