While global attention is fixated on the conflict between Israel and Iran, Palestinians continue to suffer escalating violence from Israeli forces across the occupied territories. The world may have stopped watching, but for Palestinians, the war has never ended.
In early June, a seven-month-old Palestinian baby named Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was shot in the face by Israeli soldiers and killed near Hebron in the West Bank. Yet most people in the West, even those who follow international news, are almost entirely unaware of this story. Western media rarely mention villages like Sinjil in the West Bank, where residents are surrounded by barbed wire fences and barred from accessing their own land.
Since the cease-fire went into effect last October, Israeli violations have occurred almost daily. By spring this year, over 2,000 violations had been recorded, leaving at least 981 Palestinians dead, including many children. The killings continue, buildings still collapse, snipers and drones remain poised. Famine persists, as humanitarian aid is treated like a calculation: the less goods allowed in, the better, and the slower, the better.
By mid-March, when the world’s focus shifted to Iran, the Israeli military sent maps to aid organizations showing it had extended its control by 11% beyond the gold line—from 53% of Gaza’s area to 64%. By the end of May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the army controlled 60% of the territory and ordered an expansion to 70%, while crowds chanted for 100%. Palestinians now cannot access roughly two-thirds of their own land, including nearly all agricultural areas east of the gold line.
In southern Lebanon, a similar plight unfolds. Evacuation orders force people to leave everything south of the Litani River. Over 1.2 million people have been displaced. Hospitals and ambulances come under attack. Land is burned with white phosphorus. When displaced families try to walk home against Israeli instructions, they are treated as a threat.
No agreement with Iran can be considered an 'end to the war' in the region while Palestinian land continues to be seized, Gaza remains starved, and the West Bank is carved up by soldiers, settlers, checkpoints, and barbed wire. Palestine is where this war begins again and again: where cease-fire becomes another name for control, where famine becomes policy, where a baby shot in the face becomes a footnote.
Sam Abu Haikal was buried wrapped in the Palestinian flag, carried in his father's arms, carrying all the innocent dreams that died with him. Oblivion, and the forgotten, is Israel's final weapon.
