If an all-out conflagration in the region and perhaps beyond is to be avoided, the United States and other Western governments that have pledged unwavering support to Israel’s far-right government would be well advised to reverse course—not merely to urge caution and delay, as President Biden has done in discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but to push for an immediate cease-fire. This needs to go hand in hand with a fundamental shift in the U.S. approach to the question of Palestine, to address the underlying causes of the violence: Israel’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people and its virtual impunity in doing so.
My father’s side of the family resides in Gaza City, while my mother’s side of the family calls the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis home. We do our best to stay in contact throughout the day with cell phones they charge using car batteries. Sometimes their updates are frenetic, a harrowing summary of the day’s events I missed when I try to sleep. Time is a precious commodity, and the news from loved ones keeps rolling in.
New bombings. Closer this time. A tree fell on the house. Our neighbor’s house was hit. Many trapped under rubble. A hospital just bombed. The bakery, too. More families wiped out—the Abadalah family, remember them? We may not survive the night. But we feel better today. We ran out of water. We need to clean ourselves of the stench of blood and bomb debris and broken lives. Then we had cake—don’t ask how. A birthday for our 9-year-old. We insist on celebrating life.
My uncle Omar’s family in Gaza City have made the difficult decision to remain in their home, despite Israeli orders for Palestinians in that part of the Strip to leave (where to, no one knows), a move that U.N. experts consider to be a crime against humanity. They tried to flee, they told me in a somber WhatsApp message, but ultimately decided to turn back and risk dying “in the dignity of their own homes” after hearing the news of over 70 Palestinians being killed in Israeli attacks as they attempted to make that same journey that day on a road that Israel said was a safe passage. Unrelenting, the Israeli military dropped fliers over their homes telling them that by choosing to stay, they may be considered “members of a terrorist group.”