On the forty-fifth day of the war triggered by the Hamas massacres against Israeli civilians, the observation is implacable: the Palestinians of Gaza do not count. In the eyes of the militiamen, first of all, who launched their attack and their hostage-taking without any consideration for their consequences. To those of the Israeli army, then, launched with one objective, the eradication of the Islamist movement, to which the fate of more than 2 million civilians is subordinated, as fragile and destitute as they may be. In the eyes of the Western allies of the Jewish State, finally, who continue to judge, apart from a few coughs, that this price to pay is all in all acceptable.
Since the Israeli military took control of the northern half of Gaza, evidence of the eradication of Hamas has been slow to emerge. Those of the destruction of entire neighborhoods of the largest Palestinian city, on the other hand, are available to anyone who wants to see them, despite the closed doors imposed by Israel. The case of Gaza City is not unique. Everywhere, in the part invested by the Israeli army, the assault against the militiamen and their infrastructure resulted in thousands of deaths, a figure which the American authorities no longer doubt, and in thousands of buildings razed or seriously damaged, particularly in refugee camps.
Trauma of the Nakba
Water and electricity networks, roads, schools, hospitals, nothing escaped Israeli strikes or operations which culminated with the capture of Al-Shifa hospital, since described as a “death zone” by the World Health Organization. The Israeli authorities assure that there should be no spirit of revenge after the massacres of October 7. The reason for the suspected or proven presence of militiamen or tunnels serves as a generic justification for the destruction or shutdown of crucial health infrastructure in times of war. How else to describe, however, the methodical work which means that half of the buildings in Gaza, whose population density is one of the highest in the world, are now destroyed or damaged, according to consistent estimates.
The Palestinians have not finished with this devastation, if we are to believe the Israeli authorities, who announced, on November 19, a new phase of their operation. It is now targeting the large city of Khan Younès, in the South. The Israeli army intends to hunt down Hamas leaders who were clearly not in what has been reduced to fields of rubble and where thousands of people have been trapped.
Civilians deprived of everything, left to their own devices and tragic wandering, makeshift camps, extreme deprivation, such is now daily life in Gaza. It makes its inhabitants relive the trauma of the Nakba, the “catastrophe” that was their forced displacement during the first Israeli-Arab war (1948-1949). The current one is hitting a narrow strip of land structurally on the edge of the abyss due to a merciless blockade, both land and sea, imposed by Israel for sixteen years, with the help of Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi’s Egypt. Year after year, the World Bank’s staggering socio-economic statistics attested to the disaster, but the Palestinians in Gaza already did not count.