An Israeli strike Monday evening hit a car in Gaza City and killed two men, according to Shifa Hospital, while over the weekend Israeli attacks left at least 17 people dead, including children, according to hospitals in Gaza. The machinery keeps moving. The bodies keep piling up. And the people caught underneath are left to absorb the costs of decisions made in command rooms, ministries and back-channel talks they never asked to join.
The State Monopoly on Violence
The Israeli military said the weekend strikes targeted militants and confirmed Monday’s strike, saying it would release more information later. That’s the familiar script: force first, explanation later, if at all. In Gaza, where soaring temperatures have turned makeshift tents into suffocating ovens, the violence doesn’t stop at bombs and bullets. Plastic-sheet shelters trap heat during the day and offer little ventilation, forcing many families to spend hours outside. With limited access to clean water, electricity and sanitation, residents of the overcrowded camps face high risk of dehydration, heat-related illnesses and the spread of skin infections, diarrheal diseases and other communicable illnesses, humanitarian agencies warn.
Aida Abu Hadeesha, displaced from Rafah near the border with Egypt, said, “There is no breeze, nothing. Our kids are suffering.” That’s the human ledger the war machine never balances. The camps are overcrowded, the water is scarce, and the institutions that claim to manage the crisis keep producing more of it.
Diplomacy as Another Command Structure
U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that he decided to hold off on ordering American forces to carry out new strikes against Iran at the urging of Gulf allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He said a plan had been in place for U.S. forces to carry out “the biggest attack since World War II,” but he decided to give diplomacy more time after hearing from key Gulf leaders and requests from unnamed Iranian officials. On Monday, Trump said the two sides are resuming talks to wind down the war, and he called the negotiations the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and address his concerns about its nuclear program.
He also said, “Whether Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking.” On Truth Social, he wrote, “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” The language is blunt, theatrical and useful to the same old hierarchy: presidents threaten mass violence, then dress it up as negotiation, then threaten again when the other side doesn’t perform obedience on cue.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the country was not currently holding negotiations with the United States. Esmail Baghaei, an agency spokesperson, said Monday that ongoing talks were with Oman and were focused only on establishing a temporary route for safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Nine vessels transited through the strait Sunday, most of them using an Iranian-controlled route, according to trade data and analytics platform Kpler. Even the shipping lane becomes a managed corridor, policed by states, narrated by states, and used by states to stage their own indispensability.
Who Gets to Decide, Who Pays
A top official overseeing Gaza’s postwar transition met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, in part to press him to halt military attacks on the territory. Nikolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza on the Board of Peace, also discussed with Netanyahu the need to decommission all weapons in the enclave, the international body established by the U.S. said in a statement. Days earlier, the U.S. and Hamas reached a deal to disarm the militant group, a potential step toward ending the war in Gaza.
The cast changes. The structure doesn’t. Washington, Gulf capitals, the Israeli government, Hamas and international bodies all claim some piece of the future, while ordinary people in Gaza are left in tents that bake in the heat and in neighborhoods where strikes still land. The Board of Peace arrives with titles and statements. The U.S. arrives with plans, deadlines and the language of “last chance.” Hamas arrives with its own armed authority. Israel arrives with airstrikes. The civilians arrive at hospitals.
Trump said the U.S. had considered “the biggest attack since World War II,” then paused after pressure from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and requests from unnamed Iranian officials. The pause may suit diplomats. It doesn’t change the fact that the threat was there in the first place, sitting on the table like a loaded weapon. And in Gaza, where hospitals counted the dead and humanitarian agencies warned of disease and dehydration, the people under the tents still had to live through the weather, the shortages and the next strike.
The official statements keep coming. The suffering does too.