By: Qamer Soomro
As dawn breaks over Gaza today, it does so on a landscape shredded by relentless bombardment and a blockade that has turned hunger into a weapon of war. What we are witnessing is not collateral damage but a deliberate, systematic campaign of genocide— where starvation stalks children in the same breath that fighter jets roar overhead. Hospitals lie in ruins; mothers cradle lifeless infants too weak to cry; entire neighbourhoods wait in line for scraps that never come.
Even as the International Court of Justice begins hearings on Israel’s obligations toward Palestinians, Gaza bleeds profusely under a merciless siege. More than 65 days into this inhumane blockade, the situation has spiraled into a deliberate humanitarian catastrophe. Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing a livestreamed genocide— displacing civilians, levelling neighbourhoods, and engineering mass starvation. The UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, has urged the world to halt Gaza’s plunge into an abyss of unspeakable suffering.
Today, the genocide— coupled with starvation as a war tool— has crippled the entire enclave. On one hand, precision airstrikes rain down; on the other, a total blockade has turned basic sustenance into a fleeting hope. The UN’s World Food Programme confirms its food stocks are exhausted. Over one million children now face the horror of the worst famine. Around 3500 children under five face imminent death by starvation. Another 290,000 teeter on the brink of oblivion. Life oscillates between the panic of bombs and the desperation of empty stomachs. Mass starvation is fracturing minds and shattering souls.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has proposed invalidating Gaza’s banknotes, worsening the agony of a devastated and traumatized population. Settler violence in the occupied West Bank continues unchecked. Homes are demolished, families uprooted, and civilians made strangers in their own land. Since 7 October 2023, Israel’s war machine has unleashed an unrelenting campaign of annihilation, disproportionately targeting women and children with alarming impunity. Gaza has been under siege since 2007, caught in an endless cycle of retaliation, radicalization, and despair.Every Palestinian impulse to resist illegal occupation and subjugation is being brutally subdued.
And now, a new horror looms. News reports suggest that Israel plans to relocate the entire population of Gaza under the pretext of a new ground invasion— effectively conquering the besieged enclave through starvation, displacement, and brute force. Tens of thousands of reservists have been mobilized to strengthen capacity for this final push. The United Nations fears this strategy will result in further mass killings. A starving population— mothers, children, emaciated and helpless souls— are caught in a trap of medieval savagery, as the world awfully watches this hellscape, complicit in crimes with the perpetrators of these unforgivable atrocities. The UN cries out, calls for international action, and yet helplessly watches these chilling episodes as a bystander.
The question is no longer what is happening—but why the world will not act. Who will rein in this rampaging beast trampling international law, morality, and the conscience of humanity?
With the UN helplessly watching live streamed genocide in Gaza, this is not the first time the world organisation has stood paralysed in the face of grave atrocities. In 1994, 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in Rwanda as UN peacekeepers stood by. In 2017, the UN was similarly silent during Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. It remained indecisive throughout Syria’s civil war, which claimed over 500,000 lives. Even in the very heart of Europe, it faltered. In 1995, more than 8,000 Muslim boys and men were mercilessly slaughtered by Serbs in Srebrenica while Dutch peacekeepers failed to intervene.
And yet, unlike today’s inertia in Gaza, the world did not remain frozen. NATO intervened in Bosnia. The Dayton Accords were signed. A coalition of 66,000 NATO troops enforced peace. War criminals like Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, and Ratko Mladić were hunted down and brought to justice.
A new world order rooted in justice is not a utopia— it is an existential necessity. One where law triumphs over lawlessness, where the weak are not trampled by the powerful, and where humanity, not hegemony, prevails. Let us not wait until the bones of Gaza’s children join the sorrowful chronicles of Srebrenica and Rwanda. Let us act— now— so that history does not condemn us as passive bystanders to yet another orchestrated massacre of innocents.
The killing fields of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the civilian carnage during the Vietnam War— all remind us that when the world delays action, blood runs freely. But they also prove that even delayed, international resolve can uphold justice and confront impunity.
So why not Palestine?
Why does Gaza’s agony evoke only diplomatic platitudes? Why is there silence, selective outrage, and glaring double standards? Why is the same moral clarity that galvanized the world in Bosnia absent here?
Because international institutions have been hijacked by the geopolitics of power. The veto system at the UN Security Council— wielded by the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China— has become a blunt instrument serving national interests, not global justice. The US routinely blocks resolutions condemning Israeli aggression. Russia vetoes efforts to address its own war crimes in Ukraine. When global policing depends on strategic alliances, impunity becomes the law of the land.
In Gaza, this dysfunction is painfully evident. Every effort to hold Israel accountable is strangled by vetoes. The General Assembly—the voice of 193 nations—is reduced to a debating forum. The voices of weaker nations are drowned in hypocrisy and power games.
Zionist zealotry, bolstered by the unwavering support of powerful states, mocks diplomacy, law, and compassion. UN resolutions, ICJ rulings, and Amnesty’s warnings are treated with contempt. Instead of remorse, we witness defiance, arrogance, and the normalization of unthinkable brutality.
The Palestinian people— stateless, voiceless, unarmed— are being crushed by a nuclear-armed state backed by immense global power. This is not order. It is disorder masquerading as order. A world ruled not by justice, but by brute force— where those who hold the gun forget the very reasons that once justified their power.
The world must reject this system where “might is right,” and scoundrels armed with sophisticated weaponry dictate the terms. Global governance must be democratized. The veto must be abolished. The General Assembly must be empowered. International courts must be given binding enforcement authority— not just moral weight.
Conflict resolution demands justice, not silence. Peace requires accountability, not complicity. The United Nations must evolve— or risk the same fate as the League of Nations, which collapsed in the face of unchecked tyranny and injustices.
But the most urgent imperative is to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The international community must act under a bold, actionable plan. A neutral, UN-mandated or NATO-supported intervention force, composed of credible, non-aligned nations, must be deployed across Gaza and the occupied territories. Their mission: to protect civilians, stop settler violence, prevent atrocities, and enforce a genuine political resolution.
The long-promised two-state solution must no longer remain a slogan. It must be pursued with enforceable international guarantees that ensure peace, dignity, and security— for all.
A new world order rooted in justice is not a utopia— it is an existential necessity. One where law triumphs over lawlessness, where the weak are not trampled by the powerful, and where humanity, not hegemony, prevails. Let us not wait until the bones of Gaza’s children join the sorrowful chronicles of Srebrenica and Rwanda. Let us act— now— so that history does not condemn us as passive bystanders to yet another orchestrated massacre of innocents.
The writer is a freelance columnist
