While these lines are being written on Sunday evening, on that day, 67 Palestinians had been killed, nearly all of them civilians. Schools turned into shelters, tents and even houses were bombed. Families who had already lost their homes were targeted again. Children, who should have been in classrooms, became victims of airstrikes. Israel says it is targeting Hamas, but the facts on the ground tell another story. More horrific stories await listeners and journalists, but Israel does not allow independent journalists into Gaza. Entire neighbourhoods in Gaza City are being flattened. Towers where families lived for generations are reduced to dust. The Gaza interior ministry says this is not about security but about forcing people to leave their city. And when Israel tells people to move south, the so-called ‘safe zones’ are bombed too. Where, then, can a family go?
International organisations are raising an alarm. UNICEF reminds the world that half of Gaza’s population are children. Many of them have no clean water, no safe shelter, and no school. Save the Children reports that one child is being killed every hour. Hamas has condemned the destruction of Gaza’s high-rises and called it forced displacement. Whatever one thinks of Hamas, the reality is that civilians are paying the price. Mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, all of them are the ones buried under rubble. The world stays silent, and Israel keeps on doing it work of genocide. Each bomb that falls makes peace more distant. Each destroyed school or shelter pushes the dream of a normal life further away for Gaza’s children. Governments that talk about human rights must show that those words mean something. Otherwise, history will remember their silence as complicity. *