We all want the horror in Gaza to end. But the reality is harsher than we are willing to admit: it has not ended. It has been pushed into the shadows.
TODAY, the world’s gaze is fixed on the escalating confrontation involving Iran, the United States, and Israel. Missiles, retaliation, and the spectre of regional war dominate headlines. Yet, beneath this spectacle, another crisis deepens – less visible, less reported, but no less devastating.
Gaza is being starved, not in isolation, but in the cover provided by a wider war. This is not conjecture. Analysts and humanitarian observers have already warned that the Iran war has shifted global attention away from Gaza, allowing Israel greater operational and political space to intensify its actions. The consequences are immediate and severe: border crossings have been restricted, aid deliveries curtailed, and the fragile lifelines sustaining Gaza’s population have been further weakened.
War, in this sense, is not only fought with bombs. It is also fought through distraction.
The Politics of Distraction
Every major conflict produces a hierarchy of attention. Some crises dominate the global stage; others are relegated to its margins.
The war with Iran has done precisely this – it has reordered global concern. Diplomatic energy has shifted. Media bandwidth has narrowed. Public outrage, once focused on Gaza’s devastation, has been diluted. Even humanitarian advocacy struggles to break through the noise of a larger, more geopolitically “significant” war. This shift is not neutral. It has consequences on the ground. When scrutiny diminishes, impunity expands.
The reduction of international pressure creates a permissive environment—one in which policies that might otherwise provoke outrage can proceed with minimal resistance. In Gaza, this has translated into tighter restrictions on aid, reduced humanitarian access, and worsening conditions for an already besieged population. The logic is brutally simple: what the world does not see, it does not stop.
Starvation as Strategy
The humanitarian situation in Gaza was already catastrophic. Now, it is entering an even more dangerous phase. More than 100,000 children face acute malnutrition. But this statistic, stark as it is, does not fully capture the violence of what is unfolding. Acute malnutrition is not merely hunger – it is the systematic breakdown of the human body. Fat reserves are consumed, muscles deteriorate, immune systems collapse, and, ultimately, vital organs fail.
This is not an unintended by-product of war. It is the result of policies that restrict food, fuel, and medical supplies. Since the escalation with Iran, crossings into Gaza have been repeatedly closed or severely limited, disrupting the flow of essential goods. The impact is immediate: shortages intensify, prices rise, and humanitarian agencies struggle to maintain even minimal levels of support. In such conditions, aid itself becomes precarious—subject to political calculation and military priorities. Starvation, therefore, becomes a tool.
The Destruction of Self-Sufficiency
To understand the depth of Gaza’s crisis, one must look beyond aid and examine the destruction of its internal capacity to survive.
Over 86 percent of Gaza’s farmland has been damaged or destroyed. Irrigation systems lie in ruins. Water wells are unusable. Greenhouses have been flattened. The infrastructure that once allowed Gaza to produce its own food has been systematically dismantled. This is not incidental damage. It is structural.
A population that cannot feed itself becomes dependent. And dependency is not merely an economic condition- it is a political one. It places survival itself under external control. In this context, the Iran war amplifies an already existing dynamic. By diverting attention and reducing scrutiny, it allows the continuation—and deepening—of policies that entrench this dependency.
War as Cover
History offers countless examples of how larger conflicts create cover for actions elsewhere. The present moment is no different.
As missiles fly between Israel and Iran, Gaza recedes from the centre of international concern. The urgency that once drove calls for ceasefire, humanitarian access, and accountability is replaced by the immediacy of a new war.
This is not to suggest that the Iran conflict is fabricated or insignificant. It is real, dangerous, and regionally destabilizing. But its political effect is unmistakable: it reshapes priorities. And in that reshaping, Gaza is pushed further into invisibility.
Even the language of diplomacy reflects this shift. Proposals framed as regional stabilization – often associated with figures such as Donald Trump – risk subsuming Gaza within broader geopolitical calculations. In such frameworks, Palestinian rights are not central; they are negotiable. The danger is clear: Gaza becomes a bargaining chip in a larger game.
The Illusion of Humanitarianism
In response to Gaza’s suffering, the international community often turns to humanitarian aid. While necessary, this response is fundamentally limited. Aid can alleviate immediate suffering, but it does not address the structures that produce that suffering. When the flow of aid itself is controlled, restricted, or weaponised, it becomes part of the problem.
The Iran war exacerbates this limitation. With resources, attention, and political will redirected, humanitarian efforts in Gaza face additional constraints. Funding becomes uncertain. Access becomes more difficult. The already fragile system of support begins to fracture. In such a context, humanitarianism risks becoming a substitute for justice—a way of managing crisis without confronting its causes.
Resistance in the Ruins
Yet, even in these conditions, Gaza is not passive. Across the territory, farmers and community groups are attempting to rebuild what has been destroyed. With minimal resources, they are repairing irrigation lines, restoring wells, and cultivating small plots of land. Greenhouses are being reconstructed. Crops are being grown.
These efforts are fragile and limited. They cannot compensate for the scale of destruction. But they represent something vital: the refusal to surrender to imposed dependency. To grow food in Gaza today is not merely an economic activity. It is a political act. It asserts the right to live with dignity. It challenges the structures that seek to reduce a population to perpetual reliance on aid. It insists that survival must not be dictated by external control.
A Crisis of Conscience
The question that emerges is not only political, but one of justice.
What does it mean for the world to watch one war while another continues in its shadow? What does it mean for attention to shift, for outrage to dissipate, for suffering to become background noise? The answer is uncomfortable. It means that global concern is not evenly distributed. It means that some lives are rendered more visible -and therefore more valuable – than others. It means that silence, even when unintended, becomes complicity.
Gaza today is not only a site of humanitarian crisis. It is a test of whether the international community can hold multiple truths at once—whether it can recognise that a new war does not erase an ongoing one.
Beyond the Shadow
Gaza cannot be allowed to disappear into the margins of a larger conflict. The war with Iran may dominate headlines, but it must not obscure the realities on the ground in Gaza. The restriction of aid, the destruction of infrastructure, and the use of starvation as a weapon demand continued attention and accountability. To see Gaza clearly requires resisting the logic of distraction.
It requires insisting that no war, however large, justifies the neglect of another. It requires recognising that the suffering in Gaza is not an isolated tragedy, but part of a broader system of power and control. Above all, it requires a refusal to accept that some crises matter more than others. Because in Gaza, even now, life continues under conditions designed to extinguish it. And in the shadow of war, that struggle becomes even harder to see – and even more urgent to confront.
__________
Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
