Gaza, a cornered and extremely vulnerable people

Extreme scarcity and desperation define life in the Gaza Strip today. The population has been subjected to a cruel blockade by the Israeli government since 2007. Before the current crisis, after the Hamas attack on Israeli territory with taken of hostages, Gaza had already been bombed by Israel several times, killing hundreds of people and destroying many buildings. and structures. It must be remembered that the 2 million residents who live in the small territory of 375 km2 have been suffering multiple hardships. Before the current total lockdown they had lived on four hours or less of electricity a day. It had been the case for a long time that most families did not have access to clean water because the supply system was contaminated with sewage: For some school children, breakfast was a cup of hot water flavored with a pinch of salt. Today not even that. Said Omar Ghraieb, a journalist and digital media manager who lives in Gaza. "Despair is not even the right word to describe what is happening here because things are getting worse," he said. "We wake up to a world of fighting every day." For more than a decade, Palestinians living in Gaza had suffered major escalations of violence and an Israeli-imposed air and sea blockade that has decimated infrastructure, stifled economic growth and living conditions so bleak that United Nations officials They said, before the Israeli bombings, that a humanitarian disaster was inevitable.
"We are really seeing a collapse on the ground," said Matthias Schmale, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which provided humanitarian assistance to more than 1.3 million refugees in the autonomous Palestinian territory.

You can imagine that some reaction from the population was inevitable. The Hamas attack, as well as other reactions of Palestinian rebellion in Gaza, were predictable.
To all of the above we must add that there are nearly 3 million Palestinians in the Western Bank of the Jordan, constantly dispossessed of land and homes due to the advance of Israeli colonies in their traditional lands. In their jobs and transfers they are permanently humiliated with controls on all the main routes in the territory. As if that were not enough, something similar is happening in the Arab and Muslim sector of Jerusalem. The Palestinians themselves, who have been incorporated into Israeli citizenship for decades, are constantly discriminated against and their rights are not taken into account. Added to the above is that there are several million Palestinian refugees in neighboring countries. Jordan, which in practice has been and is a country with a majority Palestinian population, is threatened both politically and militarily by the Israeli state. Something similar happens in the south of Lebanon and in the southwest of Syria, a country that has already lost the Golan area since the 6-day war and Yon Kippur in 1967 and 1973. Something similar can be said of Egypt, particularly on the peninsula. of Sinai, which was already occupied by Israel in 1967. There are also several million Palestinians who were forced to migrate to different countries in the world.
In this situation it seems difficult that the solution of eradication of the Palestinian population from their former territories becomes impracticable. Netanyahu's policy of taking advantage of the reaction generated by the Hamas attacks on his territory to annihilate the Palestinian population, both those actively involved in the resistance struggle and the civilian population made up mainly of women and children, has generated and is generating rejection in Arab and Muslim governments, as well as in numerous social and political organizations throughout the world. It would be easier for Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Palestinian Hamas leaders to achieve the release of hostages captured by Hamas in exchange for the release of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons. This would allow time for Israel's political forces to rethink their relationship with the Palestinian political leaders, and advance the constitution and demarcation of an internationally recognized independent Palestinian state. While that would be the solution, it is not likely that due to the racist and Islamophobic reactions that have developed in a part of Israeli society, it can happen in the near future.
Israeli decisions are influenced by the United States, which constitutes the main economic and military support of the Israeli state, but American positions are influenced by a very politically strong pro-Israeli sector that prevents the United States from changing its position.
Meanwhile, the death toll of thousands of Palestinian victims, most of them civilians, including tens of thousands of children, seems set to continue.
At the same time the world watches with a lot of anger and a lot of helplessness.