The Question of Control in Gaza
The words of my sister still echo in my mind, her voice trembling with fear. She lives in Gaza with the rest of my family, and I am terrified for them all. Her question is one that lingers in the air: “Gaza City is already occupied. Wherever we go, there are Israeli tanks. To the sea? Not safe. Their drones are everywhere. They can even get inside your house. So what is left to control?” This is not just a rhetorical question — it is the most searing question of our time.
After Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan on Friday to take full control of Gaza City, this conversation became even more urgent. But the reality is that Israel has already controlled most of Gaza for years. It controls not just militarily, but through every artery of life: borders, seas, sky, electricity, food, water, telecommunications, and humanitarian access. What is being declared as “full control” is not a new strategy — it is an escalation of genocide.
The Destruction of Rafah
Take Rafah, for example. Since early May 2024, Israel launched a sweeping offensive, seizing the Rafah border crossing and moving into the city’s outskirts. Evacuation orders intensified, forcing tens of thousands to flee to so-called ‘safe zones’ like Al-Mawasi. Yet those zones quickly turned into death traps — overcrowded, lacking water, food, or medical aid. Hospitals ran out of fuel, medics were threatened, and aid convoys were intercepted or blocked.
A UN court, the International Court of Justice, ordered Israel to halt its operations in Rafah on May 24, 2024. Israel ignored the order. Demolition continued, turning entire neighborhoods into rubble. By mid-2025, satellite imagery confirmed that most of Rafah had been deliberately razed, erased entirely from the map.
A Pattern of Inaction
So what red lines are we still talking about? When Israel invaded Rafah — after Biden himself said it was a red line — nothing happened. When Israel blocked humanitarian aid, starving children to death — nothing happened. When Israel killed aid workers, doctors, journalists, and entire families — again, nothing. And now, as they raze what’s left of Gaza City — as people die, not just from bombs, but from hunger — the world offers the same recycled statement: “deep concern.”
What does “deep concern” mean when babies are dying of starvation and dehydration in hospitals with no fuel? When people are grinding animal feed to make bread? When children dig through rubble for a handful of food? It means nothing. The international community is offering lip service while a nation is being starved, suffocated, and bombed out of existence.
A Campaign of Annihilation
In my view, Israel’s campaign has never truly been about “defeating Hamas.” It is about permanently breaking Gaza. It is about making the land unlivable so that Palestinians either die or never return. And the idea of taking full control is just another way of saying they intend to finish the job.
We are watching what many experts — like B’Tselem, Amnesty International, The Lemkin Institute, and UN officials — call a genocide unfold in real time, with full surveillance, full knowledge, and full complicity. And those in power — in London, Washington, Brussels, and around the world — are not just failing to stop it. They are enabling it.
The Role of the International Community
They are the ones supplying the weapons, the diplomatic cover, the financial aid, the vetoes at the UN. They are the ones pressuring journalists, silencing dissent, and criminalizing protest. They are not bystanders. They are partners in the crime.
I speak to my family in Gaza and sometimes I don’t even know what to say anymore. My sister tells me how they hear tanks in the streets, drones overhead, how even the air feels weaponized. “You can’t sleep. You can’t eat. You can’t even scream anymore,” she said. And yet, somehow, Israel claims it needs more control.
A Call for Action
This moment demands more than words. It demands immediate action to stop what I can only describe as a catastrophic genocide through actual enforcement — not just speeches and statements. It demands humanitarian corridors that function without interference, under neutral oversight, with fuel, food, medicine, and water allowed in unimpeded. It demands legal accountability — for those who weaponize aid, obliterate medical facilities, and destroy civilian infrastructure.
It demands a halt on military support from states that continue to supply weapons and diplomatic cover. And it demands real international pressure — on all levels: diplomatic, civil society, legal — to stop this atrocity.
Because if this is genocide, “deep concern” is a lie. If tanks have flattened homes, if aid is blocked, if Rafah lies in ruins, then silence is concealment — and inaction is guilt.
My sister cannot speak freely. She cannot sleep. But I speak for her. I speak for all the mothers, the children, the civilians whose homes and lives are being erased.
And I demand: do not let them erase this moment, too — from history, from conscience.
If there is moral clarity left in the world, it must rise now. Not in words, but in action.