War in the land of lost promises

Israel-Hamas conflict doesn’t augur well for a world grappling with economic distress compounded by Covid-19 and the Ukraine war The gruesome terrorist strike by Hamas and other militant factions from the Gaza Strip against Israel continues to reverberate around the globe. Israeli armed forces have launched retaliatory strikes that have laid waste to vast areas within the Palestinian enclave, one of the most densely populated places in the world. The world has rightly condemned the assaults by Hamas as terrorist attacks. The human cost of this latest upsurge of violence in the seven-decade conflict is staggering — more than 900 Israelis and 700 Palestinians killed so far. Israel has said it is in a state of war and the threat of an invasion continues to loom over the Gaza Strip; such an operation has probably not been ordered by the Israeli leadership only because of scores of hostages taken by Hamas fighters in Gaza.