Gaza City’s Hopeless Siege: The Real-Life Horror No One Can Ctrl+Z
Hello everyone. Once again, we’re thrust into the absurd theatre of politics, where human tragedy is just another plotline in a never-ending, low-budget war strategy game. Only this time, the setting is Gaza City – a place that’s long since stopped feeling real and has started to resemble one of those glitchy post-apocalyptic levels you spend hours wandering through in a survival game, while your teammates on voice chat argue about the strategy. Except here, there is no respawn, and there’s nothing remotely entertaining about pressing “continue.”
The “Plan”: A Game of Human Chess
The Israeli government has announced its grand plan to take over Gaza City – “to disarm Hamas, free hostages, and establish security control.” Sounds neat on paper, right? Much like a tutorial mission goal list – simple, clean, and utterly detached from the reality that the map you’re stepping into is already on fire, riddled with NPC civilians, and the minimap is flooded with red blips.
Residents? They’re terrified. You have Abu Mohammad saying the obvious: civilians are not the ones pulling the war strings. Hamas leaders? They’re living comfortably abroad while the population here gets pummelled like target dummies in a shooting range. It’s a grimly familiar trope – the antagonists are comfortably off-screen, while the collateral damage racks up in centre frame.
International Outrage: The Stat Sheet of Suffering
The UN human rights chief declares this would cause “more massive forced displacement… senseless destruction and atrocity crimes.” Translation: we’ve reviewed the patch notes for this operation and confirmed it’s essentially a buff to human misery, with no nerf to violence.
Locals call it “totally disastrous” and “a death sentence.” And honestly, given the conditions? They’re not wrong. There’s already been widespread devastation, air strikes are a daily occurrence, and famine statistics read like a perverse scoreboard: 99 deaths from malnutrition this year, including 29 children under five. Those numbers are not telling you who’s winning – they’re telling you the entire concept of a “win” is a sick joke.
Daily Life: The Survival Mode No One Asked For
Dr. Hatem Qanoua sums it up in medically accurate terms: “We’re collapsing across every aspect of life.” Food, education, healthcare – all at critical levels. For anyone pretending this is just short-term pain, here’s the prognosis: even if the war ends tomorrow, the scars – physical, emotional, infrastructural – will last decades. Gaza isn’t under siege; it’s being hollowed out like a building slated for demolition.
And the people? Many refuse to leave their homes, not out of bravery, but because prior “evacuations” just meant trading one nightmare for another. As resident Sabrine Mahmoud put it – they’ve seen the worst of forced displacement and will not play that round again. “Let them destroy the house over our heads – we will not leave.” It’s the ultimate game-over mindset: no more running, just waiting for the attack wave to arrive.
The “Evacuation Mini-Game”: Bad Design, Endless Loops
Abu Mustafa notes that Israel has “turned evacuation into a game” – go here, leave there, shuffle back again. It’s the kind of open-world roaming quest that would get a triple-A developer crucified because there’s no payoff, no purpose, just an endless loop to wear you down. Others lament their inability to even afford basic staples like flour. This isn’t just poor resource management – it’s a systemic starvation mechanic baked into the very ruleset being enforced.
Hamas: The Other Boss Fight No One Wants
It’s not as though Hamas escapes criticism here. Some residents accuse them outright of refusing to negotiate, choosing “suicide” for everyone instead. One influencer likens Hamas leadership to living in a “science fiction world” – a neat way of saying that while the playable characters are battling over scraps in the rubble, the quest-givers are lounging on another planet entirely.
The Hopeless Ending
And then, some residents express flat-out indifference: “Gaza is occupied. We are in a cage.” This isn’t resignation – it’s the grim acceptance that when you’ve been playing the same map for years with no way to exit, you stop expecting victory conditions to ever change.
Here’s the uncensored truth: This isn’t strategy. This isn’t liberation. It’s a zero-sum PvP match being fought over other people’s lives, where the spectators pretend to care but change the channel the moment the content gets repetitive. The people in Gaza are paying the price for the hubris of two opposing power structures that treat the city less like a community and more like a capture point that must be controlled for “security” or “honour.” Forgive me if I refuse to romanticise that.
My overall verdict? Bad. Very bad. Not just bad game design, but ethically bankrupt to its core. If this were an actual game, it’d get review-bombed into oblivion – but unfortunately, the only ones bombed in reality are the civilians trapped inside it.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Article source: It’s become a game for Israel’: Gaza City residents fear takeover plans, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy534012y3o
