Gaza's pain should awaken and unite the world against global injustice

The Israeli government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recently embarked on a controversial plan for the military takeover—and indefinite, full control—of the Palestinian territory of Gaza, administered by the militant group, Hamas, since 2007. What began as retaliation shortly after Hamas operatives attacked Israel on October 7, 2023—killing an estimated 1,400 people—soon spawned what could possibly be the worst humanitarian crisis of this decade.

Gaza has, at some point, been described as the world's largest open-air prison. And, towards the end of last year, the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against, among others, Prime Minister Netanyahu for possible war crimes.

Over 60,000 people have been killed since the start of Israel's military offensive against Hamas in Gaza. Talks aimed at agreeing a halt to the war have been on and off. And Israel is now being accused by critics of blocking aid with a view to adding starvation to its ammunition against Gazans. Israeli soldiers—and, sometimes, settlers—reportedly fire shots at and kill Gazans seeking access to aid distribution points co-designated by Israel and the US. And lately, world powers, including France, Britain and Canada, have threatened to recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel agrees—and demonstrates genuine commitment—to end the conflict.

It's not easy to keep track of how many people die from starvation daily as Israel does not allow foreign journalists to report from within Gaza. But it probably could be hundreds, matching—and possibly surpassing—the death toll from the Israeli Defence Forces' (IDF) daily bombardment of the territory. Last year, South Africa led cries for justice in Gaza, filing a war crimes case against Israel at the Hague and paying for it with punitive, US-imposed trade tariffs. Sanctions, arrests, deportations and, lately, tariffs are Washington's tools of punition against those critical of Israel's impunity in Gaza. And victims of US-sanctioned persecution for criticism of Israel's actions have included Ivy League college students and administration officials. Staff and prosecutorial heads at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, respectively, have also been marked out for perdition by the US for their condemnation of, or action against, Israel.

US President Donald Trump, at some point, suggested a plan to completely depopulate the territory by farming its people onto neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, after which he would build—on what's now the Gaza Strip, with a pre-October 7 population of nearly three million—a sprawling souk patterned after the French Riviera. And, rather than disapprobation, Mr Trump's misleadership has been celebrated with recommendations for the addition of the US president's name to the pantheon of the Nobel Peace Prize honour roll. Israel's Netanyahu and, lately, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan—two Eastern European nations mired in a territorial dispute since the late 1980s—have led petitions for an otherwise undeserved Trump Nobel win.

The Middle Eastern conflict pitting Israel against Palestine has its origins in events that predate the October 7 Hamas attacks on the former. In 1897, the Jewish Austro-Hungarian journalist and lawyer Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), venerated in the Jewish World as “the Father of modern Zionism”, convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, at which he was elected president of the Zionist Organisation. He soon embarked on a series of diplomatic initiatives to solicit support for a Jewish state, which included unsuccessful appeals to then-German emperor Wilhelm II and then-Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II.

At the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903, Herzl presented a proposal seeking temporary refuge for Jews in then-British East Africa. And the plan—endorsed by then-Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain—was only abandoned following strong opposition. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 would, however, identify then-British-administered Palestine as the future “national home” of the Jews. And, with the end of the British Mandate in Palestine on May 15, 1948, the Jewish National Council, led by David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, though not without a war with the Arabs.

The injustices in the Gaza of 2025 more than add to the decades-long crisis that's post-1948 Palestine. What first began 77 years ago as a declaration, and defence, of the right to exist now threatens the world with a superpower-enabled wrecking ball attack on the fortress that's international law. Israel's actions in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen and, lately, Qatar—while defended as necessary for the Jewish state's security—have followed both a pattern and history of impunity.

And Gaza's pain under the boot of US-enabled law-breaking on the part of Israel should jolt us all into a conscientious awakening and sting us into solidarity against global injustice. War—as we've seen in Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, DR Congo and elsewhere, throughout history—represents an uninviting, Apocalypse-level low for humankind. And Gaza's impunity-fuelled chokehold is just how the descent starts. 

 — Mr Baraza is a writer and historian