Gaza has already been turned into the most dangerous place in the world for civilians. Hospitals have been bombed, aid convoys attacked, refugee camps flattened, and families starved into desperation. By any measure, this is the worst war on civilians in modern memory. Humanitarian agencies describe conditions as catastrophic, with the UN officially confirming famine. The World Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, and Oxfam have all repeatedly condemned the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and the systematic starvation of over two million people.
Now, the Israeli government has declared Gaza City a "dangerous combat zone." This is a political decree that strips a million civilians of their final protections under international law. It means every home, every hospital, every starving child can now be labeled a target. It is genocide by bureaucracy, announced in daylight.
Declaring an entire city a combat zone is not a neutral description of battlefield conditions. It is a weaponized euphemism designed to erase civilian status. In one stroke, Israel has attempted to void the very principle of civilian immunity at the heart of humanitarian law. International conventions are clear: you cannot declare away the existence of civilians. Doing so is itself a war crime.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly warned that international humanitarian law obliges warring parties to distinguish between civilians and combatants at all times. By treating an entire urban population as combatants, Israel is openly rejecting one of the most fundamental principles of law established after the horrors of the Second World War.
The war against civilians is already in full swing in Gaza, as we have all seen on our screens, Israel has implemented a strategy of war crime on the people of Palestine, including, but not limited to:
Starvation as policy: UN agencies confirm famine, with over half a million people in catastrophic hunger. Parents are feeding their children leaves, animal fodder, and inedible roots to keep them alive.
Collapse of health care: Hospitals are bombed, abandoned, or overwhelmed. Surgeons operate without anesthesia. Cancer patients go untreated. Children die from dehydration and infection because there is no medicine.
Children deliberately endangered: Gaza has become the most dangerous place on earth to be a child. UNICEF has stated that no conflict in modern memory has killed children at such a scale and pace.
Aid and press under fire: More aid workers and journalists have been killed in Gaza than in any other conflict in living memory, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and multiple NGOs.
These horrors place Gaza beyond comparison with recent wars. Even Syria, Yemen, and Iraq did not see this level of civilian destruction in such a short time.
By declaring Gaza City a combat zone, Israel has moved from denial to admission. The war on civilians is no longer disguised under the language of self-defense. It is written into military orders. Genocidal intent is no longer inferred; it is declared.
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has already described Israel’s actions as having genocidal characteristics. The International Court of Justice, in its provisional ruling, warned of the plausible risk of genocide. Israel’s decision to strip Gaza City of protections cements this intent for all the world to see.
History provides grim parallels for the present moment. In 1937, the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War shocked the world with its deliberate targeting of civilians. It quickly became a symbol of barbarism, immortalized in art and memory as a turning point in modern warfare. Today, Gaza City stands as Guernica magnified a thousandfold, where civilian neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble under relentless bombardment.
The destruction recalls other dark chapters as well. In 1999 and 2000, Russia declared the Chechen capital of Grozny a combat zone, leveling much of the city and killing tens of thousands of civilians. Human rights groups called the assault a war crime, and though the world condemned the violence, no intervention came. Gaza risks following the same trajectory: devastated under the weight of overwhelming military force, while international outcry fails to translate into meaningful action.
The echoes reach further still, to Fallujah in 2004, when U.S. forces launched an assault on the Iraqi city using white phosphorus and indiscriminate firepower. That offensive became one of the most devastating urban battles of modern times, yet Gaza’s scale and civilian toll have already surpassed it.
Each of these moments became shorthand for state violence against civilians, markers of the brutality nations can inflict upon cities and their people. Gaza City now joins this lineage of atrocities, but on a scale unprecedented in both speed and scope.
Even by Israel’s own security logic, this makes no sense. Bombing starving families will not bring peace. Starving hospitals into collapse will not create security. There is no strategy here, only the logic of annihilation. To claim otherwise is to abandon not just morality but reason itself.
International law, morality, and basic humanity converge on the same point: you cannot annihilate a civilian population and call it security. To do so is to endorse the ideology of extermination.
The declaration comes as aid agencies have already sounded the alarm over famine, mass displacement, and collapse of Gaza’s social fabric. The World Food Programme warns that famine is spreading. The UN has said humanitarian convoys cannot safely enter Gaza City without the mid-day pauses Israel has now suspended. Doctors Without Borders has described entire families dying without treatment because hospitals can no longer function. Save the Children says Gaza is the deadliest conflict for children in modern times.
Meanwhile, global leaders issue statements of “concern” while continuing to arm Israel. The United States has approved additional weapons shipments. European states remain divided between outrage and complicity. The international system is failing as it did in Srebrenica and Rwanda, watching atrocity unfold and only acknowledging it in hindsight.
The war on civilians in Gaza is already the worst in modern memory. Declaring Gaza City a combat zone ensures it will become worse still. This is not the fog of war. This is intent, deliberate and open. It is the normalization of genocide through military decree. The question that remains is not whether genocide is happening, but whether the world will continue to let it unfold unchallenged. History’s judgment will be harsh, but the people of Gaza cannot wait for history.