GAZA, (PIC)
When a residential apartment is reduced to rubble within minutes, and when a doctor leaves an operating room only to find the hospital itself under threat, the issue is no longer about abstract numbers or “collateral damage.”
Israel’s assault on civilians is a daily reality that follows Palestinians into their homes, streets, schools and places of refuge. It raises a question that cannot be evaded: how can defenseless civilians be left exposed to a military machine that treats the foundations of life as targets to be disabled and destroyed?
In Gaza, and in the West Bank and Jerusalem in different forms and degrees, danger is never separate from the details of daily life. A family searching for water, a child trying to reach school, an elderly person waiting for medicine, and a displaced person who believes a shelter may offer some measure of safety are all paying the price of a policy that cannot be reduced to cold military language.
Israeli attacks on civilians are a pattern, not an exception
The official Israeli narrative often seeks to present each bombing, raid or killing as an exceptional incident dictated by “security necessities.” But the repetition of the scene, the expansion of its scope, and its overlap with siege, blocked supplies and forced displacement show that this is not a series of isolated mistakes.
It is a pattern of force imposed on an entire society, in which civilians are trapped between direct danger and the collapse of the basic conditions needed to survive.
Civilian protection does not only mean refraining from shooting unarmed people. It also means protecting homes, hospitals, ambulances, water networks, bakeries and schools, and ensuring access to food, medicine and fuel.
When these facilities are attacked, disabled or denied what they need to operate, the impact does not stop at the targeted building. It extends to thousands of families who depend on it.
The danger of this approach is that it creates an impossible equation for civilians. They are ordered to leave their areas under fire, yet no safe shelter, safe route or basic necessities are guaranteed in the place to which they are pushed. They are told to seek refuge in civilian facilities, while those same facilities remain exposed to danger.
These are not free choices. They are a form of forced uprooting in which people are stripped of their ability to make even the most basic decisions about their lives.
Since the start of the genocide in October 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 173,000 others, most of them civilians, equivalent to around 10% of Gaza’s population.
A home is not a military target
A Palestinian home is not merely stone and concrete. It is a family’s memory, documents, savings, photographs, and the place where children and elderly relatives are cared for.
The widespread destruction of homes does not only create displaced people. It also breaks social and economic stability and turns entire neighborhoods into places unfit for life.
When a family loses its home, a chain of overlapping crises begins: overcrowding, the spread of disease, interrupted education, loss of privacy and difficulty accessing healthcare.
That is why viewing the demolition of homes as a mere urban or structural issue ignores its deeper human and political meaning: dismantling Palestinians’ ability to remain on their land with dignity.
Israeli occupation forces have destroyed 90% of Gaza’s buildings and homes, while thousands of housing units have also been demolished in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
A hospital under pressure means a society without refuge
Hospitals do not operate in a vacuum. They need electricity, fuel, medicine, water and medical teams able to move and reach their workplaces. Targeting hospitals, besieging them or threatening their surroundings, put the patients, the wounded, pregnant women, and children in danger, even when no direct injury occurs inside their wards.
A medical facility that can no longer receive the wounded is not just a damaged building. It is a sign of the collapse of a basic right to treatment.
The cruelty is even greater when medical teams are forced to choose between many urgent cases with scarce resources, or when patients are forced to leave their beds in search of a place that is slightly less dangerous.
No broad claims can justify turning healthcare into a space of constant threat without independent and transparent investigation and genuine accountability.
Displacement is not a neutral measure
Evacuation orders are sometimes presented as measures intended to protect civilians. But that claim loses all meaning when such orders are issued amid bombardment, with no safe transport, no shelter, and no food or water in displacement areas.
Movement cannot be called protection if it leads to greater exposure to danger and to life without basic necessities.
Repeated displacement also exhausts people psychologically and physically. Families cannot carry everything they need. Patients cannot always travel long distances. Children carry accumulated fear even into their sleep.
Over time, displacement stops being an emergency and becomes an imposed reality, threatening the social fabric and deepening a Palestinian wound that extends across generations.
International law does not offer civilians conditional protection
The basic rules of international humanitarian law are clear in essence: distinction must be made between civilians and fighters, and between civilian objects and military targets. Necessary precautions must also be taken to minimize harm to civilians.
These obligations do not cease to apply because of an imbalance of power, or because political rhetoric seeks to justify collective punishment.
Accountability is neither a legal luxury nor an item to be postponed until after the catastrophe ends. Investigating violations, documenting testimonies, protecting evidence and prosecuting those responsible for orders and decisions that harm civilians are necessary conditions for preventing the crime from recurring.
Impunity does not close the chapter. It gives a green light for violations to expand. It is not enough for states and institutions to express “concern.” Concern that is not followed by pressure to stop the targeting, ensure the flow of aid, and protect medical teams and journalists remains comfortable language for those who do not live under bombardment.
Palestinian civilians do not need selective sympathy. They need equal application of the standards the world repeats in other crises.
The battle over narrative is part of protecting civilians
The language of coverage is not a matter of style. When civilians are said to have “died” without naming the perpetrator or explaining the context that led to their killing, responsibility is erased from the sentence.
When destroyed neighborhoods are presented merely as a “battlefield,” it is forgotten that they contain families, civilian life and rights that do not vanish because of occupation or siege.
Palestinian documentation, from survivor testimonies to hospital records, rescue teams and journalists, is a necessary line of defense against denial and disinformation. But it also requires precision.
Protecting the truth requires verifying names, places and dates, and distinguishing between what is confirmed and what remains under verification. The strongest Palestinian narrative is one that combines moral clarity with solid evidence.
Reducing Palestinians to numbers makes it easier for the world to move past the tragedy. Restoring the name, story, home, profession and dream makes the human loss visible and reveals that behind every victim was a life with its own place, rights and future.
What does responsibility require now?
The first obligation is to stop attacks that threaten civilians and reject their normalization in any form. Then comes the need to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid without obstruction, restore the operation of hospitals and vital facilities, and provide real protection for displaced people.
These are urgent steps, but they do not address the root of the crisis as long as occupation continues to impose military control and siege and deny Palestinians the right to security and freedom.
Media attention must also become an act of sustained awareness, not fleeting interest governed by the news cycle.
Readers, researchers and journalists must preserve testimonies, verify information and reject language that equates the victim with the party that possesses the tools of killing and siege. False balance in description serves the stronger party, while justice begins by naming reality as it is.
Palestinian civilians are not a footnote in the story, nor a detail that can be bypassed when discussing politics and war. Listening to their voices, protecting their right to life and demanding that the world hold accountable those who violate that right are practical steps to preserve human dignity and prevent tragedy from becoming an ordinary news item that is repeated and then forgotten.