On September 14, 2025, the world’s gaze remains fixed on Gaza, where the cost of war has reached staggering new heights and the political landscape surrounding Israel’s actions is shifting in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. The devastation, both physical and moral, is being measured not just in statistics and headlines, but in the stories of those who live—and perish—amid the rubble.
According to The Independent, Nedal Hamdouna, a Palestinian journalist, has been forced to flee his home seven times since the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza began in response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023. “We’ve criss-crossed the length and breadth of Gaza, trying to escape tanks, fighter jets, drones, and bombs,” he writes. Hamdouna recounts how he tried to shield his three-year-old daughter from the terror by framing their latest evacuation as a holiday. “She laughed and got excited for the ‘holiday’, packing her favourite knapsack that has a purple stuffed sheep on the front. ‘To the south!’ she says, doing a little dance.” Yet, beneath this moment of innocence lies “a vortex of exhaustion and fear, moving constantly, waiting for the unknown.”
Hamdouna’s account is emblematic of the new reality for Gaza’s two million residents. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take “full military control” of Gaza City. Last week, Israeli forces dropped leaflets warning that those who did not evacuate could be killed. The cost of a tent, the price of barren land to pitch it on, and the daily struggle for water and food have become the currency of survival for displaced families. As The Independent notes, the Israeli government’s refusal to allow international journalists into Gaza means that the world must rely on the voices of Palestinian reporters like Hamdouna to understand life under siege.
The numbers are almost unfathomable. As reported by Ashok Swain in his analysis, by September 14, 2025, nearly 65,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 163,000 wounded. Half a million now suffer from famine, and nearly 400 have already died from malnutrition, including 134 children. Gaza’s hospitals, homes, and schools have been reduced to rubble, and its journalists—nearly 270 of whom have been killed, all Palestinians—are among the deadliest tolls for the press in modern memory. The siege has also seen Israel bomb targets in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and, most recently, Qatar. Swain writes, “Israel now controls 75 percent of the Gaza Strip, much of it declared buffer zones or no-go areas, and is meticulously razing Gaza City ahead of a ground offensive that humanitarian agencies warn will be catastrophic.”
Despite mounting evidence of atrocities, the international response has largely been paralysis. The International Association of Genocide Scholars has declared that Israel’s war in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 Convention. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, charging them with war crimes and the weaponization of starvation. Yet, as Swain points out, “the United Nations remains paralysed, Western governments repeat bromides about Israel’s right to self-defence, and they shield Tel Aviv from accountability while arming it to the teeth.”
Western governments’ refusal to take decisive action is not due to confusion or lack of information, according to analysis from Layth Hanbali and James Smith (as reported by Mondoweiss). They argue that Western leaders act out of “imperial interests,” and that only measures such as sanctions, legal risks for officials, labor actions, and divestment campaigns will change the calculus. “No amount of convincing and irrefutable evidence of the genocide will convince Western leaders to halt support for Israel, because it isn’t in their interests. The only thing that will stop the genocide is to make it more costly than profitable,” they write.
The war’s brutality is matched by the desperation of its diplomacy. In a move widely criticized as counterproductive, Israel conducted an airstrike targeting the Hamas negotiating team in Doha, Qatar, while the team was reviewing a proposal from Donald Trump. The strike, which failed to kill the negotiators, drew disapproval from Trump himself but did little to alter the fundamental U.S. stance of support for Israel. Qatar publicly denied U.S. claims that it had been warned in advance, exposing further cracks in the narrative of coordination among allies. As Michael Arria noted, “bombing the negotiating team is the opposite of negotiating.”
The impact of these actions is being felt far beyond Gaza’s borders. In the West Bank, following a shooting in Jerusalem that killed six Israelis, Israeli analysts warned of an impending “explosion,” and Palestinians braced for the collective punishment that typically follows such incidents. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog, have faced increasing isolation in international forums—Herzog’s recent visit to the United Kingdom underscored the growing gap between Israel and world opinion. Yet, as The Independent observes, “as long as President Trump stands by Mr Netanyahu, there will be no change to the Israeli government’s disastrous policy in Gaza.”
Arab governments, once vocal in support of the Palestinian cause, have largely limited their responses to warnings about “red lines” in the West Bank, doing little to stem the carnage in Gaza. The Abraham Accords and other normalization agreements have left many Arab states entangled in strategic alliances that mute their opposition. In India, memories of colonialism sharpen solidarity with Gaza in the public sphere, but the government has abstained from UN resolutions calling for sanctions on Israel, prioritizing its own strategic interests.
Amid the horror, acts of resistance and solidarity persist. On August 31, thousands gathered at the port of Barcelona to send off the Sumud Flotilla—the largest maritime convoy yet organized to break the siege. More than 50 ships, carrying activists, doctors, clerics, and journalists from 44 countries, set sail for Gaza with food, water, and medicine. Previous flotillas have been intercepted, attacked, or boarded, but still they sail. The spirit of sumud, or steadfast perseverance, is alive even as Gaza’s children prepare for their own funerals, their dreams of school and play replaced by the grim reality of war.
Within Israel and among its supporters, the political consensus that once shielded Zionism from criticism is fracturing. As Phil Weiss wrote in Mondoweiss, “The breakdown of the mainstream consensus on Israel is an opportunity for the left, specifically anti-Zionist Jews, to get their message across. We must seize it and welcome those who are finally seeing the light.” The challenge now, he argues, is to persuade and welcome newcomers into a politics of equality, not to gatekeep.
The violence in Gaza is not just a local tragedy; it is a global indictment. As the world’s most powerful states wring their hands, history will record not only the suffering of Gaza’s people, but also the courage of those who refused to look away. The story of Gaza in 2025 is a story of devastation and despair, but also of resistance, solidarity, and the enduring hope that justice, once denied, may yet prevail.
