Israel must pause hostilities in Gaza to allow aid to reach its desperate civilian population

Editorial: Four weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, peace is as far away as ever. Humanitarian support must be allowed into Gaza to limit the damage to innocent people

The overall death toll has now passed 10,000, with nearly half of these, according to Hamas medical sources, being Palestinian children (AP)

This weekend marked four weeks since the massacre, kidnapping and torture of Israeli civilians launched by Hamas fighters from Gaza. The veritable orgy of killing left more than 1,400 dead, the highest toll of Jewish people killed on any one day since the Holocaust.

The record since then has been one of ever more death, destruction and, with a few honourable exceptions, diplomatic failure. The overall death toll has now passed 10,000, with nearly half of these, according to Hamas medical sources, being Palestinian children. Just four of Israel’s 242 hostages have been freed by Hamas, with one captured Israeli soldier liberated by her comrades. After a massive military build-up on the border with Gaza, Israeli forces have encircled, and are reported to have begun entering, Gaza City.

The pictures that have been released show destruction already on a scale perhaps not seen since the obliteration of the ancient city of Raqqa during the Syrian civil war. Orders by Israel to Gazans to leave the north for the relative safety of the south have been nullified several times over, both by continuing rocket attacks on the south and by the sheer impossibility for many Gazans of moving anywhere at all.