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As it is a tradition for people to wish each other a happy new year, it has also been customary for me to assess the previous and coming 12 months.

Even more so now, the conventional good wishes just do not sound fitting at all. Last year was one of adversity, ineptitude and suffering. We have pushed our planet and our environment to the brink, experiencing the hottest year on record alongside a relentless acceleration and intensification of natural disasters.

Our ignorance turned into indifference as we witnessed devastating conflicts around the world, particularly in Ukraine and now in Gaza. We are not listening to our planet, and we take little heed as fellow humans are massacred. Humans seem to have lost any kind of balance, reason or sense of hope in the fractured world and societies we live in today.

Although the year ended with a potentially encouraging climate deal, our planet has never experienced such a state of collapse and imbalance, with flooding where there is already too much water, with renewed drought and wildfires where crops have already failed.

With the Ukraine war and Europeans weaning themselves off Russian gas, we are even burning more coal. Germany’s share of brown coal production represented almost 50 percent of all European output of the commodity in the past year. This is all representative of the major disconnect between what we say and what we do. Instead of drastically reducing our carbon emissions as we know we should, we are falling backward everywhere.

Most heartbreaking for many of us has been seeing the devastating situation in Gaza, with levels of death and destruction in such a small and densely-populated strip of land that are almost impossible to fathom. Almost half of Gaza’s buildings and civilian infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed, which, along with the more than 30,000 innocent Gazans killed, represents a rate of death and destruction far beyond anything seen in recent history, more than in Aleppo or the war against Daesh.

It is utterly incomprehensible that a country could impose such suffering on an innocent population, particularly after having already spent decades cutting off their food, water and fuel supplies at will. Today, Israel tells 2 million people to leave their homes and then proceeds to drop 900 kg bombs on the very areas it told Gazans would be safe, causing countless massacres. There are simply no words to describe the extent of the inhumanity Gazans are suffering yet again.

Gazans have no choice but to place themselves in the hands of fate. It is no longer a matter of life and death, it is a matter of holding onto one’s dignity and humanity, as well as reminding the world that they have a right to exist. The children of Gaza, tragically, are quite used to this.

A 7-year-old girl is interviewed and puts it simply: “What they are doing is haram (forbidden).” Another girl tells a journalist: “You can do what you want, I will not leave. If I starve, then I will die here. If I am killed by a bomb, I will be buried here.” It is not that they have given up; it is that, even faced with death, they know who they are and that they should not have to beg the world to allow them to lead a life of dignity and respect. That is why they will not fulfil Israel’s objectives of seeing Gazans flee to Egypt and leave behind yet another home.

Humanity is being denied to the men, women and children of Gaza. But the Jews lived for centuries amid us Arabs and they were always treated with respect. It is the Europeans who persecuted Jews for centuries and who killed 6 million of them in the Holocaust. That done, they decided to provide Jews with a homeland not in defeated Germany but on land inhabited by Palestinians.

How could it be conceivable for Lord Balfour in Britain to just decide that lands inhabited by a people for centuries should simply be given to the Jewish people. This is not enlightened humanity, but a European superiority complex and imperialist madness. In spite of this, Arabs have accepted that there must be a solution comprised of a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. Twenty-two Arab countries in 2002 offered Israel full peace and diplomatic relations based on such a two-state solution approved by the UN and international consensus.

I simply cannot bring myself to say “Happy New Year” while I see how deeply we continue to disregard our planet and our fellow human beings. So many of us seem to have lost our sense of what is good and how to do good. Life must be offered the utmost respect, no matter to whom and where. Absent the jasmine air of freedom and dignity, life will always be compromised. Yet we are believers, and we know that eventually we will all be judged.

Just as we all need to come to our senses about the damage we continue to knowingly wreak on our planet, we must remind the Israelis quite pointedly that they will not be successful in this deathly Quixotic rampage. Once they have come to understand this, we will show them the generosity of kindness and we will welcome them as neighbors. Jews have always been a part of our lands.

So maybe after all these words we can embark upon this new year by just saying: “Let us wish for the strength and understanding to make this new year a better one than the last.”

• Hassan bin Youssef Yassin worked closely with ����ֱ��’s petroleum ministers Abdullah Tariki and Ahmed Zaki Yamani from 1959 to 1967. He led the Saudi Information Office in Washington from 1972 to 1981 and served with the Arab League’s observer delegation to the UN from 1981 to 1983.