The Gaza Tragedy

If any place had experience seeing civilians through war, it was the Gaza Strip.

- BY KARL VICK

It's much of why the place exists. That stretch of Mediterranean coast was only even named while being demarcated as a refuge for Palestinians driven off their land by Jewish forces in the 1948 war that created Israel. Gaza's permanent status, like the fate of the Palestinians, was never decided, however. And as the decades churned on, so did the conflict.

There was a devastating rhythm to it. Palestinian militants launched missiles into Israel from Gaza. Israel's military replied with airstrikes, at times with sustained campaigns dubbed wars. The longest lasted 50 days. In each round of fighting, civilians knew where to find safety: in the schools, clinics, and hospitals run by the U.N., which also fed them.

Nearly all of that has been destroyed in Israel's response to the horrific Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023—though not only by bombardment. In its war on a terrorist group, Israel also dismantled civic structures that support an entire population, with the bonus of undercutting the U.N.

Volunteers prepare meals from donated food over wood fires in Gaza City on July 30 PHOTOGRAPH BY ABDALHKEM ABU RIASH

Mothers and babies at a malnutrition clinic in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, on May 1 PHOTOGRAPH BY ABDEL KAREEM HANA