Looking At and Examining an Ongoing Political War with No Means of Ending It
By: Prapti Dasgupta
Following the attack by Hamas, a US-designated foreign terrorist group, against Israel, tensions between Palestine and Israel have been at an all-time high. The attack was launched against Israel on 7th October 2023 from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea. According to the Prime Minister of Israel, more than 1,400 civilians had been killed and 6,900 others injured. In an attempt to retaliate, Israel launched several attacks on Gaza resulting in the death of 10,000 people and injured 26,000 others.
According to some reports, amidst the continual show of aggression from both Israel and Hamas, civilians’ lives are being treated like nothing but mere pawns in the larger socio-political scenario. It is also being reported that Hamas have positioned themselves in the civilian infrastructure which has led to the bombing of several civilian locations in Gaza.
Israel has rejected calls for providing humanitarian aid to Gaza so far and has only recently opened up pathways for roughly a hundred aid trucks to pass through to the Strip. Gaza has become both burning pyres and burial grounds for hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may date back to the year of 1948, with Israel winning the war against Arabs and about 75,000 Palestinians getting displaced. The consequences of the war were the territory becoming divided into the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
Photo by: Mohammed Abubakr on Pexels
Years down the line, Hamas won the Palestinian Authority’s parliament elections and sought to launch a movement to gain complete control of the Gaza Strip. In 2014, Hamas had launched about three thousand rockets at Israel, and Israel again was forced to retaliate. Years of unresolved political aspirations had once again put the residents of both Israel and Palestine at risk and that has continued to the present day.
The current war between Israel and Palestine has seen several war crimes being committed daily and the civilians on both sides have no one to turn to. Generation after generation have been wiped off due to the unwarranted air strikes in Gaza, the bombing of hospitals, and the rejection of a call for a ceasefire.
This rejection came from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who demanded that the 240 hostages be released from Hamas, who had been captured on 7th October. Both the lives of Israelis and Palestinians hang in the balance, while world leaders scramble to make sense of this harrowing situation.
“We are fighting a cruel enemy, worse than ISIS," Netanyahu said. According to him, the reason Israel must look to keep fighting is “because the fate of our state is on the line."
Protests against the continued aggression towards Gaza have broken out all over the world and several student communities have come out in support of all those caught in the political crossfire. The need for a conversation regarding the current situation has been long overdue and people from around the world feel the need to be part of such a conversation.
A recent United Nations General Assembly voted on a motion calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustainable humanitarian truce” in Gaza. This brought forth a wide difference of opinions regarding war crimes, the need for humanitarian aid, and the need for a ceasefire amongst the several countries. The final vote was 120 in favour, 45 abstentions, and 14 against.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine does not remain limited to the rooms of presidents and prime ministers but overflows to the streets of both Israel and Palestine, resulting in horrific experiences for those who find themselves alive at the end of this war. The UN vote and Netanyahu’s rejection of a ceasefire opened themselves up to public scrutiny which in any democracy is a necessity.
Governments around the world are fragile, unable to provide respite to the onlookers of the bloodshed in Israel and Palestine. Civilians are either dead, injured or maddened with anger at the possibility of a complete wipe-out of a people, all due to an eons-old political upheaval that even then could not be contained and is today raging fire.
