It’s the third anniversary of the peaceful unarmed Gazans’ attack on “the Zionist entity” (Gazans don’t recognize the existence or legitimacy of a state of Israel). The Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) refuses to disarm (BBC; this makes sense since we’re informed that Gazans were never armed) and continues to fight despite having suffered some apparent losses.
From Florence Nightingale opposed the Red Cross (2010):
… she rejected the idea of the Red Cross from the outset. “I think its views most absurd just such as would originate in a little state like Geneva, which can never see war,” she said. … How could anyone who sought to reduce human suffering want to make war less costly? By easing the burden on war ministries, Nightingale argued, volunteer efforts could simply make waging war more attractive, and more probable.
Without humanitarian aid, eventually one side in a war has to surrender and make the best terms that it can for peace. People have to go back to work or they’ll starve and be unable to feed their children (the latter consideration is especially important for Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian”; they have very nearly the world’s highest population growth rate (even in Gaza right now)). With UNRWA, World Central Kitchen, Doctors Without Borders, etc., however, Gazans can stay at war indefinitely and they seem to know it. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an updated poll asking the same questions, but Ramallah-based AWRAD polled Gazans in the fall of 2023 and they were supportive of their October 7 attack and of Hamas and Palestinian Jihad. From International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (and a poll result):
The Gazans’ plan was to fight until total victory (“A Palestinian state from the river to the sea”) was achieved:
The new state would be ruled by Hamas and/or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, based on the poll results for which parties were most popular in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas had 75% support and PIJ had 85%.
Israel has fought this war in a radically different way than what the U.S., U.K., and Russians did to win World War II, even though a smaller percentage of Germans and Japanese supported their respective governments than the percentage of Gazans who say that they support Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The US-/UK- approach would have been to drop bombs until the Gazans surrendered. The Russian approach would have been to fire artillery shells until the Gazans surrendered. The Israelis instead sent infantry in to sort through Gazans one by one, kept the aid flowing so that the Gazans could stay at war, and tried to engineer a built environment that would allow the Gazans to stay at war with the Zionist entity for another 78 years but not be able to accomplish another October 7-style attack (tunnels mostly destroyed; significant buffer zone along the border). The Gazans haven’t launched a rocket at Israeli civilians for an entire year so maybe this is working, at least in the short run. However, it is unclear that a drawn-out war is actually better for Gazans than a one-month much more intense war would have been. On the one hand, the Gazans happiest day ever was October 7, 2023 (video of ecstatic Gazans celebrating). On the other hand, there are at least some Gazans capable of productive work and a hot war followed be a true peace would enable them to go to work.
Where else are we seeing humanitarian aid and apparently endless war? Yemen. Foreign do-gooders, including the UN, dump food in and the result is that Yemenis can spend all of their time and energy fighting each other.
Related, the peaceful Gazans killed more than 40 Thai Buddhists on October 7, 2023 and then held more than 30 hostage, some for roughly 500 days. If the hot war had been shorter, the Thais could have gone home sooner. BBC:
(It’s interesting that no Gazan “civilian” ever helped a hostage escape, not even a non-Jew such as the above-referenced Thais. All over Europe during the Holocaust there were Christians, including in Germany itself, who helped Jews hide and/or escape. Gazans, however, appear to have been 100% united in their fight against Israeli civilians and, even, Thai Buddhists. Perhaps some of that unity is cracking now, however. Various Hamas affiliates seem to be getting killed as they walk around Gaza. I don’t see how it would be possible for the Zionist entity to kill these folks without at least some snitches on the inside.)