On Wednesday, the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest update that Israel’s ban on entry of aid has continued for nearly a month and that no aid entered the enclave throughout this period. All requests by humanitarian agencies to coordinate access with Israeli authorities have been denied.
Helles recalled when the blockade was imposed. The shops were empty within hours, and what was left was too expensive, she said. Even the charity distributions, which once offered a variety of meals, have dwindled, now providing only small servings of rice at the time of Iftar.
After days of eating little more than rice, Huda couldn’t sleep at night, suffering from severe stomach pain and colic. She was diagnosed with a stomach infection two weeks ago.
They’ve discarded any hope of moral rectitude and are simply trying to win the fight in practical terms by whatever means available.
Children. Are. Dying.
Standing on principle for decades is good, but you cannot ask people to watch whole families die and do nothing. Israel shooting and killing hundreds of unarmed protestors with no consequences from the rest of the world showed that the Gandhi-style strategy will never work. You ask about effectiveness, Israel showed that they won’t allow nonviolent protest, they lock up moderate politicians and fund extremists, and make any sort of peaceful reconciliation impossible. The large majority of Israelis and Palestinians who want peace are actively blocked by the Netanyahu government. It’s nice to tell people how they should do things from the comfort of your safe home with electricity.
I wish their entire strategy was built around minimizing the number of children dying, but it is clearly not. There is no actor in this picture whose is.
I’m going to push back on that, Gazans have zero options to prevent children dying. No options at all. They can’t even send them away since Israel won’t let them out. Hamas surrendering won’t save children’s lives. They have no “best” option since even Israeli officials are saying that Arab children are a threat that must be addressed now early or later. There’s no winning against a genocidal threat. Even former PM Ehud Barak, no friend to Palestinians, said if he was born Palestinian he would have joined a terrorist organization.
Such selective logic. Their massive terrorist attack has caused such blowback that now they have no good options to minimize child deaths. Maybe the terror attack was not about preventing child deaths? That’s the point here.
I understand you want to champion the Palestinians because they are dreadfully overmatched. But don’t let that whitewash your view of a very grey situation.