A heartrending ‘humanitarian pause’

Al Ahram Weekly

Azza Radwan Sedky

Tuesday 31 Oct 202

The world is choosing to turn a blind eye to the Israeli destruction of Gaza, writes Azza Radwan Sedky

Over the last few days, Western leaders have somewhat shifted their expectations of Israel to call for a “humanitarian pause” in its bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip. However, this call has fallen blatantly short of achieving peace in the Gaza war.

For the first two weeks of the Israeli-Gazan war, practically all the Western heads of government stated their abhorrence of the Palestinian group Hamas and emphasised Israel’s “right to self-defence” and to annihilate those who had attacked it on 7 October. The world stood by a grieving Israel.

However, in the process of “defending itself,” Israel has now bombed millions of defenceless civilians who had taken shelter in mosques, churches, and schools. These people have been considered nothing but collateral damage standing in the way of Israel’s triumph.

For over two weeks, Gaza has been bombed, its civilians blocked from access to the outside world and all sustenance denied to them. Perhaps this has even been Israel’s intention: to kill as many Palestinians as possible, seeing them as an irritating inconvenience in the face of its ambitions to control the Middle East?

However, despite the propaganda in the Western media, the rest of the world has become aware of the ongoing atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza and has called for an immediate ceasefire. Did the Western world do the same? By no means – for the West, it would apparently be too much to ask Israel to cancel its vendetta against Gaza. Instead, the term “ceasefire” has been replaced by “humanitarian pause.”

A humanitarian pause entails a respite to allow the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. It is at best a makeshift solution since the bombing will begin again soon afterwards.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for “a temporary pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas to allow for humanitarian relief in Gaza” making no mention of a ceasefire. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also called for “humanitarian pauses” at a recent meeting of the UN Security Council.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that he supports a humanitarian pause in the conflict to allow for the safe delivery of aid to civilians. However, he has rejected calls for a full ceasefire. As for the EU, it has failed to agree on a consensus over a humanitarian pause. Even that is apparently too much to ask.

Despite the lukewarm goodwill, the benevolence of these Western leaders is not wholly addressed to the stricken Gazans. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has said that the pause “is needed to allow Canadians to leave Gaza.” Trudeau said that the pause would allow for “the hostages to be freed”.

Once the hostages are freed and foreigners, Americans and Canadians among them, leave Gaza, the ongoing slaughter of Gazan civilians will apparently start again.

An authentic ceasefire would mean that Israel would have to handle the situation differently by addressing the reasons behind the war between Gaza and Israel. It would have to put an end to the misery of those besieged in Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel were appalling, but that they “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced; and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Unless the world understands what the Gazans have been going through and tries to make amends for their suffering, other fleeting solutions will solve nothing. Even if the Israeli attacks on Gaza are contained, their bloody consequences will continue unless the Gazans are treated humanely and in a dignified manner instead of being locked up in the Strip as prisoners.

An article by the US Brookings Institution said some years ago that “the parties never move beyond this [ceasefire] towards a more sustainable political deal, and the tragic cycle repeats itself, again and again.”

“The biggest losers… are the nearly two million people of Gaza themselves… They live in terrible conditions, with an economy that has nearly ground to halt… unemployment has risen to one of the highest rates on earth at over 50 per cent. Severe shortages of electricity and clean drinking water also plague Gaza, with 97 per cent of the water… unfit for human consumption.”

We should be ashamed of ourselves. For years on end, the Gazans have suffered an unimaginable toll, only to suffer a worse calamity today. Every photograph and video coming out of Gaza today is nothing but a depiction of misery and loss: hundreds of fathers holding dead children; schools and hospitals crammed with fleeing human beings; destroyed urban areas; and grimy and bloodied parched children awaiting their deaths.

The worst footage I have seen was of a seven or eight-year-old Palestinian girl lamenting the death of her sister as she sat next to her grieving father on a destroyed pavement surrounded by rubble. She asked him again and again if she would ever see her sister again. She began listing all the good attributes that her sister had had as she wailed and sobbed.

Yet, even a simple ceasefire is not in the works. All that the world hopes to achieve in Gaza is a “humanitarian pause” – a sad reflection of where we are today. The world is choosing to turn a blind eye to the Israeli destruction of Gaza.

The writer is former professor of communication based in Vancouver, Canada.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 November, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly