ActionAid UK has sent a distress signal, inviting world community’s attention to the plight of besieged Gazans and saying that “Thousands of people are in need at Rafah border crossing, urgent appeal.”
According to it, “We implore the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to allow life-saving supplies to reach those in desperate need.” It is important to note that Egypt has stepped up its diplomatic efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.
What is more important to note is that President al-Sisi has told the visiting US Secretary of State Blinken that Israel’s bombardment of the territory is utterly disproportional.
Unfortunately, however, the situation clearly suggests that the Israeli government has decided to do everything possible to ensure that no humanitarian aid from anywhere reaches the Gazans who have run out food, medicines, electricity and drinking water.
That the humanitarian crisis in world’s largest open air imprison has been deepening every hour is a fact. The foreign minister of Pakistan, Jalil Abbas Jilani, has rightly equated Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza and the siege of the territory to conducting genocide against the people of Palestine.
In my view, the Palestinians are being visited by another Nakbah (catastrophe). Nakbah means the destruction of the Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of the Palestinian Arabs.
At present, 72 percent Gazan residents are said to be the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Palestinians who were uprooted and displaced from their ancestral lands by Israel in 1948 during Nakbah.
But this second Nakbah appears to be more catastrophic as it is aimed at annihilating the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza. Little do, however, Israel and the US-led West realise that the Palestinians will ultimately eliminate the current threat to their existence with perseverance and dignity.
The more Israel wraps itself in xenophobia towards the Palestinians, the more it assists them in staying on.
Shahida Wazir Khan (Peshawar)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023