The death toll is inching closer to 70,000 in total from both sides as the war between Hamas and Israel clocked its second anniversary this Tuesday.
At the moment, indirect talks between the fueding parties is ongoing in Egypt as part of ways to implement United States President, Donald Trump’s Gaza Plan.
Bombs, rockets and missiles are however still hitting various locations in Gaza, especially the central part of the enclave which Israel has called the last stronghold of Hamas.
At the site of the Nova Music festival in southern Israel, flowers and candles flooded memorials, as families of the over 500 young Israelis killed there mourn.
In all, over 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7, 2023 with at least 250 others taken captive into Gaza by Hamas.
At the Festival grounds and several parts of Israel, other mourners gathered, hopefully awaiting the return of those still held captive by Hamas since that Saturday morning.
Palestinian civilians are the hardest hit by the military operations subsequently embarked upon by the Israeli government in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks.
No fewer than 18,000 children are among the estimated 67,000 killed, according to the Health authorities in Gaza.
The enclave has been flattened with at least 2 million Palestinians displaced and suffering what has been described as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the 21st century, comparable only to the situation in Sudan and Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Only 2 weeks ago at the just-ended United Nations General Assembly in New York., the situation in Gaza, dominated the speeches of world leaders.
Almost all who mounted the rostrum sued for peace and a halt to hostilities in the region.
Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu, whose National Statement was read by Vice President Kashim Shettima, echoed this in his 21-minute speech.
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“We do not believe that the sanctity of human life should be trapped in the corridors of endless debate. That is why we say, without stuttering and without doubt, that a 2-State solution remains the most dignified path to lasting peace for the people of Palestine”, he said.
The Nigerian President who had tasked the UN to ensure it secures its continued relevance added,
“We come not as partisans, but as peacemakers. We come as brothers and sisters of a shared world, a world that must never reduce the right to live into the currency of devious politics. The people of Palestine are not collateral damage in a civilisation searching for order.
They are human beings, equal in worth, entitled to the same freedoms and dignities that the rest of us take for granted.”
US President, Donald Trump who had addressed the General Assembly on the 1st day of the debates later unveiled his 20-point peace plan for Gaza.
How to implement the sticking points remains the knotting issue as there are those on both the Hamas and Israeli sides who want the war to continue.
Diplomatic experts have noted that there are Hamas military commanders still in Gaza prepared to fight to the death, while on the side of the Israelis, Netanyahu’s coalition has ultra nationalists whose dream of possessing all the land as their ancestral heritage.
The Israeli Prime Minister himself has repeatedly said the Palestinians will never get a State, placing the 2-State Solution agreed to some 21 years ago, to be another story.
With the Trump Peace Plan implementation underway, the world watches on how the longest conflict in the Middle East will be resolved.
(Editor: Ken Eseni)
