Gaza's Perennial Violence
France 24 reports new Israeli airstrikes have killed at least a dozen people in Gaza, framing these events as 'fresh violence' in a volatile region. This narrative, commonly echoed across Western media, presents each incident in a vacuum, detached from the broader historical and geopolitical forces at play, failing to ask why such strikes are a near-constant. What goes unmentioned is that these
'strikes' are but one component of a 17-year blockade. Since 2007, 2.3 million Palestinians have lived under an aerial, naval, and land siege, turning Gaza into what many human rights organizations, including the UN, have called an 'open-air prison.' This sustained pressure has crippled infrastructure, decimated the economy, and created a humanitarian crisis where 80% of the population relies on
aid, a statistic rarely highlighted when individual casualties are reported. The deliberate targeting of civilian areas and infrastructure is not random; it has a clear, documented purpose. The Israeli government's Dahiya Doctrine, codified in 2006, explicitly advocates for disproportionate force against civilian targets to deter future resistance, a strategy condemned by international legal
scholars. This institutionalized doctrine, echoing the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres where Ariel Sharon was found responsible for failing to prevent the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians, illustrates a long-standing pattern of collective punishment. Thus, these 'new strikes' are not anomalous events but predictable outcomes within a strategic framework designed to maintain dominance