“It’s complicated.” This is the standard response of many people when confronted with the crisis in the Middle East. One routinely hears that it is too complicated to understand. Even Hollywood films tend to depict the Middle East as the ultimate diplomatic and political challenge.
Many things in life are indeed complicated. Dealing with the sudden loss of a beloved younger brother, as I have had to do this year, is complicated. Being a woman is not a piece of cake in itself. Facing one’s own mortality is not uncomplicated. To me, understanding cricket is complicated. But the nonstop indiscriminate bombing of civilians, including thousands of children, is not a complicated matter.
In late October I wrote that, based on Israel’s aggressive rhetoric, coupled with the experience of previous wars, the death toll in Gaza would prove the disproportionate nature of Israel’s actions. This was not particularly prescient of me. Anyone who followed previous Israel-Gaza conflicts knows that Israel does not hesitate to act disproportionately.
The Israeli death toll from Hamas’ October 7 attack is about 1,500. By November the death toll in Gaza stood at 9,500. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that this will be a long war.
Save the Children now estimates that two out of five casualties in Gaza are children. On November 2, Unicef spokesperson James Elder said at a news briefing that “Gaza has become a graveyard for children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.”
The highways in Johannesburg feature billboards with the pictures of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas and the words “Bring them home”. The parents of these children are no doubt experiencing indescribable pain and worry, and the relatives of the Israeli children killed by Hamas live with immeasurable loss.
But unlike the children on the posters, the Palestinian child victims of this war are mostly faceless. A fact that cannot be repeated often enough is that in the extremely overpopulated Gaza any ostensible military attack is likely to kill civilians. Because of the high proportion of children in Gaza, a bombing campaign likely to hit civilians is highly likely to kill children.
With hospitals under attack, injured Gazan children do not have sophisticated, well-equipped hospitals and doctors to treat them. This means humanitarian law is being violated by the minute, and the number of war crimes being committed every time a child is injured, killed, displaced or denied aid is multiplying by the day.
Palestinian children have long borne the brunt of the Israeli occupation. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada 12,000 Palestinian children have been kept in Israeli prisons, in many cases without trial. This has been ignored by the world for decades, in spite of international consensus on the near-sacred nature of children’s rights.
With 195 signatories, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified international human rights convention in history. Many countries around the world that agree on hardly anything else when it comes to human rights, do agree on the fundamental and inviolable nature of children’s rights.
Interestingly, the US is one of only two countries that have not ratified the convention. Indeed, for a country such as the US not to use its influence to press for a ceasefire is tantamount to tearing up this much-revered document. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire until all his demands are met translates, in effect, to the massacring of children.
During a consultancy for the UN Development Programme shortly after the 2014 war known as Operation Protective Edge, I stayed in Al Deira hotel on the beach in Gaza. My room overlooked the small beach where four boys were killed by an Israeli missile while they were playing soccer. Watching the glorious Gaza sunsets in the evenings, I often thought of those children, aged between 9 to 11.
There was, of course, never any accountability for this act, not by the International Criminal Court nor any other international or national mechanism. Israel called the killing on the beach “a tragic accident”. What will it call the killing of thousands of children?
In a statement last week, the head of the UN Children’s Rights Committee called for a ceasefire, saying: “There are no winners in a war where thousands of children are killed.” Not only will there be no winner, there will be a fresh intergenerational cycle of violence, inherited trauma and increased hatred. And as in all wars, the children of the future will bear the brunt.
• Swart is a visiting professor at Wits Law School specialising in human rights, international relations and international law. She writes in her personal capacity.
