By William Briggs
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has moved to charge Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Gallant with promoting “deliberate starvation.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke for humanity when he said, “just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse in Gaza – somehow, appallingly, civilians are being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell.”
As each awful day turns into another awful week, Israeli tanks continue to shell civilians. Jets turn homes to rubble and then bomb the refugees seeking shelter in the rubble that was once home.
New peace initiative from Hamas, intransigence from Netanyahu
Hamas has offered a new initiative that Israel is all but certain to refuse. Husam Badran, a senior Hamas official, has stated that “first and foremost, we want the Palestinian people in Gaza to recover from this war.” Hamas has declared it would support the creation of a government in Gaza and the occupied West Bank made up of independent figures.
What is particularly significant is that Hamas is prepared to give up civilian and police control of Gaza. It would consent to a security force organized by the Palestinian Authority, which is the effective state authority for Palestine.
Badran made it clear that “we’re keen that the people will not be from Hamas or considered close to Hamas.” There was just one qualification, and this was singularly positive. He insisted that members of this new government have the support of both Hamas and Fatah. The two groups have been in serious dispute for many years.
This should be the basis for an end to the horror. Israel, however, indicated that such a proposal would not be acceptable or tolerated. Netanyahu has remained totally intransigent. For him and his extremist power base, there will be no peace while Hamas exists. He will not shift from his pledge to destroy Hamas, regardless of the cost.
A response to any possible peace deal came in the form of a statement from Netanyahu’s office. It went under the title of “Principles for a Hostage Release Deal.” The “principles” include the demand that “any deal [must] enable Israel to resume its offensive operations until it achieves its war goals.”
The slogan, “the day after the war” has been used by many to describe the future for Palestine and its relationship with Israel. For some Western leaders this means a relatively long-term cessation of hostilities. For some it means the beginning of reconstruction of Gaza. For some it means the beginning of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution. What comes after is vitally important. Netanyahu cynically altered that slogan. He repeatedly speaks of the “day after Hamas.” This has important ramifications as it relates to Israel’s plans for Gaza, and by implication, for the West Bank which he belligerently refers to as “Judea and Samaria.”
Israel refuses to countenance peace, except on its own barbaric terms. The US and its allies make what they feel are appropriate noises to the effect that the war must end and that Israel must negotiate in good faith. They blame the breakdown in negotiations on the Palestinians and continue to arm Israel. The US and acquiescent governments are partners in an awful crime against humanity.
The slaughter is not hidden but conducted in plain view. Israel still acts with impunity.
Immense destruction including “safe zones”
It is impossible to cite all atrocities committed or every act of Israeli terror. A residential area in Gaza City, Shujaiya, is one example. Israel’s military stated that it had completed its “mission” in Shujaiya. Sixty bodies were found under the rubble. More than 300 residential units and 100 businesses were destroyed. Mohammed Nairi, a Shujaiya resident, spoke of returning to the neighbourhood and seeing the “immense destruction that defies description. All the houses were demolished.” The tanks had simply rolled out of the suburb and onto other targets. For Israel this is “mission accomplished.”
The Israeli military once more told civilians to leave Gaza City and head south. There is a vicious cycle of orders. Move south. Move north. Move south again. But safety never comes. A recent “evacuation order” told the people to go south along two “safe routes” to the town of Deir al-Balah. This town and the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp are in the alleged “humanitarian safe zone.” Strikes from Israeli forces made a lie of that. Eight people were killed in Deir al Balah and another twelve in the Nuseirat camp.
There were four airstrikes, in four days, that killed dozens of people sheltering in schools that had become refugee centres in the area. Israel’s military chief, Herzi Halevi, waved away criticisms of his forces, saying that the armed forces were at work in Gaza “to carry out a very important mission: pressure.”
The general failed to comment how that “pressure” is being applied. Israeli munitions are increasingly being packed with shrapnel in the form of tiny metal cubes about three millimetres wide that pierce the skin and destroy bone and organs while leaving just a scratch on the skin. The use of such munitions has been documented in past Israeli offensives in Gaza. They are manufactured by Elbit Systems of Haifa. Elbit markets these weapons as “highly lethal against dismounted infantry.”
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has praised the pilots who bombed the al-Mawasi displacement camp, killing 90 and wounding hundreds. Airstrikes have demolished Gaza’s UNWRA headquarters. On July 15, seventeen Palestinians were killed by an Israeli missile attack on a UN school in Nuseirat refugee camp.
Intentional starvation
The genocide being perpetrated by Israel comes from the gun and the bomb, and also from a program and campaign of deliberate starvation. The ICC’s charges against Netanyahu and Gallant have been fully substantiated by UN personnel who are in absolutely no doubt that famine now exists.
Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and another nine independent UN experts have declared that “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”
Three conditions must be proven to declare a region to suffer from famine. At least 20 percent of the population must be facing extreme levels of hunger. Thirty percent of children must be shown to be too thin for their height. The average death rate for adults and children must have doubled. These conditions exist in Gaza.
The United Nations and its Secretary-General have been accused of antisemitism for stating the obvious fact that the Israeli war is a war of genocide. UNWRA, the ICC and the International Court of Justice have been labelled antisemitic. When the fact is stated that thousands of children have been slaughtered, it is dismissed as an antisemitic “blood libel.”
Tens of thousands of civilians lie dead. Thousands more bodies are missing. Thousands of children are dead. The number of traumatized is beyond calculation. The people are “being pushed into ever deeper circles of hell.”
Guardian (Australia)
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