The devastating and fast-moving events in the Gaza Strip – including the catastrophic massive bombardments and explosions by errant Israeli rockets – are leaving many observers reeling and desperate regarding how events will develop, and how the international community should respond.
This Israeli war on Palestinians that responded to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 was unfathomable in scale and brutality, as the death toll hit a grim milestone with more than 11,100 Palestinians killed to date, including over 8,000 children and women.
Rockets have continued daily to target Palestinian homes, mosques, hospitals and schools, and have wiped-out complete neighborhoods.
The Israeli government and military remain single-mindedly focused on their stated goal of eliminating the threat posed by Hamas in the wake of its Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel, during which around 1,200 people were killed. However, around the world, there are signs of mounting concern about the heavy cost being paid by the Palestinian population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decisively rejected a cease-fire, saying “this is a time for war.” Also, Netanyahu vowed on Nov. 6, that Israel will take control of "overall security" of besieged Gaza after the war and said that there would be no letup in the war to destroy Hamas.
On the other hand, international humanitarian organizations are calling attention to the daunting scale of civilian suffering, and the head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, told the Security Council that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life-and-death for millions.”
Palestinian civilians have been suffering in corralled Gaza for the past 17 years, burdened with mass unemployment and poverty – even before Israeli white phosphorous filled the skies, and before they lay crushed beneath the rubble – they could not breathe.
Israel held them captive like prisoners who had never committed a crime and were shot down when they attempted to protest their incarceration peacefully. Their 1 million children have never traveled outside Israel’s militarized cage and know nothing but overcrowding, shortages, danger and the buzz of drones in the sky tracking their every move.
The world is witnessing now, almost in real time, the impact on the children of Gaza of the latest siege-like conditions imposed by Israel in the wake of its attacks. The lack of water and food is inevitably affecting the young more immediately and more severely than adults, who are surviving now on bread and contaminated water.
Those children who fall sick or are injured seek treatment in a collapsing health system, with multiple facilities attacked, while those still functioning must manage an impossible level of demand along with a drastic shortage of medicine. In such circumstances, many children are vulnerable to severe harm and death.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fueled protests around the world.
The United States, as Israel’s main supporter, is the only outside force that could restrain it.
The Biden administration, so far, has rejected cease-fire advocacy, but recently urged only a "humanitarian pause” due to the mounting international blame for heavy and unjustified civilian casualties.
Every day, Israel adds hundreds more to the toll by staging a series of devastating strikes on refugee camps; bombing hospitals, schools, U.N. facilities, churches and mosques; leveling entire neighborhoods; and cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to a civilian population already traumatized by 55 years of violent military occupation and 16 years of a suffocating and illegal siege, as well as previous bombardments.
In addition, the Israeli government has tightened the blockade so that even commodities essential for survival are denied to the civilian population.
For his part, Netanyahu threatened to turn parts of Gaza “into rubble,” which is exactly what Israel has been doing to date. An Israeli military spokesperson admitted that the military was disregarding “precision” in favor of “damage and destruction.” However, thousands of Palestinians have been ordered to leave their homes in what is effectively an act of ethnic cleansing.
Pressure around the world has been building up for a halt to this carnage. Some have called for a cease-fire, others for a truce, still others for a “humanitarian pause,” for which the Biden administration has now voiced support.
The Biden administration has been mostly supportive of the Israeli government's response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Biden has deployed U.S. warships to the Eastern Mediterranean, sought $14 billion in military assistance for Israel, rejected calls for a cease-fire and downplayed the Palestinian death count, which is mounting heavily.
When some Democratic lawmakers called for a cease-fire, his press secretary called their remarks repugnant.
Today things on the ground are changing rapidly, with tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters filling U.S. cities to protest against U.S. military support for Israel.
In a poll by Quinnipiac University, only a slim majority of Americans, and even a plurality of Democrats, expressed support for U.S. military aid for Israel.
Today, Biden is calling for a humanitarian pause, has negotiated the opening of the humanitarian corridor into Gaza and has publicly – and repeatedly – urged Israel not to give into vengeful impulses, but to protect civilian lives.
For his part, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has rebuffed the calls for a Gaza cease-fire by Arab leaders. Jordanian and Egyptian leaders want an immediate cease-fire, but Blinken said he would back only a “humanitarian pause” to provide a window for supplies to come in and some civilians to get out.
Whatever term one prefers to use, such a halt that begins as a temporary measure, but which could be extended, is vitally necessary to prevent further loss of life on a mass scale.
Yet “cease-fire” seems to have become a soiled word for Biden and other Western leaders.
Declaring a cease-fire is a strategic, political and moral imperative that offers a chance to prevent an all-out conflagration in the region and beyond – something that would ultimately run contrary to U.S. interests. Most important, though, there is also the overriding need to stop civilian casualties – above all for the sake of the children being killed every hour. There is no time to waste.
Israeli officials have said the operation could last months, while in practice it is unlikely that it could continue that long. Even if Israel’s economy can sustain the level of mobilization and the general disruption that war brings, the suffering of the Palestinian people is already of international concern. Furthermore, some of those trapped in Gaza are hostages, including many foreign nationals.
While the Israeli government has both the right and responsibility to protect its people, it does not have the right to commit a massacre. And massacres are what the world is witnessing now.
A cease-fire would also help calm tensions in the West Bank – where Israeli settlers have accelerated their campaign of expulsion and were Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians since Oct. 7 – and elsewhere in the region, reducing the risk of further escalations.
While the hope is that such a cease-fire will be extended, it is worth noting that a cease-fire is not a peace treaty. But such a measure is needed right now to save lives and to potentially open a path to saving more.
