Gaza’s cries have been drowned out by Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the diplomatic pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu over the suffering has ebbed. Yet as the industrialised world urges de-escalation in the Middle East, the devastation continues. On Tuesday morning, witnesses described Israeli forces firing towards a crowd waiting for trucks loaded with flour, leaving more than 50 dead. These are not stray bullets in wartime chaos, they are the outcome of a system that makes relief deadly.
As Médecins Sans Frontières declared this week, what is unfolding in Gaza is “the calculated evisceration of the very systems that sustain life”. That includes homes, markets, water networks and hospitals – with healthcare continually under attack. Last week, a UN commission found that more than 90% of the Gaza Strip’s schools and universities have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces using airstrikes, burning, shelling and controlled demolitions. What’s happening is not the collateral damage of military necessity, it is a programme of civic annihilation.
