Gaza is a densely populated area, and the collateral damage caused by Israeli jets, tanks and artillery has continued to rise steeply.

With the largely civilian death toll in Gaza soaring above 1500, and at least 60 military and two civilian fatalities on the Israeli side.

Besides heavy casualties and mass trauma, civilians are suffering terribly from lack of water, food and electricity, with the wounded unable to receive proper medical care due to shortages of supplies.

This and other shortages are the result of years of Israeli siege and blockade of the movement of people and goods.

No one from Gaza can leave from the only two checkpoints, Erez or Rafah, without special permission from the Israelis and the Egyptians, which is hard to come by for many, if not impossible.

Even humanitarian organizations, who want to go and help are unable to reach Gaza due to the blockade. There have been large demonstrations(mostly unreported in the main stream media) in London, Marseille, Santiago, Tunis, Chicago and all over the world. Anger with Israel’s actions is growing exponentially on social media. Twitter is full of photos of the murdered children of Gaza. Sometimes carried by screaming fathers, sometimes by blood-soaked women. Some bodies are torn to pieces. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008.

Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose. Israel cannot win this war, primarily because it is fighting only the symptoms of the conflict with the Palestinians — rocket launching — not the underlying causes, which are the Gaza blockade and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The heavy bombardment of Gaza only deepens the Israelis’ problem rather than solving it. Over the last 47 years, Israel has systematically created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world in the Gaza Strip.

The more targets Israel destroys, the more frustration grows among the Gazans. The surviving relatives, neighbors and friends of those killed, and the rest of Gazan society, are more exasperated than ever by the Israeli blockade We gasp in horror. Ask this question, how long?

This is a massive humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding in Gaza Strip.UK, along with the UN, the US and other major powers, needs to be proactive in helping to end the worst violence in the region in the last five years.

The wounds of war are, otherwise, too difficult to heal, as the region knows too well.

This long standing conflict doesn’t have a military solution. Both sides have to start the dialogue. It is golden opportunity for Ed Miliband to take initiative and prove his credentials as a major international player.

Labour party’s views on the ongoing Gaza crisis, is an exercise in political correctness. By repeating that Labour’s stance on the Israel-Palestine issue has not shifted, and going ahead with a pro forma denunciation of violence, the party and Ed Miliband is missing a golden opportunity to impress upon a domestic audience that the party under leadership of Ed is pursuing a fresh statesman-like approach on a complex global issue.

Besides, he may have also disappointed a wider international audience, especially in West Asia and North Africa, which has been looking for a stronger and principled Labour voice to help resolve the spiralling crisis.

It is important to recognize that the Israel-Palestinian issue is the core of instability in West Asia — a region that is the lifeline of economy because of its huge oil and gas reserves. A long-term interest in energy security alone demands that the labour party — a friend of both Israel and the Palestinians — should leverage its position to persuade both sides to revive peace talks.

This is especially true at a time when the international system is mutating from the unipolarity of the 1990s to the emergence of a multipolar world in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fundamental to sustainable peace in West Asia. Ed Miliband must take lead to get the dialogue resumed, which would result in a two-state solution based on the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state and recognition of Israeil as an independent sovereign nation.

Why does war keep breaking out in Gaza?

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, a Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was set up to govern Palestinian areas of West Bank and Gaza. In 2006, the first Palestinian government was elected under the leadership of Yasser Arafat founder of the PLO.

While the main Palestinian group Fatah won in West Bank, radical Islamic Hamas won in Gaza.

While carrying out welfare work among Palestinians and gaining popularity, Hamas was involved in violent strikes against Israelis. Hamas’s victory in Gaza resulted in a conflict between Fatah and Hamas leading to the ouster of Fatah from Gaza. Hamas became Gaza’s de facto ruling party. This was unacceptable to Israel because Hamas was strongly opposed to it.

Why the current Israeli attack?

The last major conflict was in 2012 attack, following that a ceasefire was negotiated between Hamas and Israel. Early this year US-initiated peace talks on the Palestinian issue failed. In June, Hamas and Fatah reconciled and formed a Unity government, ending eight years of conflict. Israel saw this unity between the two major Palestinian factions as a threat.

Flash point of this conflict was, three young Israeli men were kidnapped and killed by a West Bank Palestinian family.

Israel claimed this was Hamas’s work, although Hamas denied it. Israel carried out mass arrests of Palestinians and ratcheted up pressure. Hamas responded with rockets. Israel got the pretext to strike back.