“The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), said after travelling the length of Gaza this week. There is nothing left: Republicans who called for Gaza to be turned into a “parking lot” have got their wish. Amid the ruins, a traumatized and trapped population are being starved to death; an entire generation is seeing their future destroyed. “Starvation is used as a weapon of war,” the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said this week. “Israel is provoking famine.”
While the world’s attention is on Gaza, life for Palestinians in the West Bank is also growing increasingly precarious. There has been a surge in settler violence and a spike in unlawful lethal force from Israeli forces. More than 400 Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since 7 October, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has said that about 100 of these deaths have been children, most of whom posed no credible threat to heavily armed soldiers from one of the most powerful militaries in the world.