Israel has unleashed another round of destruction and suffering on the Gaza Strip, even more ferocious than its 2008–9 invasion. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have yet again been displaced, over 1,817 have been killed and 7,553 injured (mostly civilians), thousands of buildings have been fully or partially destroyed (including numerous mosques, schools, and hospitals directly targeted).

Neighborhoods in Shujai’yya and Khuza’a have been leveled and turned into piles of concrete and mangled iron. Witness accounts tell of whole families wiped out, collective assassinations, endless shooting at unarmed civilians, and around 430 children killed. There is no safe place in the Strip — not even UN schools turned into shelters that house well over 220,000 internally displaced Palestinians. After eight years of siege and blockade, forty-seven years of occupation, and sixty-six years of national dispossession, 1.8 million Gazans have been living in fear and terror for nearly a month now. The strongest army in the region is again bombarding its long-suffering population.

The cost to Israel has been mainly military: sixty-four invading soldiers killed and more injured. There have also been three civilian deaths from thousands of homemade Qassam rockets and mortars fired into Israel, many intercepted by the American-funded Iron Dome missile system. Many residents of Israel’s southern towns (where state-provided shelters are prevalent) have left to unaffected or safer areas.