••• The International Writers Magazine - Gaza in Ruins

Gaza: Israel’s textbook misery case • Dr Marwan Asmar All this suffering won't solve anything

Gaza is in total devastation. There is no water nor energy which means there is no electricity and the internet has been killed off. Thus, information on the war inside Gaza will now be sparse.

With over 2.2000 killed and more than 7000 injured, it is civilians who are suffering in the most horrible way. Israel warplanes are targeting homes, houses and neighborhoods.

Whole families are being killed through Israeli megaton bombs that are being dropped on such place as Gaza City, Shuja’iyya, Tel Al Tuffah, Deir Al Balah, Jabaliya, Breij and Khan Younis. Since extended families have been living together after - having been dislocated last week - many are dying together as well. One family of 26 members have died together, but today there is many more stories like this.

American-made Israeli phantom jets have been dropping bombs indiscriminately on whole neighborhoods. And as a result, and across Gaza these neighborhoods have been reduced to debris and rubble in cave-like manner. To say that Gaza is being bombed back to the 16th century is even worse for whole areas, buildings, homes and places are bolted down into the earth in macabre sense and surrealistic playground of death with stench of bodies and rotting human flesh.

Surreal and graphic

The pictures are surreal and graphic but these are no storybook tales. Cameras, television sets and the social media do not lie with extensive areas knocked into cement smithereens by round-the-clock bombing that will not relent for Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu has said from day one this will be a long-war going after the Hamas enemy.

It’s madness that has never been seen before even by Israeli standards who are excelling their barbarity this time around. This is Israel’s sixth war on the Gaza Strip since 2008/09 but never before has it registered such level of hate and depravity against unarmed civilians even when it waged a 51-day war on the Gaza Strip in 2014 when over 2000 Palestinians were killed.

All residential areas of the strip are today legitimate Israeli targets: north, center and south of the enclave. Every city, town, village and camp have been targeted. In the first six days of the crisis in Gaza, Israel has dropped 6000 dropped on the strip, that is a total of 4000 tons of explosives.

Experts have pointed out that this is the equivalent of what the Americans dropped on Afghanistan in a year Its early days yet, despite the fact Gaza has already been turned into an eyesore with the health system quickly crumbling as the plots for burying the dead is becoming less and less, and families that are killed in Israeli strikes are being buried collectively in mass graves. The morgue in the Shiffa hospital in central Gaza is in an over-fill mode. The Palestinian medical staff is at their wits end about where to put the incoming bodies. They have been for days now laying them in the hospital’s courtyard. About 60 percent of those dead are children hospital officials say. The number of children killed stand at 614 and women killed at 370 according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (13 October, 2023).

A shut-down

Elsewhere, hospitals especially in the north of the Strip have been ordered to shut-down by the Israeli authorities. How will they do that when they have and are receiving patients by the day is anyone’s guess

It’s war crimes on incredible levels. In this war, it is civilians who are bearing the brunt and not the Hamas rulers of the Strip who some, especially western countries, would say brought it unto themselves when they infiltrated Israeli settlements on 7 October in a surprising and shocking manner that blew the minds of top Israelis like Netanyahu and president of the Israeli state Isaac Herzog who both called the actions a black Israeli day for Israel never witnessed since the Holocaust.

But judging from what is happening in terms of the bloody destruction across the strip, Israel may be over-reacting to use an understatement. Its warplanes and American phantom jets have already displaced 400,000 people in as many days. This is a figure that is set to increase very quickly.

The Israeli army has already given people of north Gaza – up to 1.1 million – 24 hours to start moving to the south of the strip and or face their military wrath. Apart from the fact that many are saying this is may be aimed at expelling them into Egypt through the Rafah border, the UN, whose order has been given to, say its physically impossible to move such amount of people in such a short time.

But the Israeli army insists this time period must be stuck to. It’s a travesty of justice for a day after the order was made, Israeli military jets allegedly fired on a convoy carrying 100s of people from the north of the country and killing at least 70 of them. So, Gazans are today in bewilderment and confusion. If they stay put, they face the hammer and if they move, they also face the hammer.

A bloody week has already passed and another way is starting that is just as deadly and in spite of the fact that such international dignitaries like US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recently visited Israel and the region. The Gaza war is becoming complicated with much intricacies and labyrinths that now lie with the Israeli government and Hamas and bringing in the USA, European countries, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey for escalation.

Unfortunately, the Gaza Palestinians are now stuck right in the middle, with their already miserable life because of the 16-year-old siege imposed by Israel. They will surely now even sink further down, maybe forever this time. With the screws now being turned on in terms of lack of water, electricity and food, this maybe just the beginning for them.

© Dr Marwan Asmar - 15th October 2023

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