In his harrowing report from Gaza, our reporter Donald Macintyre tells the story of Mohammed Badran, a ten-year-old-boy whose family was killed in an Israeli air strike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Mohammed survived but was blinded in the attack, probably by flying shrapnel, which is maiming and killing so many. Confused by what was happening around him when he arrived at al-Shifa Hospital, the boy kept asking staff, “Why have you switched the lights off?” A bereaved and blinded boy asking for the lights to be turned on in a suddenly darkened world: the cruelty and arbitrariness of his suffering is like something from an ancient parable.
More than 1,850 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since Israel responded to Hamas rocket fire by launching a series of air strikes on Gaza in which hospitals, mosques and even UN schools sheltering displaced civilians have been deemed legitimate targets. In addition, Israel launched a land invasion of the blighted strip on 17 July, the purpose of which, it said, was to destroy the network of tunnels that had been dug deep beneath Gaza and through which Hamas militants could enter Israel to launch terror attacks.
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