It's a pretty photo showing city lights viewed from 200 miles up in the air, twinkling in a blanket of darkness. It also shows the continued worsening of the situation in Gaza.
This is the photo European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst took over the Gaza Strip and posted on Twitter. He described it as the "saddest photo yet" he's taken during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS). Gerst has been on the ISS for 57 days accompanied by Russian flight commander Maksim Surayev and American Reid Wiseman. He is on a six-month mission as a flight engineer.
This isn't the first time though that the ISS was able to capture major events on Earth. In 2001, Frank Culbertson took a snapshot of a smoking World Trade Center right after the Sept. 11 attacks, while Oleg Kononenko took a photo of the South Ossetia region short after troops from Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. The ISS was also able to capture the devastation in Port-au-Prince after an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, as well as the aftermath of the tsunami that crashed into Japan in 2011.
Gert's Twitter photo brought different reactions but most don't condone war. Critics see it differently though, remarking the possibility of the ISS being used for non-peaceful means. This is a very real concern for the 14 governments who signed the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement in 1998. The agreement stipulates that the spacecraft must only be used for peaceful purposes. Fortunately, none of the participating governments have broken the agreement so the ISS continues to be considered as not a threat.
Conflict in the Gaza Strip intensified more than two weeks ago when the Hamas bombarded Israel to deter Jerusalem's efforts at cracking down on the group, a move set in motion when three Israeli teens were believed to be kidnapped by two Hamas members. The Israeli teens were found dead 18 days after they were abducted while more than 600 Palestinians have already died during the conflict.
The UN and the US have stepped in to end the conflict, hoping to broker peace talks but so far neither side are showing signs of backing down. Israel wants to take down Hamas, an Islamic militant group, and Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to lift the blockade on the coastal territory. The Palestinians are saying that Israel is randomly unleashing weaponry against the 1.7 million people in Gaza. Israel says it is merely responding to Hamas rocket fire.
