One of the foundational aspects of this blog, such as it was, was being late to things. It was envisaged as not-quite-timely observations. Things would happen, people would comment on it, some time would pass, and then I'd get my lick in, snarking at some weird bit of commentary. In part because it was a pressure relief valve - an outlet for me to say shit without alienating people IRL - and thus some time was required for the pressure to build up. So it feels weird to be doing this thing about what's coming next - but that thing that's next has been bearing down on us like a slow motion train crash - it feels like it has been happening for weeks already.
When the Al Ahli hospital was hit - it seemed like something entirely different. Sure the air raids were already very deadly - hundreds of people were dying every day and had been for several days running by that point. What was it that made the hospital disaster so very bad? It was the number of dead. Dozens being killed in a strike was unfortunate, but acceptable. Hundreds is not. That's it - and it is incredibly sad that we value Palestinian lives so little that it takes hundreds of them to raise a response. Killing dozens is okay, killing hundreds is not.
The death toll from the Jabalia air strike is still ticking up, but it has already gone into the hundreds. Maybe the IDF misunderstood how many civilians were going to be caught in this attack or maybe they've adjusted their marker upwards now that we are in the new phase of the war. Regardless, it is a change in scale, from dozens to hundreds, and it provoked responses. It has brought us closer still to that regional war we are supposed to be trying to avoid.
The Gaza hospitals are on the brink now. We were warned about this just over two weeks ago - that fuel and medical supplies were running out. They were running out, but it looks like what happened was that Gazans banded together and scavenged and scrounged resources to keep things going. Some of what they scrounged was from hospitals that shut down due to damage from air strikes. As of yesterday, half of the hospitals in Gaza had already closed. But now, the vinegar they've used as a replacement for antiseptic and the fuel they've siphoned out of vehicles in order to keep power going to dialysis machines - that's running out now too. So this will be another shift - people who are dying in Gaza hospitals because of a lack of supplies, because of the failing ability to provide medical services - that's going to tick up as well. And maybe it'll take a few days for these deaths to fully hit, maybe some patients will hold out for a bit without care. But they will die and their numbers will go from dozens to hundreds.
So what will be the response? Already there are world-wide protests against the genocide. Daily people march for Palestine. The Arab countries who had signed on to the normalization plan are being pushed out of it. As much as the rulers would love to reap the rewards of achieving peace in the Middle East without doing anything to achieve peace in the Middle East - their people will not allow it. Not when the killing is by the hundreds, not merely by the dozens. So the pressure for them to act will increase just as the killing has increased. And maybe they'll be able to buy some time by doing things other than escalating the conflict to war, but there is zero indication that the pressure build up will slow at all. And so war is on the doorstep.
I can see this coming, way out here in my comfortable suburban Canadian home. Everybody sees it coming. So the people who are actually involved and getting reports directly from people on the ground - they must have known it has been coming for ages now.
Maybe they were hoping it wasn't going to happen - maybe they were hoping that Israel would allow fuel into Gaza to keep the hospitals going. They did start allowing food and water last week, so maybe the desperately needed fuel will come too. But it is not coming.
Maybe the people who saw this happening were hoping that Israel wouldn't escalate her attacks in ways that results in hundreds, not dozens of civilian casualties. After all, the IDF clearly recognized that the scope of death at Al Ahli hospital was too much and had to be avoided. But that did not happen - the IDF was happy to claim responsibility for the Jabalia missile strikes.
So what was their plan? If we are to avoid escalation into a wider regional conflict - what is being done about it? These people know it is coming, and they know it is coming soon. And what are they doing?
Biden's administration is adamantly against a ceasefire. The Security Council was supposed to be working on another resolution, this one from the UAE and developed with the backing of all of the elected members. That meeting was Monday but we do not have a Security Council resolution. A UNSC resolution is binding - it would serve notice to Israel that the world can and will take action to end this mindless bloodthirsty rampage. But we don't have a UNSC resolution.
The only answer is that a wider regional war is expected. Maybe the US thinks that this is the preferable outcome - a wider regional war. I cannot for the life of me imagine a scenario where peace is the less preferred alternative, but that seems to be what the decisions are pointing to.
And it is coming. I have been saying for weeks that this situation is going to get worse, and then stay worse for a long time. This is what Israel has promised us. And while it has been getting worse this entire time, the actual serious getting worse part was yet to come. When the numbers killed tick up from dozens to hundreds. Well, that time is at hand. It's already started and there seems to be nothing holding it back.
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