Gaza: The War the World Watched Live
Gaza
The War the World Watched Live
Gaza is 365 square kilometers. It is home to 2.3 million people — one of the most densely populated places on earth. Since October 7, 2023, it has been the site of a military campaign that has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, displaced virtually the entire population, and reduced much of its infrastructure to rubble. It has been livestreamed. It has been documented in real time by journalists, doctors, and civilians with phones. And the governments with the power to stop it have largely chosen not to. This page exists because silence, when it is chosen, is a position.
The Historical Root: Partition & Displacement
The modern conflict in Gaza cannot be understood without 1948 — the year Palestinians call the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.” Following the end of the British Mandate in Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes. Villages were destroyed. Families were separated across borders that did not exist the year before. The Palestinian people became, overnight, one of the largest stateless refugee populations in the world.
The British Mandate itself — the framework that governed Palestine from 1920 to 1948 — was a product of the same colonial logic that carved up Africa: a European power administering a non-European people’s land, making promises to multiple parties it could not keep, and departing without accountability for the consequences. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, was written without the consent of the Arab majority who lived there. The pattern is familiar.
Gaza has been under Israeli blockade since 2007 — restricting the movement of people, goods, food, medicine, and building materials. The UN has described the blockade as collective punishment. Before October 2023, Gaza’s unemployment rate was over 45%. Over 80% of its population depended on humanitarian aid.
October 7, 2023 & What Followed
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack from Gaza into southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people — civilians and soldiers — and taking around 250 hostages. It was the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. The violence was real, documented, and indefensible.
Israel’s military response has been one of the most intense bombardment campaigns in modern history. Within the first year, over 41,000 Palestinians were killed — the majority women and children. By May 2026, the death toll has surpassed 50,000, with tens of thousands more buried under rubble and unaccounted for. The entire population of Gaza — 2.3 million people — has been displaced at least once. Most have been displaced multiple times, ordered to evacuate to areas that were subsequently bombed.
As of May 2026: Gaza’s healthcare system has been almost entirely destroyed. Over 200 aid workers have been killed, including staff from World Central Kitchen and UNRWA. Famine conditions have been declared in northern Gaza. A ceasefire agreement reached in early 2025 collapsed. Fighting has resumed. The hostage situation remains unresolved.
The Role of Global Power
The United States has provided Israel with over $3.8 billion in military aid annually for decades. Since October 2023, emergency military packages have added tens of billions more — including precision bombs, artillery shells, and aircraft. The US has vetoed multiple UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions. The UK, Germany, and other Western nations have continued arms transfers at various points during the conflict.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in January 2024 that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and ordered provisional measures to protect Palestinian civilians. The ruling was not enforced. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Several Western nations refused to commit to arresting them.
This is the architecture of global power laid bare: institutions exist, laws exist, courts exist — but enforcement depends on political will, and political will depends on whose lives are considered worth protecting. The same nations that invoked international law to respond to the invasion of Ukraine have applied a different standard in Gaza. That inconsistency is not lost on the Global South. It is not lost on Africa. It is not lost on us.
The Connection to Africa
Gaza is not an African conflict. But it is an African concern — because the logic that enables it is the same logic that has governed Africa’s relationship with the world’s powerful nations for centuries. Colonial partition. Displacement without accountability. Resources and strategic interests prioritized over human lives. International institutions that function selectively. The dehumanization of a people as a precondition for their dispossession.
South Africa — a nation that knows genocide and apartheid from the inside — brought the case against Israel to the ICJ. It was not acting alone. It was acting on behalf of a Global South that has watched the rules-based international order be applied unevenly for generations. When South Africa stood before the court, it stood in a tradition that includes every African nation that has demanded to be treated as fully human by a world that has not always agreed.
Key Facts
- The Nakba (1948): 700,000+ Palestinians displaced. Hundreds of villages destroyed.
- Gaza has been under blockade since 2007. Pre-war unemployment: 45%+. 80% aid-dependent.
- October 7, 2023: Hamas attack killed ~1,200 Israelis. ~250 taken hostage.
- Israeli military response: 50,000+ Palestinians killed as of May 2026. Majority women and children.
- Entire population of Gaza (2.3 million) displaced. Most displaced multiple times.
- Gaza’s healthcare system near-totally destroyed. Famine declared in northern Gaza.
- ICJ ruled genocide plausible in January 2024. ICC issued arrest warrants in November 2024.
- The US has vetoed multiple UN ceasefire resolutions.
- South Africa brought the genocide case to the ICJ — the first nation to do so.
- As of May 2026: no durable ceasefire. Hostages remain. Reconstruction has not begun.
NZETE: The Beacon
NZETE is an African brand. Gaza is not Africa. But we include this page because we believe in a simple principle: the value of a human life does not change based on where it was born, what language it speaks, or whose strategic interests it serves. The Palestinian people are not a political position. They are people — with names, families, histories, and futures that are being extinguished while the world debates the language of condemnation.
We also include this page because the forces that have kept Africa fragmented, exploited, and silenced are the same forces that determine whose suffering receives a response and whose does not. Understanding Gaza is part of understanding the world that Africa must navigate — and ultimately transform.
We stand with every people who has been told their lives matter less. That is not a political statement. It is a human one. And NZETE will always be on the side of the human.
Sources: UNHCR, UNRWA, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, UN OCHA, B’Tselem, Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters. Last reviewed: May 2026.