We, who watch Gaza, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

“If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”– African proverb.

A new milestone has just been reached by the tragedy the world has watched unfold for almost two years now. A United Nations agency has confirmed the existence of hunger, mass starvation and famine engineered by Israel in Gaza on a scale that confounds even the most hardened observer. Actually the world had known of the near-certainty of this stage in this conflict, and it knows with even greater certainty that Israel will take what it will as it wills. Israel is beyond restraint.

Gaza cannot be saved by a world that had long surrendered it to Israel. Everyone has taken sides, most with the impunity of Israel, many with fear of speaking up against one of the most heinous crimes against humanity, and a few like our country because we have lost the  courage and the self-respect to say what is right and wrong. As the world watches, children and adults will die from famine in a world that does not care enough to get them fed. Millions of Nigerians are pained by events in Gaza, but our leaders say it is not our business. So, we have to watch as our humanity bleeds.

 We know what happened on October 7, 2023. The world knew about the outrage caused by Hamas fighters who committed murders, kidnappings and other atrocities against Israelis. The world knows this was another chapter in the terrible history of Israel and its neighbours, particularly Palestinians whose lands were  taken over to give Jewish people a place they claim was promised them by God. The world was primed for another conflict that was to take many victims, majority of whom are only guilty of being Palestinians or Israelis. This particular round has taken a large number of casualties.

 The first was the disputed trigger to the most heartless conflict since the wars of 1939 to 1945. Should the trigger be located at the confiscation and gradual annexation of Palestinian lands by Israel and its powerful supporter nations in 1949, or the attack on unarmed Israeli civilians by Hamas fighters at a social event in Israel? Another casualty was the perception that Israel could be restrained from committing  wrongs in the manner it sought revenge and the freedom of its citizens. Another was the massive injury to world conscience when Israel tore into Gaza and committed every crime in the books of the international community. Half of the world attempted to shut the entire conflict out of its existence. It does not hear that Gaza is in the midst of the worst man-made famine. The other half rose in condemnation by demanding the implementation of a two-state solution, a token gesture that will only be relevant if it stops Israel from occupying most of Gaza after leveling life and living in it. It will not. Israel and its main backer, the US, are bent on extinguishing all and any form of resistance in the Middle East, and eliminating Palestinian resistance entirely, at all cost.

 This is the same world that watches a frenzy of political and diplomatic drama to give US President Donald Trump an advantage to get the Nobel Peace Prize over the Ukraine-Russian war and the bombing of Iranian bomb infrastructure. Ukraine is European and mostly Christian. Palestine, just as  Iran, Syria and the entire Middle East, is Arab and Muslim. Other Arab and Muslim countries had submitted to US dominance and the fear of Israel. They are content with glimpses  as facilitators when one of them needs to be prepared for slaughter. The UN rants and raves over violations and breaches of hitherto hallowed provisions. Other international organisations wring their hands over their helplessness to bring relief to millions who need it. It is finally registering to the global community that humanitarian assistance is limited by two obstacles: not all humans are entitled to assistance; and it can be made the most potent weapon at will by  powerful nations and interests. Crimes against humanity are meant for small-time dictators in banana republics. The world has never been so cleanly divided between, to paraphrase Thucydides, where powerful nations do what they can and the weak suffer as they must.

 If Nigeria cares about its standing in the global community beyond marshaling strong arguments to borrow more money, it should have been with South Africa and a handful of other countries who have risked taking principled positions on Gaza. To be fair, we have made a statement or two on the need to respect rules of conflict and the need for restraint in the manner the Israeli-Gaza conflict is breaching basic assumptions about humanity as a whole.

Beyond this, we have been content to be anything between a liability on justice and active collaborators at a time when neutrality is criminal fiction. We now have to do more than that. We are a country of Muslims and Christians. Our faiths say the same things about justice and standing up for what is right. Our country can make a difference, if our leaders find the courage to represent us well on Gaza. No one sits on the fence in this conflict, but you can hide behind it. That is where we are now. We should demand that Israel stops its systematic annihilation of the people of Gaza and annexation of all their land it had destroyed.

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