Blood on the Gaza Strip

It’s time the world powers knock sense into Israeli leadership's head rather than playing role of a silent spectator.

The Gaza Strip is splattered with blood after Israel unleashed a reign of terror, launching 34 airstrikes on July 8 over the flashpoint Palestinian territory, which left at least 13 people dead. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shouted the battle cry and vowed that ‘Hamas will pay’ for the abduction and deaths of three Israeli teenagers. The Jewish state’s version is that the bombardment is in retaliation for 18 rockets fired into Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza. By all indications, Israel appears in a mood to go all out and drag the conflict. One of its ministers said a ground offensive remains a possibility.



The relentless pounding of the besieged Gaza Strip since July 7 comes less than two weeks after Israel concluded its largest military assault on the occupied West Bank in more than a decade. The ongoing bombing campaign is the most severe violence inflicted by Israel on Gaza since its eight-day assault in November 2012, during which more than 150 Palestinians were killed, 33 of them children. If the soaring tensions in the region are anything to go by, Israel could deploy its full military might to hammer the innocent Palestinians, throwing all caution to the wind. Already, 25 lives have been claimed by its military since July 7, including at least eight children, as warplanes pounded targets across Gaza, whose Palestinian inhabitants live under a siege and are unable to flee and have nowhere to seek shelter.

On its part, Hamas has vowed revenge. Its spokesman said all Israelis would be potential targets for retaliation. “The Khan Yunis massacre… of children is a horrendous war crime, and all Israelis have now become legitimate targets for the resistance,” the spokesman wrote on his Facebook page. The war hysteria on both sides to the conflict bodes ill for the region, weighed down by the Syrian war theatre and a sudden spurt in the violence in Iraq. It’s time the world powers stepped in and knocked sense into the heads of the Israeli leadership rather than playing the role of a silent spectator. Diplomatic pressure must be brought to bear upon Israel to restrain its hand of aggression.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2014.

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