The solitude of Gaza

“Alone like Gaza” is the comment inspired by dozens of Internet users by the latest image we have of Doctor Houssem Abou Safieh, director of the Kamel Adwane hospital located in the north of Gaza. Doctor Houssem Abou Safieh was arrested a few days ago, along with other medical staff and patients, by the Israeli occupation army.

Doctor Houssem Abou Safieh studied medicine in Kazakhstan but preferred to return to Gaza in 1996 to be close to his people and treat the sick and numerous wounded who sought his care during the numerous wars suffered by the population of Gaza. over the last three decades.

Doctor Houssem Abou Safieh, his wife and their children born in Gaza have Russian nationality and, like many foreigners, could have left Gaza during the early stages of the war, but they did not do so. A modest and silent heroism which could have inspired beautiful pages from Tolstoy.

The hospital, which bears the name of PLO leader Kamel Adwane assassinated by an Israeli commando on April 10, 1973, in Beirut, at the same time as two other leaders, Kamel Nasser and Abou Youcef Al-Najjar, was targeted in several times by the occupying army during the genocidal war it has been waging for 15 months now in Gaza.

This time, the occupying army burned the hospital after emptying it of its occupants who were transferred to an unknown location. THE Haaretz Israeli rightly believes that the destruction of the Kamel Adwane hospital is a prelude to a massive expulsion of Palestinians who to this day refuse to leave northern Gaza.

Indeed, the destruction of hospitals is part of a politico-military strategy which consists of eliminating all the factors making life possible in the Gaza Strip: shelter, security, food, health care, education, etc. . The dilemma imposed on the Palestinians by the occupying power is simple: leave or die.

But if the image of Doctor Houssem Abou Safieh, alone facing the occupier’s tanks, has aroused such an outpouring of emotion and sympathy on social networks, it is because it alone symbolizes all the loneliness of Gaza facing a genocide which is increasingly recognized as such by all international humanitarian organizations.

The suffering of the population of Gaza in solitude is an offense to humanity which illustrates the gravity of the moral decline of international powers who have the capacity to stop the carnage – without endangering the security of the State of Israel, it must be remembered – but they do not do so.

But beyond the moral aspect which deserves in-depth reflection on the discourse held by the West on human rights, the solitude of Gaza raises fundamental political questions.

The solitude of Gaza illustrates in a frightening and chilling way that justice without force is nothing in the world in which we live. If Israel allows itself what it does in Gaza it is because it is sure of its strength and the omnipotence of its American protector.

If Iran did not engage directly in the war despite its anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist rhetoric and preferred to act through its vectors in the region, it is because it knows that any real attack on Israel’s security will open the gates of hell.

If Hezbollah stuck for a full year to what it called “the rules of engagement” which certainly disturbed Israel but did not threaten it in any way, it was also for the same reason. And if after the attack on the beepers, the escalation between Hezbollah and Israel made people believe in a total war between the two parties, the blows received by Hezbollah quickly pushed it to a separate ceasefire which has only accentuated the loneliness of Gaza.

Other regional actors (Türkiye, Arab countries) have done nothing to alleviate the loneliness of Gaza. Aside from Turkey and Egypt, whose national security doctrine and strategic calculations prevent them from going beyond a certain red line drawn by the American superpower, the other states in the region do not even have the capacity to defend their own territorial integrity without the American umbrella.

But the solitude of Gaza also poses another nagging question that neither the media nor researchers dare to put on the table: why is Israel above all suspicion? Why does Israel benefit from this revolting impunity?

Everyone knows that if another state had accomplished a quarter of what is being committed today in Gaza, it would be put on the bench of nations, with international sanctions and perhaps even provoke international intervention under of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations. Is Israel above international law?

If the answer to this question seems obvious, there remains the question that disturbs consciences who believe they find in an adulterated feeling of guilt a convenient motive for their cowardice: why? An essential question whose answer conditions the freedom not only of the Palestinian people but of all the nations of the world.

Finally, the solitude of Gaza should seriously challenge public opinion in so-called democratic countries. Gaza is alone but paradoxically large sectors of the world’s youth, including in the United States and Europe, have continued to demonstrate their opposition to the genocidal war being waged by the Israeli occupying army against the Palestinian people.

A simple comparison between what is said in the mainstream European media and what we can see on social networks shows us a staggering gap between the official doxa and the vox populi, a gap which says a lot about the true dictatorship of the a thought whose proponents continue to proclaim their attachment to democracy and human rights.

Slogans which appear every day for what they are, that is to say empty ideological slogans but which prove to be weapons of mass destruction in “barbaric” countries where the duty of democratic intervention is invoked, especially where States continue to exist which have the misfortune of clinging to their sovereignty and their right to development far from the dictates of the Empire and the Market.