The Guardian view on Gaza’s suffering: a deepening disaster should not be treated as inevitable | Editorial

The new year has commenced as bleakly as the last one concluded in Gaza. As December came to an end, the UN announced that the healthcare system was on the brink of outright collapse due to Israel’s attacks. Within days of the new year beginning, an official with Unrwa warned that social order will collapse if Israel ends all cooperation with the aid agency for Palestinians later this month, as scheduled. In between, scores of people were killed in intensified Israeli strikes, including in an area designated as a safe zone. Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday that at least 45,854 have now died there in the 15 months since the Hamas attacks in southern Israel.

The crisis is so familiar and relentless now that international attention has flagged. And yet it is so desperate that the facts must be reiterated. At least seven infants have died from the cold in recent weeks. Almost the entire 1.9m population has been displaced, in most cases repeatedly. They are exhausted and traumatised. An estimated 91% face high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.

There are reports that Israel is considering limiting humanitarian aid after Donald Trump’s inauguration. But it already falls vastly and devastatingly short of the level needed. According to the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, only 2,205 aid trucks entered Gaza in December; Israel says that the number was over 5,000 trucks. Before the war, when needs were far lower, around 15,000 entered monthly. Oxfam says only 12 aid trucks managed to distribute aid to starving civilians in northern Gaza from October to late December. The Biden administration has concluded that Israel is not blocking aid and plans a further $8bn arms sale.

Amid such suffering, and given the many previous false dawns, few place much faith in suggestions that a ceasefire and the release of hostages could be edging closer. At best it would be a partial deal: discussion has centred on 34 hostages on a “humanitarian list” of women, children and the elderly, though no one knows how many have been killed already. As families of the others are well aware, their release would relieve most of what political pressure Benjamin Netanyahu feels to effect their return. But the Israeli prime minister is in any case less than a fortnight away from the embrace of a second Trump administration. Hamas has reiterated that it will not release anyone unless Israel commits to a full end to the war.

Should a ceasefire be declared, the odds of it enduring look poor. Mr Netanyahu’s vision of endless war sees Israel ready to resume its battle in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, intensify strikes on the Houthis in Yemen or perhaps venture further afield, in strikes on Iran or conflict with Turkey. He has not laid out a vision for the “day after” in Gaza. The “generals’ plan” – laying siege to the north and treating all those who don’t or cannot leave as combatants, depopulating it – was officially repudiated. But many Palestinians and other observers believe it is being enacted on the ground.

Even an immediate and lasting peace would not halt the civilian deaths in Gaza. The needs are too immense and the ability to meet them shattered. But the full release of hostages, a lasting ceasefire and a dramatic surge in aid, delivered through the existing mechanisms, remain the minimum required and offer the only hope for 2025 and the years to come.

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