What Is Happening in Gaza

Even if Hamas operates near civilian areas in one of the most densely populated places on earth (2.3 million people in 365 km²), international law is clear: the presence of combatants does not strip civilians of their protection, and does not give a military the right to bomb hospitals, schools, and refugee camps indiscriminately. Moreover, the "human shields" argument cannot explain children being shot in the head by snipers while playing in safe zones or walking on evacuation corridors — as documented by the BBC, the NYT, and dozens of Western doctors. A sniper shot to a 6-year-old's head is not collateral damage. It is a choice. It is also worth noting that Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit documented Israeli forces using Palestinian civilians as human shields — forcing them to enter buildings ahead of soldiers, or using them as messengers before shooting them. The accusation Israel levels at Hamas has been documented as an Israeli practice.

The Gaza Health Ministry's figures have been independently validated by multiple peer-reviewed studies in The Lancet, by the UN, by the WHO, and by Israeli intelligence services. In January 2026, an Israeli military official publicly accepted the figures as broadly accurate. The Lancet's independent household survey found the real death toll is actually 41–50% higher than what the Ministry reported — meaning they are an undercount, not an overcount. The casualty list includes full names, national ID numbers, ages, and dates — 1,516 pages of them.

A popular narrative claims Israel left Gaza in good faith and Palestinians squandered the opportunity. In reality, Israeli settlers demolished about half the greenhouses themselves before leaving. American Jewish donors bought the rest for $14 million and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Some Palestinian looters damaged equipment, but the structures remained intact. James Wolfensohn, the US Special Envoy who brokered the deal, wrote that the greenhouses "came through essentially intact." What killed the project was Israel closing the Karni border crossing and blocking exports. By February 2006, farmers were dumping perfect strawberries onto wastelands because they couldn't get them through. Israel's own Gaza Division commander told Haaretz there was no security reason for the closures. After the 2005 withdrawal, Israel maintained control over Gaza's borders, airspace, coastline, population registry, and electromagnetic spectrum — which is why the UN, the ICJ, and the international legal community still consider Gaza occupied territory.

Israel does not "give" Gaza food. It controls what enters through crossings it has blockaded since 2007. UN agencies reported that 70% of their humanitarian missions were denied access by Israel in late 2024. In March 2025, Israel imposed a near-total blockade — even restricting baby formula, confiscating it from doctors and nurses trying to bring it in. The UN declared a Phase 5 famine (the highest level) in August 2025. As for the tunnels: they are real and extensive (estimated at 350–450 miles by Israeli defense officials), and Hamas did divert resources to build them. But this does not justify collectively starving 2.3 million civilians — including over a million children — as a response. Collective punishment of civilians is a war crime under international law, regardless of what Hamas has done.

Every country has a right to self-defense — but not in the way Israel claims. In its 2004 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ ruled that Article 51 of the UN Charter (the legal basis for self-defense) does not apply when the threat comes from within territory a state occupies. In July 2024, the ICJ went further, declaring Israel's entire occupation of Palestinian territories illegal and ordering Israel to withdraw. The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese, stated plainly: "The right to self-defense can be invoked when the state is threatened by another state, which is not the case." As the occupying power, Israel has legal obligations to protect the civilian population — not destroy it. Even setting aside the occupation question, self-defense must be proportionate under international law. Destroying 81% of all structures, killing over 75,000 people (majority women and children), levelling every university, and engineering a famine affecting 2.3 million people is not a proportionate response to a militia estimated at 20,000–30,000 fighters. The right to self-defense does not override the prohibition on genocide, collective punishment, or the deliberate starvation of civilians.

This phrase has been repeated by Israeli leaders since at least 2005. The evidence against it is now overwhelming — and much of it comes from Israeli sources. The Israeli magazine +972 published testimonies from soldiers describing "total freedom" to shoot anyone: "a young girl, an old woman." In June 2025, Israel's own newspaper Haaretz reported that soldiers near food aid distribution sites described the area as a "killing field" — with orders to fire live ammunition at unarmed, starving civilians, including at night when people didn't know they were in restricted areas. One soldier told Haaretz: "The loss of human life means nothing. It's not even an 'unfortunate incident,' like the IDF used to say." Over 500 Palestinians were killed near aid sites in a single month. Israel's former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon publicly accused Israel of carrying out "ethnic cleansing" in northern Gaza and said the IDF is not the most moral army. Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli military veterans, has collected hundreds of soldier testimonies documenting systematic abuses. Israeli soldiers themselves posted thousands of social media videos celebrating destruction, looting, and demolition of civilian homes. Of 52 IDF internal investigations into alleged war crimes (2023–2025), 88% were stalled or closed with no action, according to Action on Armed Violence. Only one resulted in a prison sentence.

October 7th was a horrific attack that killed approximately 1,200 people — overwhelmingly civilians — and involved hostage-taking and atrocities by Hamas. Nothing justifies it. But it did not happen in a vacuum. Gaza has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967 and under a suffocating land, sea, and air blockade since 2007. By 2023, 81% of Gazans lived below the poverty line and 63% were food insecure before a single bomb fell. The UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B'Tselem (Israel's own leading human rights organization) had been documenting systematic human rights violations in Gaza for decades. Understanding the context is not justifying the attack — it is necessary to understand why simply "destroying Hamas" militarily has not and will not bring peace or security to anyone.

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex. What is happening right now is not. When the BBC, The New York Times, The Lancet, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, Dutch forensic pathologists, and dozens of American military veteran doctors all independently reach the same conclusion — that civilians, and specifically children, are being systematically killed — that is no longer "complicated." The October 7th attack by Hamas was a horrific crime. But the response has killed more than 75,000 people, the majority women and children, destroyed 81% of all structures, engineered a famine, and prompted the highest courts in the world to issue arrest warrants and declare a plausible genocide. One atrocity does not justify another.