Cartoon by Simon Farr.
The rains of death continue to fall in Gaza. And silently, the world watches. And silently, governments plotted: how shall we make the thunder and clouds rain death on to Gaza?It will all seem, at the end of the day, that this is somehow a response to something: rockets; broken truces; irreconcilability ...
It is as though the situation were not only acceptable, but normal in the period prior to it all. As though a calm that provides no relief – political, economic, or otherwise – for Gaza's stateless, occupied, besieged Palestinians were tenable. As though settlements did not continue to expand; walls did not continue to extend and choke lands and lives; families and friends were not dislocated; life was not paralysed; people were not exterminated; borders were not sealed and food and light and fuel were in fair supply.
But it is the prisoners' burden to bear: they broke the conditions of their incarceration. Nevertheless, there are concerns for the "humanitarian situation": as long as they do not starve …
The warden improves the living conditions now and then, in varying degrees of relativity, but the prison doors remain sealed. And so when there are 20 hours of power outages in a row, the prisoners wish that they were only eight; or 10; and dream of the days of four.
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