Humanitarian cease-fire needed to end 'collective punishment' of civilians in Gaza: China Daily editorial

How many civilian deaths will it take till the international community agrees to take the concerted actions necessary to prevent the ongoing human tragedy in Gaza from escalating further?

The United Nations adopted a nonbinding resolution that its General Assembly approved on Friday, calling for a "humanitarian truce" between Israel and Palestine.

The UN's first response to the Israel-Palestine conflict comes as the crisis in Gaza has entered its fourth week. Israeli strikes have since killed more than 8,000 people in Gaza, mainly civilians, with many of them being children. International charity Save the Children said on Sunday that the number of children killed in Gaza since Oct 7, which it put at around 3,200, has exceeded the number of children killed in armed conflicts every year globally since 2019.

Soon after Israel pledged it would eliminate Hamas, which has also taken Israelis and foreigners captive, it cut off the supply of electricity, food and water to the Palestinian territory, and announced the start of a ground offensive. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has warned there is the fear of thousands more civilians dying if Israel presses ahead with its ground offensive in Gaza.

A cease-fire is the only way to ensure that no more civilian lives are lost.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, "the laws of war establish clear rules to protect human life and respect humanitarian concerns. Those laws cannot be contorted for the sake of expedience."

Yet despite the international appeal for the protection of civilians, Israel has intensified its air and ground operations in Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing on Saturday a "second stage" in the war.

This means the international call for protection of civilians could risk turning into empty words, as it is generally impossible to distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians during any military action in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Moreover, continuous military conflict will prevent the desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, fuel, water and medicine, from reaching the more than 2 million people besieged in the Palestinian territory, which may make a greater "humanitarian catastrophe" inevitable.

The situation in Gaza is already "growing more desperate by the hour", as Guterres put it, with signs that civil order is starting to break down. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said, "Israel's actions have gone beyond self-defense", it should stop its "collective punishment" of Gaza's civilians.

It will be an indelible stain on the moral fiber of the international community if the deaths and injuries of civilians continue to surge due to its failure to do anything to stop the tragedy from unfolding in front of its eyes.