"Genocide being committed against the Palestinian people"

Hamas police officers secure the scene of burned apartment on the third floor of a three-story building in Jebaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022. AP Photo - Adel Hana

Penang, 8 Nov (Kanaga Raja) — “Over the past 26 days, we have been witnessing a genocide being committed against the Palestinian people in plain sight, for the whole world to see, and with total impunity,” according to a briefing delivered by the Permanent Observer Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations in Geneva.

The latest briefing on the situation in Palestine by the Observer Mission was delivered on 2 November by Dima Asfour, Counsellor and Deputy Permanent Observer at the mission, and Nada Tarbush, a Counsellor at the mission.

“We come here today with a very heavy heart. We come here today carrying an unbearable pain in our hearts. We also come here today appalled and dismayed by the inaction of the world towards the suffering of millions. Despite that we are here today because we still want to keep faith and hope that justice will prevail that humanity is not totally dead,” said the Palestinian envoys at the briefing.

In just three weeks, Israel, the occupying Power, proceeded to drop 12,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, nearly the same amount of tonnes of explosives that were dropped on Hiroshima. This has included the use of white phosphorous and other weapons causing extensive burns and deformation, they added.

More than 8,720 Palestinians have been killed, more than 75% of whom are children (more than 4,000 children), women (more than 1,800 women) and the elderly.

“It is impossible to keep track: according to human rights organisations, Israel kills one Palestinian child every 10 minutes. So, over the course of this briefing alone, 9 children will have been killed,” said the envoys.

According to Save the Children, the number of Palestinian children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world’s conflict zones since 2019, they added.

“Think about that for a moment, let it give you pause,” the envoys said.

[Latest media reports have cited the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza as putting the death toll at over 10,000, including 4,104 children. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on 6 November said that “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children”, adding that hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day. Calling the “nightmare” in Gaza, a “crisis of humanity”, he said that the “unfolding catastrophe makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing hour.”]

According to the Observer Mission of Palestine, at least 63 United Nations staff, 5 members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 132 medical personnel and 33 journalists have been killed by Israel.

“More than 826 entire families have been wiped off the population registry in Gaza – from grandparents to grandchildren, they have been decimated.”

More than 21,000 Palestinians have been injured, while hospitals are coming to a halt due to the cutting off of fuel and electricity to the civilian population in Gaza, said the Mission.

It said that doctors are performing surgery without anaesthesia; mothers are watching their babies fighting for survival in incubators that are running out of electricity; the only cancer hospital in Gaza has shut down while other hospitals are bombed.

The Mission said residential areas including refugee camps, apartment buildings, schools, ambulances, bakeries, mosques, and churches have been directly targeted and reduced to rubble, including Israel’s latest targeting of the Jabalia Refugee Camp, using 6,000 kg of explosives on a residential block, killing 400 Palestinians in one go.

It cited the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as stating that Israel’s strikes on Jabalia are likely to amount to a war crime.

It also includes Israel’s targeting of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, its targeting of the al-Omari Mosque, an ancient mosque dating back from the 7th century, its targeting, on 18 October, of the Anglican Church-run Baptist Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, killing at least 500 patients, health workers and families seeking refuge from relentless Israeli bombardment.

The Palestinian envoys said, “And if you are still convinced that Israel was not responsible for this strike, we refer you to read the investigative findings of the New York Times, Forensic Architecture UK, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera.”

People queuing for hours for bread at bakeries have been bombed. Nothing has been spared from relentless and indiscriminate Israeli bombing, they added.

They cited an Israeli official has having told Israel’s Channel 13 that “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents… There will be no buildings.”

The envoys said that this is exactly what is being implemented. “So far, in this frenzy of unhinged genocidal violence – throughout which Israel has not received a single word of condemnation from most Western governments – at least 45% of all housing in Gaza has been either destroyed by Israeli bombing, rendered uninhabitable or damaged.”

The reverberating effects of the use of explosive weapons on hospitals, schools, food security, water, electricity and shelter are affecting millions, they pointed out.

“In addition to the illegal blockade imposed on Gaza for the past 16 years, Israel perpetuated this war crime by further tightening the siege, cutting off food, water, fuel, gas, electricity, telecommunications from the civilian population. Pregnant women and toddlers are drinking unsafe sea water. There is a ratio of 400 people to every 1 toilet in some areas of Gaza.”

People have to queue for a loaf of bread at bakeries for hours, and even these people and these bakeries are bombed, said the Mission.

“After ordering more than one million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza – an impossible ask and one aimed at de-populating the area and facilitating forcible transfer and mass ethnic cleansing – Israel proceeded to bomb convoys of refugees fleeing to the south, killing mainly women and children.”

The Mission noted that protests have erupted around the world calling for a ceasefire and an end to genocide.

In their briefing, the envoys noted that the occupying Power’s deadly military aggression against the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza is the sixth since 2008.

“In each of these aggressions, international crimes were committed, as confirmed by countless reports of civil society organisations worldwide and United Nations bodies and commissions of inquiry.”

“This means that a 15-year-old child in Gaza has lived through six military aggressions. Imagine the level of trauma, imagine what the future for such a child looks like,” said the envoys.

They said: “But Israel’s declaration of war is against all Palestinians everywhere, not just in Gaza. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israel’s declaration of war has also meant the escalation of its aggression against the Palestinian civilian population where more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, including 22 children, by Israeli occupation forces and armed terrorist settlers since 7 October, and more than 1,500 have been arrested.”

According to the Observer Mission, “Israel has provided arms to the settler population in the West Bank, and settler terrorism has increased dramatically, leading to the de-population of several Palestinian villages and communities. Palestinian living in Israel are also facing a mass campaign of arrests, threats, intimidation and racist hate crimes.”

“Collective punishment is a war crime. Forcible transfer is a war crime. The targeting of civilians is a war crime. The targeting of civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Using starvation as a means of warfare is a war crime. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. Incitement to commit genocide is an international crime. Cutting civilians off from water, electricity, food, fuel, medicine, communications and other basic needs for survival are international crimes. Settler terrorism is terrorism,” the Mission emphasized.

The envoys reminded that as the UN Secretary-General and countless other UN experts and experts in the history of Palestine and Israel have said, that what happened on 7 October did not occur in a vacuum.

The envoys said that history did not start on 7 October. For 75 years, the Palestinian people have been subjected to ethnic cleansing and dispossession, for 56 years they have been illegally occupied and colonized, and for 16 years they have been blockaded in Gaza.

“Any narrative that does not acknowledge these facts is simply inaccurate and hypocritical,” they added.

“What is even more horrifying is the complicity of Israel’s allies, many of whom are former colonial powers that have been accumulating wealth and control at the expense of other countries and peoples,” said the Mission.

It said they are now aiding and abetting the commission of international crimes and genocide, including through sending further military aid to exterminate the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza.

“Domestically, they are also criminalizing peaceful forms of protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people and suppressing freedom of speech.”

The Mission said the governments supplying weapons to Israel and those condoning its bombardment, siege, and ground invasion of Gaza are not just failing to prevent genocide, they are actively enabling it.

SOME HISTORICAL FACTS

“But since the history is so often obfuscated or deliberately ignored, we are compelled here and now to remind you of some historical facts,” said the Palestinian envoys.

“Today [2 November] marks 106 years since the United Kingdom issued the Balfour Declaration which was the seed of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with devastating impacts for the Palestinian people to this day,” they said.

On 2 November 1917, the British Government announced its support for the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, said the Mission.

“In line with its colonial and imperialist doctrine, Britain did not consult the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the land before making this declaration. It simply decided to give away what it did not own, to a third party,” it added.

“Whether that third party had been Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or of any other faith, the Palestinians would have had the same reaction: how can you give our country away to another people while we live here? What will happen to us?”

It is not, and has never been, about religion, the Mission underlined, saying that Britain’s short-sightedness and prioritisation of politics over morality and human rights, ignored these dangers, and Britain bears much of the historic responsibility for the instability, immense suffering and bloodshed that has been unleashed in the Middle East ever since.

It is critical to recall these historical facts, if only because one cannot understand the present situation without understanding what led to it, the Mission observed.

It said the Balfour Declaration, in throwing Britain’s support behind the Zionist movement, unleashed European ethno-nationalist settler colonialism in Palestine that aimed to radically change the demographic structure of the country and its until then multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-cultural nature.

Indeed, it said, the core tenet of the Zionist movement was not to co-exist with native Palestinians, but rather to displace and replace them, including to neighbouring countries, in order to create a permanent Jewish majority.

The Mission said the State of Israel was established in 1948 through mass ethnic cleansing campaigns, including the notorious Deir Yassin massacre, and the mass expulsion of Palestinians, leading to the most longstanding unresolved refugee crisis in the world.

“Israel was established on the graves of the natives,” it added.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, without consulting the native Palestinian population, passed a resolution recommending the partition of Palestine between Jews and Palestinians, giving to the Jews, who comprised less than a third of the population, 55.5% of the land. This was, naturally, rejected by the Palestinians as unjust.

But even that overly-generous gifting of land to the Zionist leadership was not seen as sufficient. The Zionist leadership viewed partition as “only the beginning”, said the Mission.

Ben Gurion told the Zionist Executive that “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”

Moshe Sharett, Ben Gurion’s foreign minister, agreed and added that Israel’s territory was “determined by possession, not partition.”

So by 1949, through the acquisition of territory by force, Israel ended up with 78% of historic Palestine. As for the remaining 22% – the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – it proceeded in 1967 to occupy them. It then started to colonise this land through the construction of settlements, said the Mission.

In 1998, Ariel Sharon, then Foreign Minister of Israel, said: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”

LONGEST MILITARY OCCUPATION

In its briefing, the Mission said fast forward until the present, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, has become the longest belligerent military occupation in modern history.

Ever since, the Palestinian people have been waiting for the countries that led to their plight to feel some sort of shame, engage in some sort of self-criticism of their past actions, it added.

“Instead, we hear the UK government still celebrating the Balfour Declaration, and we hear the British Prime Minister giving political and diplomatic cover for the genocide taking place in Gaza, and doubling down on the de-humanisation of the Palestinian people in British official discourse.”

“In the West, in general, we see governments competing with each other on who will provide more political, military and diplomatic support to Israel as it perpetuates its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people as it has done since 1948.”

To Israel’s allies, when you provide so much support to Israel, let us tell you what you are supporting, said the Palestinian envoys, citing the following examples in their briefing:

* Most recently, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech that can only be described as a religious call to arms, calling the Palestinians “Amalek”. To those not familiar with the biblical term “Amalek”, it is a quotation from first Samuel 15:3: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

* Daniel Hagari, Israeli army spokesperson: “We are dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. The focus is on destruction, not accuracy.”

* Ariel Kallner, Israeli politician of the Likud Party: “Now there is only one goal: Nakba (expulsion of the Palestinians). A Nakba in Gaza that will dwarf the Nakba of 1948”.

* Ytizhak Herzog, President of Israel: “It is an entire nation who are responsible. This rhetoric about civilians supposedly not being involved is absolutely untrue… and we will fight until we break their backs”.

* Tally Gotliv, Israeli politician from the Likud Party: “Jericho Missile! Doomsday Weapon! That’s my opinion. Powerful rockets to be fired without borders, Gaza to be smashed and razed to the ground. Without mercy.”

* Ezra Yachin, Israeli army veteran, in an address to Israeli reservists: “Wipe out their families, their mothers and their children. These animals must not be allowed to live any longer.”

* Maya Golan, Israel’s Minister of Women’s Affairs: “I want to tell the world what they have long known about me in Israel: I don’t care about Gaza. I literally don’t care about Gaza. They can go swimming in the sea.” She said: “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza.”

This is the Israeli leadership that Israel’s allies, including the United States and most European countries, say they “share values” with, said the Mission.

The envoys said at the briefing: “So we ask you, when you say you share your values with Israel, do you realise the weight of your words? You are saying that you share values with a State that is responsible for committing the international crimes of genocide, apartheid and colonialism.”

Israel’s first prime minister, Ben Gurion, himself warned, after the June 1967 war, that Israel would become an “apartheid state” if it retained control of the occupied territory, which it has done, the envoys observed.

“We hear the argument that historic European guilt in Europe leads to blind support for Israel. To truly honour the victims of the Holocaust and centuries-long antisemitism and persecution, what you must do is uphold the international laws and rules that were established in response to the horrors of the Second World War, including the Holocaust, instead of encouraging Israel in their breach. To honour the victims of the Holocaust, support criminal liability for international crimes, instead of opposing any accountability for Israel’s crimes,” said the Mission.

“To the governments of Israel’s allies we say: you cannot continue justifying the death of Palestinians. That is not possible. That is inhumane. That is racist. That is supremacist.”

It should never be about the religion or the national identity or the origin or the skin colour of the people being killed. It’s about the fact that they are being killed, the Mission added.

It said continuing to deny Palestinian humanity and rights is not a way forward, adding that consistency is the condition of credibility.

“Palestinian lives are not less worthy of your respect. If you abandon them, you abandon your humanity, you undermine our international law-based order, you serve neither the cause of justice nor the cause of peace.”

“As a first step, stop using the term “self-defence” to describe the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Carpet-bombing an occupied, colonised, besieged population with the latest military technology is not self-defence. It is aggression. Choose your words appropriately,” the Mission said.

It said that the Palestine question remains a litmus test for the viability and efficacy of international law and the international system as a whole.

The credibility of this rules-based multilateral system is dependent upon it being implemented by States Parties in all circumstances and not just when convenient or politically expedient, it added.

“Further delays and detours cannot be justified. Further negligence or warmongering is unconscionable.”

These are serious times; they require serious and responsible leadership. International law is clear. The grave breaches that are being committed by Israel are clear, said the envoys at their briefing.

“Millions of civilian lives are at stake. No one, no government official, should want to be seen as complicit in the mass killings of Palestinian civilians or their continuation.”

This is a time in history that will be remembered. And where people and governments stood will be remembered by all, the Mission underlined.

According to the Palestinian envoys, “you still have time to be on the right side of history: demand a ceasefire, impose sanctions on Israel until it abides by international law, use your influence to bring an end to the Israeli occupation and an end to this ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people and to assist them to realize their rights, including to self-determination and return.”

“If you instead choose to continue remaining silent or providing military, political or diplomatic support to Israel, then you do not get to ever pretend again that you support international law, care about human life, or have moral convictions that apply universally,” they said. – Third World Network