In a development so tragically farcical it could have been scripted by a particularly cynical god, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has descended into a logistical nightmare of epic proportions. Hundreds of wounded civilians, including children with limbs dangling by threads of flesh and grandmothers with shrapnel nesting in their skulls, are trapped in a bureaucratic hell while diplomats in London finger their worry beads and demand an 'emergency corridor.' Because nothing says 'emergency' quite like months of interminable negotiations while people bleed out on concrete floors.
Let us savour the exquisite irony: the same British government that has been cheerfully flogging arms to the region for decades now affects a pose of horrified concern. 'We must have a corridor,' they intone solemnly, as if the problem were merely one of urban planning. 'We need safe passage for the wounded,' they insist, as if the bombs currently falling from the sky were polite enough to observe traffic rules. The sheer chutzpah would be breathtaking if it wasn't so nauseating.
The reality on the ground is a symphony of suffering conducted by bureaucratic incompetence. The few remaining hospitals are overwhelmed, their supplies of anaesthetic long exhausted. Surgeons work by torchlight, amputating limbs with the same hacksaws one might use to butcher a chicken. The wounded are stacked in corridors, their groans a constant backdrop to the drone of Israeli drones. And what does the international community offer? A corridor. A suggestion. A piece of paper that might, if the stars align and the wind blows favourably, allow a fraction of the dying to reach a hospital that isn't quite so besieged.
One shudders to think what the UK's 'push' actually entails. A strongly worded letter? A pointed look across the negotiating table? Perhaps a sternly furrowed brow from the Foreign Secretary. The NHS can barely manage its own patient flow; the idea of these same mandarins orchestrating a medical evacuation through a war zone is either delusion or some form of post-imperial guilt theatre.
Meanwhile, the real heroes of this tragicomedy are the Palestinian medics, who work until they collapse, who carry stretchers through sniper fire, who perform triage with the grim expertise of those who have seen far too much. They deserve a statue, not a corridor. They deserve the world's attention, not a press release.
But we must not be too harsh. After all, the UK is 'pushing.' They are pushing for a corridor. They are pushing for safe passage. They are pushing for the absolute bare minimum of humanity, and they will push and push until the next crisis distracts them, at which point they will push for something else entirely, leaving the corridor to rot in some UN filing cabinet alongside countless other well-intentioned plans that were never quite important enough to actually implement.
So here is the situation, reader: hundreds will die, not from the initial wounds of war, but from the secondary wounds of diplomatic indifference. They will die because 'emergency corridor' is an oxymoron when you have to wait for permission to save a life. They will die because the machinery of international aid moves at the speed of bureaucracy while war moves at the speed of sound. And when they are dead, the politicians will express their sadness, their profound sympathy, their commitment to doing better next time.
I need another drink. This column requires more gin than I possess.
