Northern Gaza Strip turned into a desert of rubble

Diplomacy falters. Severe destruction

by Karin Leukefeld,* Germany/Syria

(14 December 2023) Benjamin Netanyahu needs three things from the USA: “Ammunition, ammunition, ammunition”. This is how the Israeli daily newspaper “Israel Hayoum” quoted statements made by the Israeli Prime Minister in a meeting with government representatives.

So far, the USA has supplied 16 different types of weapons for the “war against Hamas”, which after 60 days has largely turned the Palestinian coastal strip into a desert of rubble. Satellite-guided, bunker-busting bombs filled with up to 2,000 pounds of explosives, laser-guided missiles and target acquisition based on artificial intelligence are being used in Gaza.

US military historian Robert Pape told the Financial Times that the northern Gaza Strip had been destroyed by one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in history – like Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne in the Second World War.

The International Committee of the Red Cross spoke of “catastrophic conditions” in the southern Gaza Strip. The president of the organisation, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, said after a visit to the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday that it was “unacceptable that civilians should suffer so much in an armed conflict”.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Wednesday [6 December] for the UN Security Council to take “urgent action” to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza war in accordance with Article 99 of the UN Charter. Otherwise, the preservation of world peace and international security would be jeopardised.

Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan rejected Guterres’ call on X. Guterres was once again showing his “bias against Israel”, Erdan said. “The Secretary-General's call for a ceasefire is in fact a call to maintain Hamas’ reign of terror in Gaza.”

The United Arab Emirates, on the other hand, presented a new draft resolution for the committee. It was imperative to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire, they said.

* Karin Leukefeld studied ethnology as well as Islamic and political sciences and is a trained bookseller. She has done organisational and public relations work for, among others, the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU), the Green Party (federal pcarty) and the El Salvador Information Centre. She was also a personal assistant to a PDS member of parliament in Germany (foreign policy and humanitarian aid). Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance correspondent in the Middle East for various German and Swiss media. She is also the author of several books on her experiences from the war zones in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/464789.gazakrieg-schwerste-zerstörung.html, 8 December 2023

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)