The 7th of October marked the one-year anniversary since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza. Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced on Saturday that over the last year of Israeli attacks, at least 42,126 people have been killed, with 98,117 people wounded. Oxfam also recently reported that more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military than in any other recent conflict in a single year. According to the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT), 66 per cent of the total structures in Gaza have sustained damage.
In terms of recent developments, Israel began an operation in northern Gaza a week ago, pushing deeper into the Jabalia area, with Palestinian health officials putting the number killed by Israeli attacks in Jabalia at around 150 over the last week. On Friday night alone, Israeli military strikes in the area killed at least 19 Palestinians, where international relief agencies say thousands are trapped in the largest of the refugee camps. Both Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza, showing concern over shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies, especially in northern Gaza, resulting in a risk of famine.
Israel has also continued its campaign on Lebanon this week, with 22 people killed and 117 wounded in an Israeli air strike on central Beirut on Thursday, marking the third such attack on the centre of the capital since Israel escalated its bombing campaign in September. Amal Saad, an expert on Hezbollah originally from south Lebanon, warns that although the severity cannot be compared with Gaza, since what Gaza is going through is unprecedented and constitutes a genocide, it looks like Israel is adapting its tactics used in Gaza to Lebanon. Alarmingly, this week, the Israeli military fired on UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon twice in less than 48 hours, wounding four peacekeepers. On Saturday, Spokesperson for the UN interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Andrea Tenenti said Israel requested they leave their position in Lebanon, but they refused. Shortly after, UNIFIL announced unknown gunfire that hit a peacekeeper, marking the fifth wounded, and Tenenti said he feared that Israeli escalation against Hezbollah could soon spiral out of control, warning of the situation turning into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone. In the statement, Tenenti called for a diplomatic solution. Also on Saturday, the Israeli army threatened to hit ambulances in southern Lebanon, claiming misuse by Hezbollah and ordering residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River.
In response to Israel’s actions this week, there has been a significant response by the international community. The African Union, along with 104 UN member states, reaffirmed full support of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after Israel declared Guterres persona non grata following his demand for an immediate de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East. Additionally, in a symbolic move, the Nicaraguan government announced it would break diplomatic ties with Israel, and Norway condemned Israel for brutal warfare, accusing it of violating the rules of war. On the flip side, U.S. officials have changed their tune concerning Lebanon, dropping their calls for a ceasefire despite analysts warning that the conflict greatly increases the risk of a broader war and growing fears that Lebanon will become another Gaza.
An area receiving less international attention is Syria, where an air attack killed 13 people in Damascus on Tuesday evening, with Syrian officials laying blame on Israel. Israel has not taken credit for every attack but has admitted to carrying out hundreds of raids on targets in Syria over the last year. According to NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Israel has bombed Syria over 255 times since the 7th of October 2023, with at least 365 people killed.
Another ongoing crisis is this fall’s tropical storm season. This week, hurricane Milton grew from category one to category five in less than 24 hours, making it one of the most rapidly strengthening storms recorded. On Monday, Milton grazed the Yucatan Peninsula as a category 4, with Mexico’s meteorology service reporting up to 150 mm of heavy rain and winds reaching 200 km/h. Governor Joaquin Diaz Mena of Yucatan state said damage so far was minor, but thousands of utility customers lost power.
Moving towards the U.S., Milton made landfall on Wednesday as a category three storm at 20:30 near Siesta Key, Florida. At least 17 people are confirmed dead, including at least five, due to tornadoes in St. Lucie County, and the rainfall following it over the Tampa Bay area qualified as a 1 in 1000 year rainfall event. The storm brought a storm surge of 8-10 feet in Sarasota county and extensive flooding and property damage across Florida, also hitting some areas previously affected by Hurricane Helene last month. Judson Jones, meteorologist and reporter for the New York Times, noted that although it is not unusual for hurricanes to produce tornadoes, those accompanying Milton were more intense than usual, with the National Weather Service issuing over 100 tornado warnings on Wednesday. A strange and ongoing aspect of Milton and Helene’s news journeys is that an increase in misinformation has followed them. In the wake of Milton, meteorologists tracking the storm have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that have taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, with people not only claiming that meteorologists created and steered the hurricane but that they should be killed.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, remnants of Hurricane Kirk reached Europe on Wednesday, tearing up trees in Portugal and Spain before causing heavy rain in France, resulting in the death of one sailor in Sete, where the storm surge overturned three boats. According to Climameter, Kirk’s power was exacerbated through the contributions of both human-driven climate change and natural variability, with Climameter classifying it as a “somewhat” uncommon event. On Saturday, parts of France were still cut off from electricity while floodwaters in Paris and Versailles were expected to peak.
Further south in the Sahara, images and footage have surfaced of the first floods in the Sahara in half a century, which prevailed after over a year’s worth of rain fell in south-east Morocco in two days. The rain came back in September, which caused a deluge in Morocco and claimed 18 lives last month, with the impact reaching regions affected by an earthquake last year.
Keeping in mind the effects of climate change on recent weather events and climate patterns, an alarming report from the World Wildlife Fund was released on Thursday on the state of the climate crisis. The report warns that we are reaching a global tipping point, highlights that we are falling short of our global goals and that current national climate commitments would lead to an average global temperature increase approaching 3°C by the end of the century, inevitably triggering multiple catastrophic tipping points. It claims that over half of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for 2030 will be missed as things stand. In response to this, the WWF calls for a coordinated, inclusive approach, which may aid in avoiding conflict, as well as minimising and managing trade-offs.
In a world seemingly simultaneously on fire and underwater, it is difficult not to lose hope. However, although the climate clock gives us less than five years to take action on climate change, it is worth remembering Greta Thunberg’s sentiment that it is never too late to do as much as we can. Giving up could be the worst thing to do. In the summer of 2023, writer Rebecca Solnit expressed her view that the general public regards climate change with a strange combination of confidence and defeatism, while reputable scientists are certain that something can be done, giving the example that scientists who study renewable energy agree that it can be achieved. She asserts that climate doomers seem to be replacing deniers but that putting this defeatist rhetoric out into the world discourages action. She speculates that if we were to lose the climate battle, such defeatism, especially among the comfortable in the global north, would likely have no small part in this, while people in directly affected communities fight for survival. In closing, Solnit asserts that fighting defeatism is integral climate work.
It is wise to remember Amal Saad’s point of view on Gaza, namely that it is not comparable to current Lebanon since it is historically unprecedented and constitutes a genocide. It is equally wise not to attempt comparison to other crises, such as the world climate crisis spoken of in Solnit’s article. Still, something of the perspective that Solnit’s article exemplifies is reflected in how the public worldwide continues to fight for Gaza’s freedom: people seem to know that defeatism serves nobody when it comes to freeing Gaza and that change can only be achieved with action. And people continue to take action through protest. Though it is not a complete list, ProtectPalestine’s crowdsourced list of protests shows that 180 Palestine protest events have taken place since Sunday last week, and there is no sign of them stopping anytime soon.
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