Has Our Death in Gaza Become This Cheap?

Has our death in Gaza become this cheap? Have our lives been reduced to passing numbers in news bulletins and painful images that flash before the eyes of the world and are then folded away by the end of the day?

In Gaza, we no longer know death in a single form. We die in all its forms and by all its tools: by missiles, bullets and bombs, by burning and drowning, by starvation and thirst, and by the blocking of medicine and treatment. Even the sand, which is supposed to be part of our land and a refuge where we bury our dead, has turned into another means of death, when entire families are buried beneath the rubble and the sand.

How long will this situation last? How long will the people of Gaza keep facing all these forms of death, while the suffering continues, the tragedies repeat, and the world is content to watch scenes of pain and destruction? And how long will Palestinian life remain too insignificant for a serious international will to move on its behalf and put an end to this tragedy?

What happened to a Palestinian family from Jabalia, displaced to Deir al-Balah in search of a safer place, only to find itself buried under the sand, is not an isolated incident or a new item added to the record of daily tragedies. It is the story of a family that fled from death to death, carrying what it could of its dreams, its children and its belongings in search of a chance to stay alive, but found no refuge to protect it on the journey of displacement.

What crime did this family commit? What crime did its children commit for their end to be beneath the sand? How can a person flee the bombing and the killing, only to find no safe place even in a tent pitched on the ground of his displacement?

Gaza no longer needs more words of sympathy, nor statements of condemnation repeated after every massacre, nor tears and sighs and promises that quickly fade. *Gaza needs real action, and a political and humanitarian will that translates words into practical steps to save what remains of its people's lives.*

Gaza needs this Israeli aggression to stop, the crossings to be opened, aid, fuel and medicine to be brought in, shelter and protection to be provided for the displaced, and its residents' right to life in dignity and safety to be guaranteed.

We are not asking for exceptional privileges, nor do we want to be an exception to the rest of the world's peoples. We only want to live as others live: to sleep without fear of a missile, to wake without searching for our martyrs under the rubble, and for our children to find a roof that protects them from the rain, food that fills their hunger, and medicine that eases their pain.

Enough death in Gaza. Enough displacement, fear, hunger and burial beneath the sand.

*We are not numbers in news bulletins, and we are not passing scenes on the world's screens.* We are human beings with a right to life, and that right needs no justification or pleading.

So how long will our death remain cheap?