Tuesday, 28 January 2025

The Palestinian tragedy of returning home to a pile of rubble

For thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, returning home during the ceaefire has meant going back to a heap of rubble. Their homes have been bombed to bits and what possessions they couldn't carry with them to refugee camps have been obliterated, too. What a terrible world Gaza now is, row upon row of destroyed homes. Israel has always said that it took every precaution to limit civilian deaths and destroy only what belonged to Hamas. But, despite what is often claimed by military tech people, there is no such thing as a perfectly accurate bomb. Yes, you can send a missile through an open window and kill a terrorist leader having his breakfast. But bombing from the air, even with precision weapons, generally cannot avoid much wider devastation because of the blast effect. So, there may have been Hamas fighters at Number 45 but at Number 44 and 46, the blast will destroy and kill. The sight of thousands of Palestinians returning to northern Gaza and finding nothing left of their homes is beyond tragic. Trump wants a large proportion of Palestinians to be housed in Jordan and Egypt, presumably while the bulldozers go in to level the destroyed homes for rebuilding to begin. But this will take years. What will their lives be like over the next few years? And who is going to pay for the reconstruction? I can't see Trump agreeing to pay.

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