Gaza without governance

This is not power.
This is force.
This is murder.

The cost is paid in minced children’s bodies.
By the kilo.

Men kill to stay in power.
To stay out of prison.
To escape the courts and prosecutions waiting for them if they lose.

They wrap murder in flags.
They wrap murder in speeches.
They wrap murder in law.
Murder is force, not power.

Both Hamas’s bosses and Israel’s bosses are accountable.
Both kill without governance.
They have no power.
Both turn civilians into currency.
Both measure their grip on survival in corpses.
Both are guilty.

Both are propped up by allies who have sent weapons and money.
Hamas and Israel do not kill alone.
Murder, mutilation, maiming is shared with those who arm them and fund them.

Children are not “caught in the middle.”
They are minced by cluster munitions.
Torn into limbs, torsos sliced and heads ripped off meters from their mothers.

Fathers scoop what is left into plastic bags.
Because there is nothing else to carry them in.

Governments call it conflict.
They call it statecraft.
The press report casualties.
They protect the reader’s stomach.
They protect their own sensibilities.

They will not say what it is.
They will not say what they are doing.
They will not stop.

Women know the cost of childbirth.
We know the weight of a body before breath.
We know the silence when that breath is gone.
We know life taken.

If women held the keys, there would be governance.
Corridors opened.
Aid moving.
Phones ripped from the hands of men ordering the taking of lives.
Locks smashed on the war rooms.
The men sent home.

Governance would not be another meeting in Geneva.
It would be armed humanitarian corridors opened and held by force if needed.
Aid trucks in.
Ambulances in.

No negotiation.
No permission slips for the men who profit from killing.

Civilians shielded.
Hospitals powered.
Water pumping.

Governance means holding the door open.
And standing there until the killing stops.

Governance is not a summit.
It is not an agenda.
It is not waiting.

It is restoring order when order is gone.
You do it now or you do not do it at all.

Governance would stop it.
Governance would put bodies ahead of borders.
Governance would end this before the next child is buried without a name.

If women had the keys, they would open the corridors now.
They would keep them open.
They would bring in food, water, power.
They would keep them on.
They would account for every child until the count is complete.

Gaza is not a concept.
This is not defence.
This is not security.
This is the deliberate destruction of children.