A genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing is underway in Gaza carried out by the current settler-controlled government of Israel. Two and a half million people are under siege cut off from food, water, and electricity and are being bombed to death before the eyes of the world and its leaders. There are one million children in Gaza that are under attack now. Hundreds have died. Many more will die.

The Gaza Strip is the world’s most densely populated area. It was created 75 years ago by the establishment of the state of Israel with its ethnic cleansing campaigns at that time. For over 22 years, Gazans have been placed under siege with severe bombing campaigns that have destroyed neighborhoods multiple times, inflicting death, pain, and suffering on the Palestinian people. Gazans have been corralled in an open-air prison for 75 years waiting for resolution to restore their lives.  

Meanwhile in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has been accelerating its settlement expansion program, displacing more Palestinian communities, stripping people of their homes and farms, and ruining their livelihood while subjecting Palestinian residents to unprecedented levels of settler violence on roads throughout the West Bank and rampage attacks on villages, particularly near Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron.

As expansion of settlements escalates and settler violence escalates, settlers’ attacks on Muslim and Christian shrines in Jerusalem inflames the whole region. The siege on Gaza only intensifies these realities while all the international political energy and debate is concentrated on normalizing Israel in the Arab and Muslim world through a peace deal with Saudi Arabia without addressing Palestine.

In this context, the dramatic breakout of Gaza fighters through the Israeli military machine with its sophisticated cyber security and surveillance systems was inevitable, and yet the horrific attacks they carried out against neighboring Israeli communities cannot be condoned. All human lives are sacred. Palestinian and Israeli children’s lives are precious. The killing of civilians is never justified on either side.

That said, the current crisis cannot be assessed without considering the suffocating backdrop of the conflict, its escalating turns, and the acceleration of the political process to “normalize” Israel in the region without addressing Palestine in practical and real terms. Moreover, the repeated processes of a one-sided peace, for Israel, without a political resolution for Palestine is cynical and was always doomed to fail. True peace starts with ending the occupation and allowing for the restoration of Palestinian national rights for statehood and their sacred human right to live in peace, freedom, and dignity in their historic homeland. 

The truth is the world’s political energy has failed Palestine at every turn. As the world fails Palestine, it also fails Israel. The people of Palestine and Israel will both suffer the ultimate loss of this political malpractice. Genocide against the people of Gaza and further displacement of Gazans into the Sinai is not a recipe for peace for Israel. It is only a recipe for more intensified cycles of violence.

At this dire time and extremely sensitive juncture in the history of the region, we look for compassion and leadership to pressure all actors to stop the war and engage in genuine peace for Palestinians and Israelis with equal measures of justice for all. 

Dr. Nasser Abufarha

Founder & Managing Director of Canaan Fair Trade Co.