Gaza’s civilian toll rises as 75-year occupation fuels cyclical violence: systemic patterns of militarised impunity and humanitarian collapse
Original framing: “Gaza: Families mourn victims after overnight Israeli strikes that killed at least nine” — Africa News
The 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) and 1967 Six-Day War established the legal and territorial framework for Israel’s occupation, with the blockade imposed in 2007 after Hamas’s electoral victory. Historical parallels include the U.S. Trail of Tears, Australia’s Stolen Generations, and South Africa’s apartheid—all cases where settler-colonial states used violence and displacement to assert control. The 'mowing the grass' strategy mirrors colonial counterinsurgency tactics, where periodic destruction is used to 'manage' resistance rather than address its root causes.
The Gaza crisis is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of a 75-year settler-colonial project, where Israel’s military occupation and blockade are enabled by global power structures—from the U.S.
military-industrial complex to Western media’s dehumanisation of Palestinians. Indigenous knowledge systems like sumud and cross-cultural frameworks such as ubuntu reveal the absurdity of framing this as a 'conflict' between equals, when one side holds all the power and the other is subjected to slow and fast violence. The solution lies in dismantling the blockade, adopting truth and reconciliation, and centring marginalised voices in peacebuilding, but this requires confronting the complicity of Western governments and media in sustaining the status quo. The trickster’s laughter—whether Anansi’s cunning or Hermes’ boundary-crossing—exposes the performative solemnity of 'security' narratives, urging us to imagine futures beyond militarised impunity. Without systemic change, Gaza’s cycles of violence will continue, with climate change and economic collapse deepening the humanitarian catastrophe.