GAZA is no more the open-air prison it has often been described as; it is virtually a charnel house, thanks to a world that is utterly indifferent to the massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government. With naval bombardment added to the cornucopia of weapons pouring fire into the Mediterranean strip, observers fear a dramatic rise in civilian fatalities, besides the damage to homes, hospitals and places of worship. Should the hardline Likud government also choose to launch a ground assault, the all-round destruction could overshadow that seen in the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2012. What encourages Israel in its depredations is its firm belief that it can get away with any crime. Notice the routine pleas for restraint by the UN, America, the European Union and the world at large, forgetting that ‘even-handedness’ here puts the criminal and the victim of criminality at the same level. As for the lame duck Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, even the mere thought that the two bodies could act in concert and meaningfully appears laughable, given the fratricide within the Muslim world, especially in Israel’s neighbourhood.

The truth is that Israel finds in the unipolar world an ideal geopolitical environment in which to operate with impunity. Even though it always enjoyed the Western world’s — especially America’s — unqualified support for all its plans since its founding in 1948, the existence till the late 1980s of a countervailing power like the Soviet Union and the communist world at large circumscribed Israel’s limitless greed for Lebensraum backed by an ideology fixated on war. The collapse of the Soviet system of states removed whatever little stood between Israel and its desire for more land, with its political leadership frustrating every attempt at a deal visualising the Jewish state’s peaceful existence with an independent Palestinian state. Supported by a powerful lobby inside the US, successive Israeli governments have snubbed American presidents and have consistently nibbled at Palestinian land by building new settlements and expanding the existing ones on the West Bank. It made President Barack Obama stand on his head within 24 hours and made him repudiate his plan for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 border. There is now vague talk in Israel about territorial swaps and population transfer as the final solution to the Palestinian problem.

As for Gaza, the ‘pullout’ in 2005 was hardly that, for Israel continues to control the strip’s land, air and sea exits and has imposed a blockade that has as a matter of policy denied normal life to the Gazans. Hamas’s isolation, in part due to its own rigid policies, also encouraged Israel to go for the kill. It is an unequal battle in which the Gazans are the losers. To save casualties, the international community should intensify efforts to effect an immediate ceasefire.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2014