Please allow us to say that Gaza is not merely a
battlefield; it is a society in flames. Over two years of intensive military
operations, territorial encirclement, and an all-but-complete blockade have
produced a cascade of death, displacement, and institutional collapse.
The question of agency — whether Gaza “is burning” as an
accident of war or because a party intends and effects its devastation — is not
rhetorical. Evidence from humanitarian agencies, human-rights groups, and UN
investigators points clearly to a campaign of force and policy by Israel that
has produced, and continues to produce, catastrophic civilian destruction and
deprivation.
The multiple UN and humanitarian reports document mass
casualties, widespread displacement and the conditions of famine and disease
now ravaging Gaza. The UN’s humanitarian coordination office describes Gaza
City — home to nearly a million people who have nowhere safe to go — as facing
daily bombardment and “compromised access to means of survival.”
The WHO’s public-health analysis confirms the lethal
public-health consequences: rising malnutrition and deaths from starvation and
disease, with hundreds of children already dead from malnutrition and famine
conditions confirmed in parts of Gaza.
These outcomes are not incidental side effects of a narrowly
targeted counterterror operation. Human-rights organizations have documented
patterns of attacks that repeatedly hit schools, hospitals, shelters, and
entire neighborhoods — precisely the civilian infrastructure that normally
offers protection in war.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have catalogued
repeated strikes on schools and hospitals, extensive razing of towns, and the
use of siege tactics that cut off food, fuel, and medical supplies — measures
they say amount to unlawful collective punishment and, in Amnesty’s assessment,
further evidence of genocidal intent.
An independent UN commission of inquiry has concluded that
actions by Israeli authorities and forces meet the threshold of genocide,
citing acts that include killing, causing severe bodily and mental harm, and
imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.
That finding is explosive in normative terms because it
reframes the humanitarian crisis as one driven not only by military necessity
claims but by a pattern of conduct that international law treats as among the
gravest crimes.
Three interlocking dynamics matter. First, operational
doctrine: tactics emphasizing area bombardment, extensive use of heavy
munitions in dense urban areas, and commands for mass civilian displacement
dramatically increase civilian death and infrastructure destruction. Second,
blockade and siege: restricting entry of food, fuel, water, and medicines turns
even partial destruction into sustained catastrophe by preventing recovery and
medical care. Third, accountability failures: continued supply of weapons and
limited enforcement of international humanitarian law incentives have, critics
argue, reduced the political and legal costs of tactics that imperil civilians.
The human consequences are immediate and wrenching. Schools
that once sheltered displaced families are being struck; hospitals struggle to
operate without fuel and supplies; entire neighborhoods have been razed to
foundations; and children face not only the trauma of violence but death from
malnutrition and preventable disease.
If civilian protection were the operational imperative, the
combination of precise targeting, unfettered humanitarian corridors, and a halt
to displacement orders would reduce civilian suffering. Instead, the
combination of intense urban combat, orders pushing mass displacement within a
sealed territory, and the impediment of essential supplies has produced
conditions that human-rights experts interpret as deliberate or recklessly
indifferent to civilian life. That is the core of the charge that Gaza is being
“burnt” by Israeli policy and force.
