The epic tragedy of Gaza

Epics are about war, heroes, villains, bravery, suffering, deaths, destructions, betrayal, crime and cruelty — all on a grand scale and spread over a period of time. Rarely have these constituent attributes of tragedy converged around an event in recorded history.  At present, all these can be found in a  small strip of land called Gaza and the epic being written there for a hapless population of 2.2 million is, unarguably, an unmitigated human tragedy. Yet, the big powers witnessing the unfolding of the tragedy through continuous deaths and destructions in real time live-streamed by internet are not moved by their conscience to call out for an end to it. Their indifference is all the more appalling because, to begin with, they  caused the conflict through the  arbitrary creation of Israeli state in 1948 and in sustaining  it with moral and material support ever since.

The epic tragedy of Palestinian Gazans started with Naqba (catastrophe) in May, 1948, during the Palestine war when 800,000 Palestinians were expelled by the victorious Israelis from 530 towns and villages. According to historians, as a result of Naqba, 70 per cent of land were taken possession of by the Israelis while the Palestinians were driven to settle in Gaza and the West Bank under the control of Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed and many more injured and maimed by Jewish militias like Haganah, Leh and Irgun until May 25, 1948  and by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) after 26 May when Israel became an independent state. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote that the displacement of Palestinians  during the 1948 war was an objective of the Zionist movement  and a must for the establishment  of Israel  as a Jewish state ( The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, 2006). He observed that the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and their flight resulted from a planned ethnic cleansing that was implemented by the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, and his cabinet. The Arab states resisted the aggrandisement by Jewish settlers occupying Palestinian land but lost in the 1948 war, while the big powers that acted as the midwife in the birth of Israel looked benignly the other way, giving the Israelis impunity.

After the six-day war in 1967, the Arab states lost again to the wily Israeli state which came to be known to the Arabs as Naqsa, setback. For the Palestinians it meant occupation of Gaza and the West Bank by Israelis and curbing of their freedom of movement and reducing Gaza and the West Bank into open prisons. Arrests, unlawful detention and killing of Palestinians on slightest pretext by both settler Israelis and the IDF became routine affairs. Alongside, forcible displacement and occupation of Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank went apace. Occupation and oppression by Israelis led to armed groups like Al Fatah (PLO) and later Hamas whose members were hunted down by the Israelis ruthlessly. After the mysterious death of PLO chief Yasser Arafat, the PLO lost its zeal and aggressiveness but the new radical group Hamas in Gaza kept up the armed resistance against Israeli occupation alive. In recent years, more than the Palestine Authority (PA) in the West Bank, Hamas fighters under their dedicated leaders carried out attacks against the occupying Israeli  Defence Force (IDF), keeping the hope of an independent Palestine state, alongside Israel within the 1967 borders, alive. But when one after another Arab state started recognising Israel under the Abraham Accord, they sensed the prospect of two-state solution slipping under their feet. In an act of desperation, Hamas launched an armed incursion into Israeli settlements and security posts in the north-east of Gaza. About 1,200 deaths of Israelis, mostly civilians, resulted from the Hamas attack and 240 civilians and armed personnel were taken as hostages.

The suddenness of Hamas attack on October 7 in 2023 and the resultant deaths and hostage taking caught the Israeli government on the back foot. It reacted with fury, describing  Palestinians as ‘animals’ and declared that water and electricity supply to Gaza would be cut off as a prelude to punitive action for the ‘crime’ committed by Hamas ‘ terrorists’. America and its allies lost no time in condemning the attack and declaring that Israel had ‘the right to defend itself’. This right was interpreted by both Israel and its Western allies as a licence to kill Hamas and the civilian Palestinians who were being used as ‘shields’. The doctrine of ‘right to self-defence’ allowed the Israeli defence forces to subject any and every site suspected   of hiding   Hamas to relentless bombing. While unknown numbers of Hamas militants were taken out by these day and night bombardments by tanks, artillery and bombers, the toll of civilian lives continued to rise precipitously. In the Israeli offensive in Gaza launched in the second week of October, the death toll soon exceeded the deaths of Israelis in the October 7 attack and ran into thousands. Children and women accounted for the majority of deaths. Cases of entire families being wiped out in artillery shells and bombs raining down from sky were not few. As the death toll rose, the UN secretary general conveyed great concern and the general assembly passed non-binding resolutions exhorting Israel for ceasefire. But in the security council all resolutions against Israel were vetoed by America.

One year after October 7 attack by Hamas, death toll of Gaza’s Palestinians rose to over 45,000, majority of whom were women and children. Double of that number were injured, many maimed hideously. The tragedy of Palestinians in Gaza is not conveyed only by the number of deaths and injured but also, and even more poignantly, by their displacements from homes and localities. As IDF continued ground invasion, backed up by attacks in air, Gazans from the north were asked to move to so called safe zones in the south. Before long they were asked to evacuate to another supposedly safe zone. This order to evacuate has been so many times that the Gazans have been continuously on the move for over a year. Even cattle, when herded, do not have such an uncertain and miserable fate. The sight of men, women and children walking wearily, with their meagre belongings in donkey carts, shown in television in real time is the most poignant aspect of the tragedy of Palestinians in Gaza. Nothing else  shows their misery  and helplessness more graphically   than this endless trek to elusive safe zones. The fact that internal refugees are not moving as intact  families, but as remaining  survivors of families from bombs, shells  and bullets put their tragedy  into  sharper focus. Even stony- hearted  individuals  would be moved to tears seeing   the plight of Palestinians driven  from their homes and localities, again and again, for no fault of theirs. Yet big powers continue to harp on the theme of Israel’s ‘right to defend’ and turn  a blind  eye on the indiscernible atrocities committed against a people who cannot live in peace even in a land occupied  by aggressors. It is the courage and fortitude of the unarmed Palestinian civilians not to give up hope for settling in their own hearths homes that stand out in bold contrast against the cruelties of Israelis and the insensitivity of their Western allies. The courage of hapless civilians is matched by the fearless dedication of doctors and nurses working at the risk of their lives in bombed out and gutted hospitals even when these are being reduced to rubbles one after another. Included in the band of courageous friends of the uprooted Palestinians are the journalists covering the events in ground zero in Gaza and the aid workers trying their utmost against heavy odds to keep them alive with whatever is trickling in as food aid.

Fifteen months after the benchmark date of October 7, 2023, and more than 50,000 deaths of Palestinians, the end game seems to be near enough to be in sight. After declaring that America would take  over Gaza and own it to develop as a Mediterranean Riviera, President  Trump brokered a three phase ceasefire, the first which saw the release of 12 hostages in two instalments  in exchange  for release of 350 Palestinian prisoners. But in violation of the ceasefire deal, Israel launched a vicious aerial bombardment of Gaza on March 18 after the completion of the first phase, killing   450 Palestinians who had just trekked north thinking the ceasefire would lead to a peaceful end. Simultaneous with large-scale bombardment, IDF occupied Nezarim corridor, cutting off north Gaza from the south.

The immediate goal of IDF appears to be to force Hamas to release the remaining 37 hostages. But the permanent goal of Israel and the Trump Administration is to herd the Palestinian together and resettle them elsewhere in the name of ‘peaceful living’. For this, the Palestinians may be kept in starvation for days and weeks to break their will to cling to their land. Already, blockade of food, water and  fuel  supply has been continuing for over three weeks  and the last hospital providing  a modicum of medical services  has been bombed to  extinction. The strategy adopted is clearly to force the Palestinians to accept the option of moving out of Gaza to a land chosen by America and Israel.

So long the Palestinians have resisted this pressure to move out of Gaza, stubbornly holding on to their land. But facing slow death through starvation in death camps may destroy their determination. The only possibility of averting this grim end is pressure from Europe and the Arab world. As regards West  European countries, nothing more than criticism over violation of human rights can be expected, showing them as hypocrites. The Arab countries may be more determined to stop this from happening but given the disarray among them, they too will fail to foil this blatant plan of ethnic  cleansing. So, in spite of the courage and fortitude of Gazan Palestinians they will once again be expelled from their land, and this time for good, because of the genocidal campaign launched against them by Israel aided by America and the absence of robust opposition from European and the Arab countries. Cruelty and avarice of the perpetrators of genocide will trump over half- hearted and feeble opposition from the self-serving countries witnessing the gradual destruction of the identity of a people. Only Iran could prevent this from happening if it was a nuclear power but it is not one as of now.

The conflict in Gaza is not a text book case of war with two protagonists more or less armed. With one side using the latest weaponry of warfare in land, sea and air and its adversary equipped with limited quantity of weapons of old vintage, the contest is skewed in favour of the former. It is a miracle that Hamas has put up resistance against the mighty IDF for so long, foiling their attempts to annihilate them and subjugate the Palestinians. But their bravery has a limit and the day they are wiped out may not be far. For their defeat lack of courage and determination will not be the cause. Failure of Arab countries to challenge Israel militarily and hesitation of countries of Western Europe to take a firm stand against genocide and illegal occupation of land by Israel will be on record as contributory factors in the making of the tragedy of Gaza. Arrayed against the brave Gazan Palestinians and the fainthearted Arabs and Europeans, the neo-imperialists America and Israel with their mighty military machine will bring down hell to Gaza, as promised by president Trump, gleefully drawing the curtain on the one-sided war as victors. Gaza will be remembered as the most pathetic tragedy of modern times where goodness and virtue were overcome by forces of evil and greed.

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