Gaza has exposed the limits of US power and opened space for new centres of global diplomacy.


Jonathan Whittall is a humanitarian leader and political analyst from South Africa. He was a senior UN official in Palestine between 2022 and 2025. Pr...ior to this he worked for 14 years with Doctors without Borders (MSF). He has now established KEYS Initiative, a political affairs and strategic advisory firm based in Beirut.
Gaza has exposed the limits of US power and opened space for new centres of global diplomacy.

It is tapping into a well-known colonial strategy of isolating and fragmenting an occupied population.
![Palestinians walk among piles of rubble in the northern Gaza Strip November 19, 2025. [Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-11-19T171209Z_902101555_RC2PZHA2UEQG_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-GAZA-1763576907.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
MSF aims always to work with the agreement of all parties to a conflict.
![The staff of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, demonstrates in Geneva on November 3, 2015, one month after the US bombing of their charity-run hospital in Kunduz in Afghanistan [File: Reuters/Denis Balibouse]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2015-11-03T120000Z_2146328064_LR2EBB312YLPA_RTRMADP_3_AFGHANISTAN-KUNDUZ-MSF.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
No humanitarian assistance can relieve Palestinian suffering, only the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid can.
![An injured Palestinian woman is evacuated during clashes with Israeli police near Damascus Gate on Laylat al-Qadr during the holy month of Ramadan, in Jerusalem's Old City on May 8, 2021 [Reuters/Ronen Zvulun]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-05-08T210442Z_10976926_RC2XBN9XMGVO_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-JERUSALEM.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
The UNSC is allowing cities to be flattened and civilians mercilessly killed under the guise of ‘fighting terror’.
