War In Gaza - War In Gaza #886900

The attack by Hamas across the security perimeter
surrounding the occupied Gaza Strip on October 7 killed
over 1200 Israelis, with hundreds more captured and
held as hostages. In response, Israel unleashed one of
the most destructive campaigns in modern history. Its
systematic bombardment of a densely populated urban
area has killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, the vast
majority of them women, children and the elderly, with
countless thousands more buried under the rubble of
collapsed buildings. Nearly the entire population of 2.2
million has been displaced into extreme conditions, with
no hope of returning to completely destroyed homes.
Their dispossession – at an extraordinary pace and scale,
as discussed by Fiona Adamson and Kelly Greenhill
in this collection – has raised profound fears among
Palestinians and across the region of another Nakba.
The comprehensive siege placed on Gaza by Israel, and
its refusal to allow the entry of adequate humanitarian
assistance, has resulted in historically unprecedented
famine, creating not only the rapid onset of starvation
but also the conditions for the spread of infectious
disease. The extremity of Israel’s destruction of Gaza,
and the accompanying rhetoric from senior officials,
has been such that the International Court of Justice
ruled that there was a plausible case for it to constitute
genocide. Settler provocations in the West Bank, backed
by key figures in Israel’s extreme right-wing coalition,
have escalated with the spotlight on Gaza. These horrors
directly affect scholars who have dedicated their lives to
studying the Middle East, whether or not they currently
reside in Gaza. As Ibrahaim Rabaia and Lordes Habash
of Birzeit University document in their contribution to
this collection, the assault manifestly includes higher
education, with virtually every university in Gaza targeted
for destruction.