With the world we live in today with more progressive thinking, you would think that genocides and humanitarian crises would not be able to happen, but that is not the case. In the present day, Israel is targeting Palestine with unrelenting missile strikes to gain control over the Gaza Strip. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on since the 19th century but has gotten much worse over the past few months. After World War 2 happened, the United Nations created Resolution 181, which split Israel and Palestine into two separate states, resulting in the Arab-Israeli war. The Arab-Israeli war alone displaced 750,000 Palestinians; since then, Palestine keeps losing more of their land to Israel and can’t do much to get it back as Israel has more countries backing them up. On October 7, 2023, a militant organization known as Hamas conducted an attack on Israel that caused a massive retaliation from Israel; as of February 10, 2024, Israel has killed at least 28,064 Palestinians with no sign of easing off being seen.
Palestinian land was lost to Israel over the years.
The most recent attack that was done to target Hamas was a mass killing event in Palestine on February 12 when Israel sent military strikes over to Rafah. The death toll is at least 67 civilians, but other sources are claiming there to be over 100 deaths. Israel’s purpose for this attack was to try to get Israeli hostages to be released, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that “only the continuation of military pressure, until complete victory, will result in the release of all our hostages.” Citizens have nowhere to go; even if they do, there’s a considerable chance they will be separated from their families. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the cities are in shambles, with limited food, water, and electricity being shut off. Citizens have started taking animal feed, turning it into food, and digging into the ground to access water pipes to get a source of water north of Gaza, with malnutrition going above 15%, the UN has stated. A spokesperson of an Israeli military agency has claimed that this is false and there is “no starvation in Gaza. Period.”
The City of Rafah after the bombings.
With all of these chaotic situations and health issues going on, people have been crying for ceasefires for months now., Still, all that has been given was a temporary ceasefire that only lasted mere days., At that time, Israel expected millions of civilians to evacuate somehow the Gaza Strip, which was nearly impossible. Once the ceasefire was over, the killing began again. President Biden says, “There has to be a temporary ceasefire,” even after vocalizing his support for Israel and sending billions of dollars to Israel to aid them. A lot of this money was given to strengthen their military and defense system while they already have one of the world’s most secure air defense systems. While Israel got the 14.3 billion dollars all to themselves, Palestine had to split 9.15 billion dollars with Israel and Ukraine.
Israel’s defense system, “The Iron Dome.”
The money is being given to Israel to defend itself against terrorism. Still, it isn’t being fully used against the “terrorists” they claim are in Palestine, with the killing of innocent civilians remaining prominent in their anti-terrorist attacks. Even before the October 7th attacks that Hamas conducted on Israel, Palestinians were dying at a much higher rate from the conflict than Israelis. According to the deaths recorded by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs from 1/1/2008 – 8/20/2023, fatalities in Palestine were 6,395, while Israeli fatalities were 319, which is roughly 20 times less. While countries may not be able to go over to Palestine and physically help out, they can hold Israel accountable for their blatant violations of Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which states that people who have no part in the hostilities shall be killed, which was ratified by Israel who goes against this when they launch their attacks.
The war has been going on for years now, and it’s unclear when this war will end, but it’s to be expected that more civilian lives will be taken before it’s over. Even though Hamas is what Israel claims their target is, their main goal since 1949 has been to gain land back that was not theirs to begin with.
