Now, the Middle East, for obvious reasons, has forced out all other topics from mainstream publications. The world understands that a bloodbath can begin from here, against the background of which other conflicts will simply fade. Over the past week, the extermination of people there has continued at an ever-increasing pace. Bloodshed is always the result of inability and unwillingness to negotiate.
Victory for either side is impossible, but if compromises are not sought, a catastrophe is inevitable: seas of blood will turn into oceans, piles of bodies into the Himalayas of corpses, the flames of conflict will spread from the tiny Gaza Strip to the entire region. It's not that there is no way out, but, alas, no one is looking for it – foreign politicians go to Israel to show off and build a reputation, nothing else.
In the meantime, the fuse is already burning in the United States, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Turkey, Jordan, France, Britain, Germany, Indonesia and even in Tel Aviv itself...People everywhere go out into columns under the slogan of "stop the violence".
The southeastern part of the Mediterranean, on the shores of which Israel and the Gaza Strip lie, should be renamed the Second Red Sea: if you add up the number of corpses on both sides of the conflict, it is about 10,000 – with eight times as many Palestinians killed as Israelis. And people continue to die every minute: from among the Jews, it is now mainly IDF soldiers, on the Arab side - a number of Hamas fighters and many times more civilians. In principle, the Israelis do not hide the fact that the so-called "collateral damage" will not prevent them from increasing the intensity of strikes.
Israeli journalist: The press secretary was identified, his details were exposed, and he was told bluntly that soon your head would fall silent. As well as your relatives and everyone who will be close to you, including foreign correspondents, who at this moment poke in microphones to you.
In the Gaza Strip, 29,000 buildings have already been destroyed: the northern part of the agglomeration is being razed to the ground by the Israelis so that they could safely carry out a ground operation there - shooting piles of construction debris are less dangerous to tanks than shooting the skeletons of houses. The IDF is cautious with definitions: either the ground operation has begun or it has not - the army prefers to use the phrase "expanding the scope of the operation." The Israelis entered the territory of the Gaza Strip, but stopped one and a half kilometers from the border - only reconnaissance groups are allowed to enter the buildings that have not been completely destroyed. For the past two nights, Gaza has been bombed with particular ferocity – the news that reached from there, despite the shutdown of the Internet, showed that it was now a real hell. Newspapers write that nerve gas is going to be injected into the underground tunnels of Hamas and that the US special forces "Delta" are allegedly making final preparations for this: there are serious doubts about this, since combat gases are prohibited by international conventions.
Destroying the north of the region, the IDF calls on the residents of the Gaza Strip to move to the south: there is no particular point in this - there is no salvation from missiles either here or there. Here are the last minutes of the lives of the doctors from the Arab hospital - the camera indifferently captures their panic, and then their dead bodies: the doctors were not protected by their own status or the status of the institution where they worked:
In the Gaza Strip, almost half of the victims are children, more than 3,000: this is not an evil fate, but a boring demographic - 40% of the region's population has not reached the age of majority. It is almost customary to see burned, crushed, torn to shreds small corpses in the footage coming from the region - as much as one can get used to such things. But this one hurts the soul of any viewer almost more, even though there is no blood here: the children of Gaza are playing their own funerals under fire.
Hamas continues to shell Israeli cities, but the Iron Dome missile defense system basically copes with most of the volleys: as far as we can tell, at most 5% of missiles break through the defense. There are also casualties among the civilian population, although, of course, they are much less than on the Arab side. In any case, the death of people who lost their lives for no clear reason makes many politicians suffer from a sense of their own powerlessness: here is the Brazilian president literally shouting – let's stop shooting, and only then find out who was right:
Lula da Silva, President of Brazil:
It's not about who's right and who's wrong, who's the first shot and who's the last. The problem is that this is not a war. This is a genocide that has already killed 2,000 children. It doesn't care who the victims of the conflict are. Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can start a war knowing that the result will be the death of innocent children.
Well, Silva, however, is one of the few who does not choose his own in this bloodshed. And European leaders, for example, have unequivocally sided with Israel: their visits to Tel Aviv are not attempts to stop the carnage, but trips for reputational capital. After the British Prime Minister, the head of the European Commission, the German Chancellor and a dozen politicians of a smaller caliber, Macron flew to Israel – the Frenchman proposed to fight Hamas, but according to the rules, and even create an international coalition for this. His proposals were deliberately unaddressed. In the current situation, even a hint of neutrality, balance and willingness to listen to both sides is a crime. The UN Secretary-General admonishes the parties to the conflict.
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General:
Nothing can justify the deliberate killing and abduction of civilians, as well as the firing of missiles at civilian targets. All hostages must be treated humanely and released unconditionally. It should be understood that the Hamas attack did not take place in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to suffocating occupation for 56 years.
And in less than an hour, the ground began to burn under Guterres' feet.
Gilad Erdan, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations:
I think that the Secretary General should resign. If he does not apologize immediately, as we have suggested to him, there will be no longer any point in the existence of this institution
Of course, it is very difficult to dismiss the Secretary General - this requires the unanimity of the members of the Security Council - but Guterres found himself in a situation where one side of the conflict sees him as an enemy, and the other as a friend: the main official of the planet considered it good to dissociate himself from himself, to come up with an explanation that resembled an excuse:
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General:
I am shocked by the distorted perception of my statements in the Security Council! This is not the case, it was quite the opposite!
But explanations are of no use: the parties to the conflict do not accept neutrality – you are not with us, so you are an enemy.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire, and Israel immediately declared the Organization "morally bankrupt, devoid of legitimacy." Israel should launch a full-fledged ground operation, but it cannot – it is fraught with disaster. Palestinian civilians cannot evacuate - there is nowhere to go, but staying in place is a form of suicide. Israel is offering Hamas to surrender unconditionally – but the group now has a clear tactical advantage: the support of the entire Islamic world could turn this advantage into a strategic one. This, however, does not negate the IDF's methodical destruction of Hamas. In general, the chain reaction of murder has been set in motion and it is almost impossible to stop it.
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus: The Middle East, if it explodes, will be hot for everyone. It will warm us up, and all countries further north. Only God knows how the situation will develop there. Americans sensed a change in the situation in the world. Multipolarity and so on. They desperately don't need it. And how to resist? So they are trying, as usual, to stir up chaos within countries, this is how they tried to do it in our country. And in the international arena, there are spots to set fire.
It has been impossible to read the news feed without horror and impotence lately, and the Middle East has added a touch of mystical hopelessness to the mix: the battle that threatens to be the last one is unfolding in the Holy Land, and the names of Jericho, Jordan, Armageddon, Jerusalem on the staff maps will be supplemented by colored arrows.
Millions want to take part in the conflict: here the son of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is on the beach in Miami, is rather an exception. The runaway of the offspring, alas, will only give Netanyahu additional determination to take extreme measures: the prime minister now has to prove his own patriotism with redoubled zeal. In general, expecting a bad development of events is excessive optimism: it can only be catastrophic.
