( Middle East Monitor ) – Emotions ran high yesterday as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) started its hearing on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, with Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour moved to tears as he delivered his final remarks. Mansour spoke about a future where the children of Palestine would be treated as children and not as a “demographic fit”; when the human rights of Palestinians would not be “diminished” because of their ethnicity and identity; and where two states would live side by side, in peace.

Over six days, the world court is hearing oral arguments from 52 countries and three international organisations, following a UN General Assembly request filed in 2022 for an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The hearing comes as Israel continues its devastating war on the Gaza Strip, where it has now killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians and laid waste to most of the besieged enclave.

The UN’s top court is already deliberating on a case filed by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, having ordered provisional measures and finding a plausible risk of genocide in its interim ruling in January.

All of the speakers during the hearing will present their views on why they support or oppose the measures that Israel has enforced in the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel itself has opted out of the hearing and instead submitted a written argument.

A court ruling is likely to take months, but could be possible somewhere between April and June, suggested Victor Kattan, assistant professor of international law at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Any decision in favour of the Palestinians will be “a vindication of their rights by the principal judicial organ of the United Nations,” he told Anadolu.

If the court comes out and holds Israel responsible for the “prohibition of the crime of apartheid, for example,” that could be quite significant, explained Kattan, because the UN has special organs and institutions to deal with combating apartheid, which have not been used for almost four decades. “They could be used to coordinate policies aimed at putting pressure on Israel to end its occupation in discriminatory policies against the Palestinian people.”

Kattan has written extensively on the Israel-Palestine issue, and said that the ICJ has essentially been asked to defend international law and to make it relevant again. “In a way, it kind of reinforces the importance and value of this approach to the International Court of Justice.”

The hearings, Kattan explained, will deal with two issues, the first being to look at the ongoing violations that Israel has committed by prolonging its occupation, denial of self-determination, major demographic changes, human rights violations and racial discrimination, as well as apartheid. The second is the question about the consequences for states arising from these violations of international law.

Al Jazeera English Video: “Palestine demands end to Israeli occupation at ICJ hearing”

The legal expert noted that the participating countries had submitted their arguments well before the 7 October Hamas attack, so it would be interesting to see how Israel’s allies shape their arguments in light of its deadly actions in Gaza. “The argument that Israel or these allies would be putting in front of these proceedings will be that this does not come under the (court’s) jurisdiction or that this is not admissible. They may say this is a political issue that needs to be resolved in negotiations.”

According to Kattan, “They’re going to simply ask the court not to consider the request at all on the grounds of jurisdiction and admissibility. However, in my view, it’s a very weak argument given the special role of the court in matters concerning decolonisation and the like.” They may also say that this is a bilateral process and that peace can only come — statehood can only come — when the Palestinians reach an agreement.

“That may be their argument, but UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron just came out and said that, actually, a Palestinian state doesn’t have to wait until the end of negotiations,” Kattan pointed out. “So, we may already be seeing a shift even in the stance of Israel’s friends in that regard, and this would explain why [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is coming out with such belligerent statements and saying that he’ll never accept a Palestinian state.”

Kattan warned that the ICJ proceedings have enough significance that Israel might do something to divert the world’s attention away from them.

“That could, for example, be deciding to attack Rafah,” a reference to Israel’s planned ground assault on the southern Gaza city currently sheltering over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians, an attack which has been condemned around the world.

Once the oral arguments conclude on 26 February, the court will start its deliberations and likely give an opinion in a few months.

“The judges will have heard the oral submissions, and they have access to written statements and comments on written statements since last year, which they have undoubtedly read, which may have also informed them, by the way, on the genocide case as well. The key points to look out for are how far does the court accept some of the arguments that Palestine has made, what kind of majorities or dissenting opinions emerge, and what are the reasons for the dissent,” said Kattan.

“If the court does give a good opinion, a majority opinion, that the occupation, for example, is illegal or that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, for example, and that states have an obligation to… refrain from trading in arms [with Israel] that will then be referred back to the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly will take note of it and then it’ll have to pass a resolution.”

The legal expert pointed out that these resolutions are not formally binding, and if it gets to the UN Security Council, we can expect the US to veto any attempts to enforce international law against Israel. “However, it is possible that some states may take matters into their own hands if the opinion is drafted well. If it’s got a large majority, it would give some states the opportunity to enforce international law themselves.” he said.

These states could contend that the court has said they should not be trading with Israel or with entities that are operating in the occupied territories, Kattan suggested.

“It might give a reason for those states to cut diplomatic relations or to take measures to enforce international law. So, even if it doesn’t come from the UN Security Council level, it’s possible for states to implement sanctions unilaterally. Whether they do so or not, we have to wait and see.”

Regarding the participation of countries in favour of Palestine, Kattan said that it is “testimony to the hard work of Palestinian diplomats, who undoubtedly would have been lobbying their friends to support them in this case.” The case also shows that Israel is “more isolated” than before 7 October, particularly in the Global South.

“Perhaps it is also becoming more isolated with states from areas it considers its friends, such as in Europe,” he added. Initially there was massive sympathy for Israel after the Hamas attacks, continued Kattan, but that has “now dissipated because of the Israeli military operations and attacks in Gaza.”

He asserted that Israel’s war on Gaza has revived the issue of Palestinian statehood and brought it back onto the global agenda. “It has undoubtedly galvanised the tension and reminded everyone that this conflict, although it’s very old, is not finished. It is still there, festering.”

While most states recognise Palestine, there are some like the UK that have already made a legal determination that Palestine is a state, but have withheld formal recognition for political reasons.

“There were some states, for instance, that voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution according Palestine observer status and statehood all the way back in 2012, but withheld from upgrading their relations,” said Kattan. “And now we can see that for some Western countries the idea of recognising Palestine is back on the agenda in connection with debates on how to end the conflict in Gaza, how to give the Palestinian people a political horizon, and how to ensure that the conflict that we are seeing never happens again.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) – One of the most prominent results of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza and its residents, who were cornered in Rafah on the Egyptian border to force them to migrate to Sinai, is the spread of Arab and international awareness and informing the public of the importance of the Palestinian issue, after its decline and marginalisation.

The Trump administration also succeeded, in exchange for gains, in reaching the “Deal of the century”, or the Abraham Accords, to integrate Israel into the Arab environment by normalising and establishing diplomatic relations with the UAE and Bahrain in the heart of the Arabian Gulf, and with Sudan and Morocco. This is at the expense of the Palestinian cause and not for its benefit, and violates the Arab initiative agreed upon by the Arabs at the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002, “Land for Peace”, that is, Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab Territories in exchange for full Arab recognition of Israel and normalising relations with it.

As the war on Gaza turned into a costly war of attrition for both sides and with it entering its fifth month, the war brought the Palestinian cause to the forefront and highlighted the systematic, brutal Israeli behaviour against the Palestinians. It also exposed the crimes committed by the Occupation, which have been documented over 75 years, and put an end to the decline in the status of the Palestinian issue, despite the repeated closing statements issued at Arab summits and meetings, stating that the Palestinian issue remains their central issue.

Today, we are witnessing signs of the expansion of the war with the first round of American retaliation against targets belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Iranian-backed factions in Syria and Iraq and, before that, against the Houthis in Yemen.

In light of this, the US and British foreign ministers announced their idea of recognising a demilitarised Palestinian state as a solution to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and the recurring Gaza wars.

However, these promises, which have been repeated for decades, hit obstacles that are difficult to overcome, starting with the position of Netanyahu and his partners in his government, the most extreme in the history of occupation governments, including the Religious Zionism Party, which is given a biblical religious aspect and which believes in the right to establish the Greater State of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and refuses to demarcate the borders. Netanyahu personally bragged that he rejects the Oslo Accords, 30 years after it was signed between Rabin and Yasser Arafat through the mediation of President Clinton in 1993, which led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu also boasts and publicly reiterates his rejection of the two-state solution because it threatens Israel’s security, providing the example of Hamas’s operation against Israel as the Al-Aqsa Flood. This embarrasses President Biden and his vision of promoting the importance of establishing a Palestinian State to end the conflict.

The challenge for those who promote the two-state solution, which seems to be a mirage is, first, how to reach a ceasefire and end the war of genocide, as well as convince the most extremist government that blatantly and publicly rejects the two-state solution to accept the two-state solution vision.

The important question is: How serious is the American-British proposal? How can the two-state solution be achieved, which continues to be the vision and strategy adopted by successive American administrations? The US State Department spokesman confirmed at the end of January, “We are actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with real security guarantees for Israel, because we do believe that is the best way to bring about lasting peace and security for Israel, for Palestinians and for the region.” US news site, Axios, reported Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, asked the State Department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible US and international recognition of a Palestinian State after the war in Gaza and considering not using its veto to block the UN Security Council.

CIA Director, William Burns, stressed, in an important article in Foreign Affairs magazine, a few days ago, the need for “resurrecting hope for a durable peace that ensures Israel’s security as well as Palestinian statehood and takes advantage of historic opportunities for normalisation with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.”

Guardian News Video: “David Cameron: UK could recognise a Palestinian state before a deal with Israel”

However, Biden’s positions are complicated, by his insistence on refusing to stop the war and providing the Israeli killing machine with weapons and cover. This is despite the differences and disagreements between Tel Aviv and Washington, the increased disputes within the Israeli war government, Biden’s expansion of his war in the region and the role of Congress, along with the House of Representatives, in supporting a bill banning the entry of all members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad Movements into the US. These are all challenges that are difficult to overcome!

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, confirmed that the British government is thinking of recognising the Palestinian State, and that the Palestinians must be given a political horizon to encourage peace in the Middle East. This is an interesting position from the UK, which has a colonial past, the Balfour Declaration and has paved the way for the establishment of the Occupying entity and the division of Palestine.

Meanwhile, President Biden, after a long wait, issued an executive order imposing US Treasury sanctions on 4 settlers involved in violence in the West Bank for threatening the security and interests of the US, as if the problem lies in the violence of the settlers and not in the approach and the American administrations’ empowerment and enablement of Israel’s governments, and especially Netanyahu, the most extremist Prime Minister in the history of the Occupation, to allow groups of settlers to wreak havoc, destruction and abuse on the Palestinians, their property, farms and crops, by destroying and burning them, and even allowing them to kill the Palestinians in the West Bank.

Journalist, Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times, who is close to decision-makers in the US, also promotes and explains a clear doctrine adopted by President Biden, consisting of three tracks. One of those tracks is working to develop an unprecedented American diplomatic initiative to promote a Palestinian State, which would “involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarised Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this State was viable and that it could never threaten Israel. Biden administration officials have been consulting experts inside and outside the US government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take.”

However, the clear truth is that the best that can be expected after marathon negotiations without specifying a time limit is not a fully sovereign State, but rather a “demilitarised Palestinian State” that is preceded by pressures to proceed with normalisation with the Arab environment, especially the biggest prize: Saudi Arabia. This completely reverses the Arab initiative by granting normalisation before the establishment of the alleged Palestinian State, so let us not be fooled by the promotion of the two-state solution illusion.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds on 4 February, 2024

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) – Since 7 October 2023, the relentless Israeli aggression on Gaza has displaced more than 85 per cent of the enclave’s population, with over 27,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children. This displacement has plunged civilians into a dire situation with shortages of food, water and medicines, made worse by the cold weather. In the words of Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, “famine was imminent” and now it is “inevitable”.

At a time when Gaza is going through an extreme humanitarian crisis, including famine, epidemics, and diseases, the abrupt funding cuts by Western liberal democracies to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), amid unproven allegations, contradict the humanitarian values they typically champion. This decision lies contrary to the basic principles of humanity and risks worsening the plight of innocent civilians in Gaza. To date, 18 countries, including the UK, the US and Canada, have suspended aid to UNRWA following Israel’s accusations that a handful of agency workers, of the 30,000 strong workforce in Gaza, were involved in the 7 October attack.

For the past few months, Israel has aggressively adopted the ‘collective punishment’ of the entire community in Gaza through continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid, which is prohibited in all circumstances under International humanitarian law. In October 2023, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called to ‘stop collective punishment’ of the entire population in Gaza. Referring to the aid suspension, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA commissioner-general, said: “It would be immensely irresponsible to sanction an Agency and an entire community it serves because of allegations of criminal acts against some individuals, especially at a time of war, displacement, and political crises in the region.”

Aid suspension to UNRWA and its potential impact

UNRWA isn’t just an organisation; it’s a lifeline for the two million people, over half of whom are children in Gaza. Beyond flashy headlines and unproven allegations, UNRWA is a beacon of hope to war-struck people, providing aid, shelter, food and healthcare in all circumstances. The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for millions of civilians who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. Moreover, the aid cuts significantly threaten its ability to maintain operations, potentially leading to a shutdown and creating an unimaginable humanitarian disaster.

An important factor as to why Israel is razing Gaza to the ground, including schools, hospitals and cultural and religious sites, followed by this aid cut, is to physically and psychologically break the civilians, potentially forcing displacement. Ashok Swain, professor and head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, shared that the current Israeli regime seems to be creating unbearable conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, possibly pushing them to leave, and “a major obstacle in this plan is the presence and work of UN agencies, particularly the UNRWA, in providing humanitarian support to the people of Gaza.”

Aljazeera English Video: “It’s immoral’: UN special rapporteur on UNRWA funding cuts | UpFront”

Additionally, in the ongoing conflict, nearly 136 UNRWA aid workers have been killed, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked, “136 of our colleagues in Gaza have been killed in 75 days —  something we have never seen in UN history,” besides the decision to suspended funding came on the same day as the ICJ’s ruling on potentially genocidal actions by Israel in Gaza. One cannot deny a political motive behind this move, as Israel has been lobbying against it for long. Being the only UN agency to have a specific mandate to provide assistance and protection for registered Palestine refugees, it stands as a threat. Thus, Israel aims to close UNRWA to eliminate the refugee issue, denying the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their land. Noga Arbell, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry official, said in January that, “It will be impossible to win the war if we do not destroy UNRWA, this destruction must begin immediately.” So, all those countries stopping their aid to UNRWA align with a political agenda to undermine the agency and its efforts.

The war in Gaza, entering its fourth month, has caused enormous suffering – many families struggle to find flour, many only eat once a day, and some have even resorted to eating animal feed. As per the International Rescue Committee’s Bob Kitchen: “It is the most intense hunger crisis I have ever seen.” Moreover, Israel is using starvation as a ‘weapon of war,’ which is a war crime. As per the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies” is a prohibited method of warfare.

Geopolitical motives should not hinder the considerations of humanitarian aid. Penalising an entire aid agency and a starving, dying community is akin to a crime against humanity. Countries like Ireland and Norway expressed continued support for UNRWA, highlighting the distinction between individual actions and the agency’s vital role in Gaza.

Instead of cutting crucial funding for those in need, the global community should call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and full humanitarian access. It is high time for the Western nations to shun their double standards, as saving human lives should come above anything else.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment .

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Middle East Monitor

Imperilled, tormented Palestinians in Gaza had little time to celebrate the January 26 order of the International Court of Justice.  In a case brought by South Africa intended to facilitate a ceasefire and ease the suffering of the Gaza populace, Israel received the unwanted news that it had to, among other obligations, ensure compliance with the UN Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza and permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip.

Within hours, Israel, bruised and outraged by a body its officials have decried as anti-Semitic and favourably disposed to Palestinian propaganda, found an excuse to flaunt the ruling.  12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, were accused (not found) by Israel’s intelligence agency, Shin Bet, of involvement in the Hamas attacks of 7 October.

The response from UNRWA was swift.  Contracts were terminated; an investigation was launched, including a full inquiry into allegations made against the organisation.  The Agency’s Commissioner General, Philippe Lazzarini promised, on 27 January, that “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.”

Not content with this, Israel stormily took to the campaign trail hoping to rid Gaza of the UN agency it has despised for years.  UNRWA, after all, is a salutary reminder of Palestinian suffering, dispossession and desperation, its existence a direct result of Israeli foreign policy.  Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, was severe in laying bare his country’s loathing for UNRWA.  “We have been warning for years: UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza,” he stated on Shabbat.  “UNRWA is not the solution – many of its employees are Hamas affiliates with murderous ideologies, aiding in terror activities and preserving its authority.”  Deviously and fiendishly, Katz was dismissing the entire enterprise of aid through a UN outlet as a terroristic extension, rather than the ghastly product of Israel’s own ruthless, generational war against Palestinians.  Leave it to us to oversee matters of aid: we know best.

Powers, many with military ties with Israel and sluggish about holding the Jewish State to account in its Gaza campaign, were relieved by the distraction.  Rather than assessing their own export regime, the grant of licenses in the arms market in gross violation of human rights and the facilitation of crimes against humanity, an excuse to continue and prolong the weapons transfers and assistance to Israel, had presented itself.

Within hours, nine states had added their names to the list suspending allocated aid.  Australia, along with the United States and Canada, rushed to the podium to condemn UNRWA and freeze funding.  The United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland followed.

The measure of rage could now be adjusted and retargeted.  A spokesperson for the UK government was “appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism that the UK government has repeatedly condemned.”  The US State Department was “extremely troubled” and had “temporarily paused additional funding.  Canada was also “deeply troubled by the allegations relating to some UNRWA employees”.

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, despite accepting that UNRWA’s role in conducting “vital, life saving work”, “providing essential services in Gaza directly to those who need it, with more than 1.4 million Palestinians currently sheltering in its own facilities”, felt a suspension of funding was wholly sensible.  This, coming from a minister who never tires about praising international law and its profoundly sacred qualities.

The assessment by Lazzarini was one of dismay and bafflement by the speed at which the funding had been halted.  “These decisions threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region, including and especially in the Gaza Strip.”

Aljazeera English Video: “UN Secretary General meets UNRWA donors: Numerous countries suspend funding of UN agency

The measure could almost be regarded as hysterical, given that a mere 12 individuals had been tarnished from a pool of some 30,000 members.  Johann Soufi, a lawyer and former director of the Agency’s legal office in Gaza, gave this assessment to Agence-France Presse: “Sanctioning UNRWA, which is barely keeping the entire population of Gaza alive, for the alleged responsibility of a few employees, is tantamount to collectively punishing the Gazan population, which is living in catastrophic conditions.”

Australian Greens Senator and defence spokesman, Senator David Shoebridge, also picked up on the grotesque twist the latest stifling of aid to the beleaguered residents of Gaza entailed.  “The one temporary pause [Senator Wong] has been able to achieve is not the bombing or killing, or even weapons exports, it’s providing aid to [Palestinians].”

For Israel, the focus can now shift back to prosecuting the war against Palestinians collectively blanketed for terrorist tendencies.  Meddlesome aid workers can also be put into the mix.  Cut the aid, cut the means of survival.  Along the way, international law can be blithely mocked and ignored by the principles of might.  With grimmest irony, the provisional measures outlined by the ICJ order, which includes increased humanitarian aid to Gaza, are being frustrated by signatories to the UN Genocide Convention. The collective regime of punishment ushered in by Israel’s policy of murderous asphyxiation, and which so concerned South Africa’s legal team, can now continue.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

( Middle East Monitor There is an urgent need to counter the Israeli propaganda that is “repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, accepted without question by the world’s governments.” Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe’s 2017 book Ten Myths About Israel (Verso) does the job admirably. The late John Pilger described Pappe as “Israel’s bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.” How right he was.

A free ebook of
Ilan Pappe’s Ten Myths About Israel can be obtained from the publisher. Click here.

The author looks at the facts of the Palestine-Israel issue; the myths on which Israel was founded; the strategies followed by the Zionists in managing it; and the reasons for the blatant Western bias in supporting Israeli aggression.

Most of the world’s understanding of Palestine’s history is distorted, largely because of the Israeli narrative. “Historical disinformation,” says Pappe, “even of the most recent past, can do tremendous harm.” What he calls “wilful misunderstanding of history” can and does “promote oppression and protect a regime of colonisation and occupation. It is not surprising, therefore, that policies of disinformation continue to the present and play an important part in perpetuating the conflict.”

Myth #1: Palestine was an empty land

That’s what the Zionists said. “A land without a people, for a people without a land,” was the claim. And yet Palestine has been inhabited by the Palestinians for centuries. “Palestine” was a Roman province, and during the Ottoman period from 1517 to 1917 it was a largely Sunni Muslim, rural society. Historian Yonatan Mendel notes that Jews made up between two and five per cent of the population before Zionism reader its ugly head.

However, according to Pappe, anyone reading official Israeli sources will come away with the idea that, “Sixteenth-century Palestine, it appears, was mainly Jewish (there were hardly any Jews there then), and the commercial lifeblood of the region was concentrated in the Jewish communities in these towns.” And that by 1800, “Palestine had become a desert… Every passing year the land became more barren, deforestation increased and farmland turned to desert.” When promoted through an official state website, adds the author, “this fabricated picture is unprecedented.”

Rather than being a desert, Palestine was a thriving Arab society about to enter the twentieth century as a modern society

Many Israeli scholars have challenged this false narrative, including David Grossman, Amnon Cohen and Yehoushua Ben-Arieh. Their research shows that, over the centuries, rather than being a desert, Palestine was a thriving Arab society about to enter the twentieth century as a modern society. The Zionist movement’s colonisation turned its modernisation process into a disaster for the majority of the indigenous people living there.

Myth #2: The Jews were a people without a land

According to Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, the Christian world adopted the idea of the Jews as a nation that must one day return to the Holy Land to fulfil Biblical prophecies about the Second Coming of Jesus and the end of time. Christian Zionism predated political Zionism, which turned it into a Jewish project. The Christian idea was to colonise Palestine and transform it into a Christian entity. This combination of Jewish and Christian motives fed into the issue of the 1917 Balfour Declaration by the British government. To this day, millions of Evangelical Christians in the US in particular are among the most vociferous supporters of the state of Israel. The “need” to facilitate the “return of the exiles” in the Holy Land is an essential part of Christian belief.

Myth #3: Zionism is Judaism

Since its inception in the mid-to-late 19th century, Zionism has been only one inessential expression of Jewish cultural life. According to Pappe, “It was born out of two impulses among Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. The first was a search for safety within a society that refused to integrate Jews as equals and that occasionally persecuted them, either through legislation or through riots organised or encouraged by the powers that be as a diversion from economic crises or political upheavals. The second impulse was a wish to emulate other new national movements mushrooming in Europe at the time, during what historians called the European Spring of Nations.”

Hence, those Jews sought to transform Judaism from a religion into a political ideology and they proposed two things: the redefinition of Judaism as a national movement, and the preference to colonise Palestine. The first phase of Zionism culminated in the actions and works of Theodor Herzl, an atheist journalist who had no connection to Jewish religious life, but who concluded that widespread anti-Semitism made assimilation impossible in Europe, and that a Jewish state was the best solution to the Jewish problem. Palestine wasn’t his first choice as the location of this state.

Prominent rabbis and figures in European Jewish communities rejected the new approach. Religious leaders saw Zionism as a form of secularisation and modernisation, while secular Jews feared that the new ideas would raise questions about Jews’ loyalty to their nation-states and thus increase anti-Semitism. Reform Judaism also rejected the idea of redefining Judaism as nationalism and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Myth #4: Zionism is not colonialism

Western settler-colonialism, which colonised the Americas, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand, was motivated by the desire to seize territory, marketed by religious right, and carried out by wiping out the indigenous population. Zionism is also a settler-colonial movement, and the Palestinian national movement is anti-colonial.

By 1945, Zionism had attracted more than half a million settlers to a country that already had a population of about two million. The only way for settlers to expand their hold on the land and ensure an exclusive demographic majority was to remove the indigenous people from their homeland. Palestine was never entirely Jewish demographically, and although Israel controls all of it politically by various means today, the Zionist state continues to colonise the land and build new settlements in the Galilee, the Negev and the West Bank.

Myth #5: The Palestinians left their homeland voluntarily in 1948

The idea that the Palestinians left their homeland voluntarily is another myth that Pappe challenges. “The Zionist leadership and ideologues could not envision a successful implementation of their project without getting rid of the native population, either through agreement or by force. More recently, after years of denial, Zionist historians such as Anita Shapira have accepted that their heroes, the leaders of the Zionist movement, seriously contemplated transferring the Palestinians.”

Population “transfer” is an essential principle of Zionist colonisation. In 1937, David Ben-Gurion told the Zionist assembly: “In many parts of the country it will not be possible to settle without transferring the Arab fellahin. With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

The Israeli government, though, insists that Palestinians left their land as refugees because their leaders, and the leaders of the Arab world, told them to leave Palestine before the Arab armies invaded and kicked out the Jews, after which they could return. However, notes Pappe, “This is a myth invented by the Israeli foreign ministry.” Moreover, “The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians can in no way be justified as a ‘punishment’ for their rejecting a UN peace plan that was devised without any consultation with the Palestinians themselves.” He goes on to point out that, “From our present vantage point, there is no escape from defining the Israeli actions in the Palestinian countryside as a war crime. Indeed, as a crime against humanity.”

Myth #6: The June 1967 War was a war of “No Choice”

The narrative accepted by Israel is that the 1967 war forced Israel to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and keep it in custody until the Arab world, or the Palestinians, were willing to make peace with the self-styled Jewish state. Many believe that the 1967 war was one in which Israel resisted attack and occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in self-defence. (Yes, the “self-defence” narrative has been around a long time.) In reality, it was Israel that launched the first strike against Egypt in 1967. Prime Minister Menachem Begin said later: “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

The seizure of the West Bank in particular was a Zionist goal before 1948, and fits into the Zionist project. The intention has always been to seize the most Palestinians land as possible with the fewest Palestinians it as possible.

“After the occupation, the new ruler confined the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in an impossible limbo: they were neither refugees nor citizens—they were, and still are, citizenless inhabitants,” writes Pappe. “They were inmates, and in many respects still are, of a huge prison in which they have no civil and human rights and no impact on their future. The world tolerates this situation because Israel claims—and the claim was never challenged until recently—that the situation is temporary and will continue only until there is a proper Palestinian partner for peace. Not surprisingly, such a partner has not been found. At the time of writing, Israel is still incarcerating a third generation of Palestinians by various means and methods, and depicting these mega-prisons as temporary realities that will change once peace comes to Israel and Palestine.”

Myth #7: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East

Until 1967, the Palestinians who were able to hold on to their homes and land in 1948 and became Israeli citizens represented 20 per cent of the population but were subjected to “military rule based on draconian British Mandatory emergency regulations that denied the Palestinians any basic human or civil rights. Local military governors were the absolute rulers of the lives of these citizens: they could devise special laws for them, destroy their houses and livelihoods, and send them to jail whenever they felt like it.” Pappe notes further: “This state of military terror is exemplified by the Kafr Qasim massacre of October 1956, when, on the eve of the Sinai operation, forty-nine Palestinian citizens were killed by the Israeli army. The authorities alleged that they were late returning home from work in the fields when a curfew had been imposed on the village. This was not the real reason, however. Later proofs show that Israel had seriously considered the expulsion of Palestinians from the whole area called the Wadi Ara and the Triangle in which the village sat.”

The Basic Law of return grants automatic Israeli citizenship to every Jew in the world, wherever they were born. “This law in particular is a flagrantly undemocratic one,” explains Pappe, “for it was accompanied by a total rejection of the Palestinian right of return — recognised internationally by the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948. This rejection refuses to allow the Palestinian citizens of Israel to unite with their immediate families or with those who were expelled in 1948. Denying people the right of return to their homeland, and at the same time offering this right to others who have no connection to the land, is a model of undemocratic practice.”

In its 2015 report, Amnesty International accused Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, of “unlawful killings of Palestinian civilians, including children.” They “detained thousands of Palestinians who protested against or otherwise opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention [with neither charge nor trial]. Torture and other ill-treatment remained rife and were committed with impunity. The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, further tightening restrictions amid an escalation of violence from October, which included attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinians and apparent extrajudicial executions by Israeli forces. Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacked Palestinians and their property with virtual impunity. The Gaza Strip remained under an Israeli military blockade that imposed collective punishment on its inhabitants. The authorities continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank and inside Israel, particularly in Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting their residents.”

These are not the actions of a democracy. And yet the so-called democratic world not only allows Israel to act with impunity, but also supports it unquestioningly.

Myth #8: The Oslo mythologies

On September 13, 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation signed a declaration of principles, known as the Oslo Accords. “We should acknowledge that the Oslo process was not a fair and equal pursuit of peace, but a compromise agreed to by a defeated, colonised people,” notes Pappe. “As a result, the Palestinians were forced to seek solutions that went against their interests and endangered their very existence. The same argument can be made about the debates concerning the ‘two-states solution’ that was offered in Oslo. This offer should be seen for what it is: partition under a different wording. Even in this scenario, although the terms of the debate appear different, Israel would not only decide how much territory it was going to concede but also what would happen in the territory it left behind.”

In the original agreements, there was an Israeli promise that major issues — the fate of Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements — would be negotiated when the five-year transitional period ended. They became the infamous “final status issues”. However, when Benjamin Netanyahu became Israeli prime minister for the first time in 1996, he opposed the Oslo Accords, and the process was stopped.

Myth #9: Gaza mythologies

The Gaza Strip embodies the issue of Palestine in general, as there are now more than 2.3 million Palestinians living there in the most miserable conditions, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world. They have been subjected by Israel to repeated bombings and military incursions since 2006.

There are three myths that mislead public opinion about the causes of the ongoing violence in Gaza:

• “Hamas is a terrorist movement”: In fact, the Islamic Resistance Movement — known by its Arabic acronym Hamas — is a legitimate liberation movement, and it is one of the main actors on the ground. From its foundation in 1987 until now, it has been engaged in an existential struggle against the West, Israel and the Palestinian Authority controlled by its main, secular rival, Fatah. It announced its acceptance of a complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories with a ten-year truce before any future solution could be discussed. Although it won a majority in the Legislative Council election in 2006 and formed the Palestinian government, it faced strong resistance from Israel and Fatah, and was expelled from the West Bank and confined to the Gaza Strip. Hamas rejects the Oslo Accords and recognition of Israel and declares its commitment to armed struggle, which is legitimate under international law.
• “The unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was a gesture of peace that was met with hostility and violence.” In fact, this “disengagement” was part of the strategy aimed at tightening Israel’s grip on the West Bank and turning the Gaza Strip into a huge prison that can be monitored and guarded from the outside. It was also a strategic deployment that enabled Israel to respond harshly to Hamas, with disastrous consequences for the residents of Gaza.
• The third myth is Israel’s claim that its actions since 2006 have all been part of a war of “self-defence” (there’s that claim again) against terrorism. In fact, this “war” is part of the “slow” genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza which has been happening for decades, and has only recently become both very obvious and murderous in every way possible.

Myth #10: The two-state solution is the only way forward

In the 2000 Camp David talks, Israel proposed the establishment of a small Palestinian state with Abu Dis as its capital, but without significant dismantling of its own illegal settlements and no right of return for the refugees. Not surprisingly, the negotiations collapsed. Hence, the Oslo Accords have become a destructive factor for Palestinian society, instead of bringing peace. The agreement has become irrelevant to the reality on the ground. More settlements have been built, and more collective punishments have been and are imposed on the Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories. Even if you believe in the two-state solution, a tour of the West Bank or Gaza Strip would have you convinced of the words of Israeli researcher, Meron Benvenisti, who wrote that Israel had created irreversible facts on the ground: the two-state solution was thus killed by Israel.

Looking to the future, the claim that the two-state solution is the only way forward is another myth. Any criticism of this myth is described as anti-Semitism. However, the opposite is true. The two-state solution is based on the idea that the Jewish state is the best solution to the Jewish “problem”, that the Jews must live in Palestine and not anywhere else, and that Israel and Judaism are the same thing and that any criticism directed at it is criticism of Jews and Judaism. This argument implies that Jews are incapable of being citizens of any other country; or will always be seen as “not quite one of us” by citizens of the countries in which they are born, which is both an anti-Semitic trope and very dangerous.

Paradoxically, many of the main supporters of Israel are those in the West who are on the right and far-right politically. In some cases, they are on the extreme right; the political heirs of the Nazis who murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust. The irony is lost on the increasingly far-right extremists who are now ministers in the most extreme Israel government ever. As things stand, therefore, it seems that nothing will prevent the Zionist state from completing its colonisation of the West Bank and continue its siege and genocide in Gaza.

Conclusion: Israel is a settler colony

Israel is a settler-colonial state, and is not only colonising Palestinian land, but also driving out and killing the indigenous population. The Palestinians are dehumanised by Israeli officials and deprived of their most basic rights. The Zionist state of Israel is adjudged to have passed the legal threshold to be classed as an apartheid entity by many, including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The Zionist quest for “Greater Israel” is built upon the need for more land with as few Palestinians on it as possible. It is this that fuels the conflict, not legitimate Palestinian resistance to the occupation of their land. “The exceptionalism enjoyed by Israel, and before that by the Zionist movement, makes a mockery of any Western critique of human rights abuses in the Arab world,” says Pappe.

Years have been wasted talking about the two-state solution. However, Israeli Jews and the world at large need to be persuaded that, “When you found a state — even one with a thriving culture, a successful high-tech industry, and a powerful military — on the basis of dispossessing another people, your moral legitimacy will always be questioned. Confining the question of legitimacy only to the territories Israel occupied in 1967 will never resolve the issue at the heart of the problem,” even if Israel ends the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip tomorrow. It will simply turn into a conflict of a different kind.

It is important for the world, especially Jews who are inclined towards Israel (and not all Jews are Zionists, just as not all Zionists are Jews), to understand what happened in Palestine after World War Two. Zionism was allowed to fulfil its colonial project because the creation of a Jewish state offered Europe, including what was then West Germany, an easy way out of the worst excess of anti-Semitism ever seen. Israel was the first to announce its recognition of the new Germany in exchange for receiving a lot of money and was given carte blanche to transform all of Palestine into Israel. Just as Theodor Herzl had argued to the anti-Semites ruling Europe in the late 19th, early 20th century, Zionism presented itself as a solution to anti-Semitism, and this allowed it to develop and continue to colonise Palestine.

A just solution to the Palestine issue will not be achieved unless myths stop being treated as facts. Palestine was not empty, nor was it a homeland for the Jews. It was colonised and its people were dispossessed in 1948 and forced to leave their land and their homeland. Colonised nations, even under the UN Charter, have the right to struggle for liberation by any means, including “armed struggle”. The successful end to this conflict lies in the establishment of an inclusive, democratic state wherein all of its citizens have equal rights. Abandoning the myths and facing reality is an important first step forward. Or, as Prof. Ilan Pappe has said often, we need to “de-Zionise” the state of Israel.

A free copy of Ilan Pappe’s Ten Myths About Israel can be obtained from the publisher here. Click.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The first sentence was omitted above. ‘Israeli’ was substituted for ‘Zionist’ in the second sentence. The parenthetical phrase “(there were hardly any Jews there then)” was added.

“With every passing day, children and families in the Gaza Strip face increased risk of death from the sky, disease from lack of safe water and deprivation from lack of food,” UNICEF Special Representative on Children in Palestine, Lucia Elmi, said at a UN press conference.

She said for two remaining Israeli children still held hostage in Gaza, their nightmare that began on 7 October continues, and “they must be unconditionally and safely released”.

“And the situation continues to deteriorate rapidly; UNICEF last week spoke of the ‘triple threat’ stalking children in the Gaza Strip: conflict, disease, and malnutrition,” said Elmi.

UNICEF’s formidable challenges

The UN children’s agency representative said UNICEF is doing everything it can but faces a formidable challenge addressing the issues.

The National News: “Hundreds of children becoming amputees amid Israel-Gaza war”

“Children in Gaza are running out of time, while most of the lifesaving humanitarian aid they desperately need remains stranded between insufficient access corridors and protracted layers of inspections,” said Elmi.

She asserted that mounting needs and a constrained response is a formula for a disaster of epic proportions.

Thousands of children have already died, and thousands more will quickly follow if urgent bottlenecks are not immediately fixed, said Elmi, as she warned that nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip.

“The intense bombardment and ongoing conflict in densely populated urban areas threatens the lives of civilians and humanitarian aid workers,” she said.

The ongoing bombardment is also impeding the delivery of desperately needed assistance.

“When I was in Gaza last week, we tried for six days to get fuel and medical supplies to the North, and for six days, movement restrictions prevented us from travelling,” said Elmi.

Her colleagues in Gaza endured this same challenge for weeks before each arrival.

“Families in the north desperately need this fuel to operate water and sanitation infrastructure. They are still waiting.”

Elmi said that the UN still needs to get sufficient aid into Gaza and that on the preceding day, just 139 trucks entered.

She said that the inspection process needs to be faster and more predictable, as some desperately needed materials are restricted.

The materials include generators to power water facilities and hospitals and plastic pipes to repair badly damaged water infrastructure.

“In addition, once aid gets in, there are significant challenges to distributing it across the Gaza Strip, particularly to the North and recently also the middle area,” said Elmi.

“Frequent communications blackouts make it extremely challenging to coordinate the distribution of aid and let people know how to access it and when.”

Elmi said that the congestion in the south due to the massive displacement and the intense needs meant continued incidents of people in despair stopping trucks and trying to get their hands on whatever they can.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian group, Hamas, on 7 October, killing at least 23,210 Palestinians and injuring 59,167 others, mostly women and children, according to health authorities.

Around 1,200 Israelis believed to have been killed in the initial Hamas attack . . .

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

According to the Times of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is discreetly exploring the acceptance of thousands of migrants from Gaza, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being one of the countries under consideration. “Congo will be willing to take in migrants,” said a senior source in the security cabinet, “and we’re in talks with others.”

During a Likud faction meeting on Monday, Netanyahu announced that he is involved actively in arranging for the voluntary migration of Gazans to other countries. “Our problem is finding countries that are willing to absorb Gazans,” he said, “and we are working on it.”

Addressing Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon’s claim that, “The world is already discussing the possibilities of voluntary migration,” the prime minister acknowledged the challenge of finding countries willing to accept Gazans, but emphasised ongoing efforts in that regard. Despite these discussions, the idea of voluntary migration has faced widespread rejection from the international community.

I don’t know why but it seems the lesson that certain Israeli people seem to draw from the Holocaust is « be more like the Nazis ». Until now I would have refrained from such a statement. Until now. https://t.co/oml0yhTpAh

— Circassian.eth 🦇🔊 (@kingofethereum) January 3, 2024

Posting from X added by Informed Comment

The US State Department yesterday slammed recent statements by far-right Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir advocating the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza, calling the rhetoric “inflammatory and irresponsible”, Reuters has reported.

The comments from the ministers appeared to underscore fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to forcibly displace and ethnically cleanse the occupied Palestinian territories, just as Zionist terrorist gangs did in historic Palestine in 1948.

While reports have emerged of offers for Arab forces and governments to administer Gaza, such as the Palestinian Authority or a combined force of Arab states, the predominant view on the part of Israel’s far-right government has been for Israel itself to re-occupy the Strip, expel its Palestinian population and resettle the land with Israelis and Jewish settlers.

Hindustan Times: “Israel’s Ploy To Send Gazans To Congo Amid War With Hamas; Why NATO Nations Are Fuming | Report”

Israel is continuing with its brutal military offensive in Gaza despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week-old war. The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October against Israeli military bases and settlements in the vicinity of Gaza, during which 1,139 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed . . . The operation was in response to “daily Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people and their sanctities,” said Hamas, notably Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem. Around 240 Israelis were captured during the operation, 110 of whom have already been exchanged for some of the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel.

Palestinian health authorities say that more than 22,000 people have been killed in Israeli air and artillery strikes since 7 October, most of them children and women. Israeli bombs have laid much of the occupied Palestinian territory to waste. Thousands more Palestinians are buried under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure. Nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times. A humanitarian catastrophe is engulfing Gaza, with famine looming.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. A post from X has been added and the title has been slightly modified, and a phrase has been deleted in accordance with IC house style.

Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) = “Bread in those days was like gold.”

These were the words of a survivor of the siege of Leningrad, arguably one of the darkest chapters of World War II and a haunting reminder of the horrific toll exacted upon populations deliberately deprived of essential resources.

The use of mass starvation as a weapon of war echoes a historical barbarity that humanity should have long transcended. This egregious strategy, reminiscent of past sieges where starvation was deliberately employed as a tool of warfare, highlights the dire consequences of collective punishment on innocent civilians.

In Gaza, Israel has been deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and other essentials to the besieged enclave’s 2.2 million people.

While Gaza has been under Israeli siege since 2007, on 9 October 2023 Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant declared a total blockade on Gaza as Israeli forces launched a full-scale war on the Palestinian territory.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch described the Israeli government’s use of the collective starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the besieged Gaza Strip as a war crime.

“International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, prohibits the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” the report says, citing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court established after the horrors of World War II.

Amidst this turmoil, Gaza’s local cuisine has emerged as a testament to resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity, with many utilising locally available ingredients to persevere despite limited resources.

Flour has been the ultimate treasure as bread remains at the heart of survival in Gaza. Palestinian staples such as olive oil, za’atar and duqqa with their long shelf-life have also been a lifeline for many who have been able to store or acquire them.

However, as Israeli forces continue razing agricultural areas, destroying bakeries, food warehouses, flour mills as well as roads used to transport humanitarian aid, the reliance on locally sourced produce serves only as a partial buffer for a ‘lucky few’ against the acute scarcity imposed by the siege and large-scale bombing campaign and ground invasion. Even preparing meals requires finding alternatives to cooking gas, like firewood or cardboard.

TRT World: “Gaza faces ‘catastrophic hunger’ warns UN”

Over 80 per cent of the besieged Strip’s population has been internally displaced and their ability to move and seek sustenance has been severely restricted.

According to a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the proportion of households in Gaza affected by high levels of acute food insecurity is the largest ever recorded by the IPC initiative globally. According to the UN-backed report, more than half a million people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, are already at starvation levels.

“It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry,” the World Food Programme’s chief economist, Arif Husain, has said. In early December, the WFP reported that nine out of 10 people in Gaza cannot eat every day and skip meals for extended periods of time.

The deliberate restriction of essential supplies, including food, water, and medical aid, accentuates the plight of a populace already grappling with the harrowing realities of a full-scale offensive. In just two months, up to 20,000 Palestinians have already been killed,  70 per cent of them women and children.

The international community’s moral obligation is to condemn such egregious tactics and prioritise diplomatic efforts to not only impose a ceasefire, but to further end the siege on Gaza once military activities have ceased, ensure unimpeded access to humanitarian aid, and seek a lasting resolution that upholds the dignity and rights of civilians trapped in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

This woeful statement underscores Netanyahu’s blinkered determination to exact maximum carnage and an unwillingness to engage in diplomacy.

Foremost, this war has forced the most exorbitant price on civilians in Gaza. The death toll, mainly comprising women and children, has exceeded 20,000. According to Middle East Monitor, there are more than 23,000 orphans in Gaza. These astounding figures merely scrape the surface of human suffering. The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) has warned of a looming famine as starvation permeates the Gaza Strip.

There have been reports of civilians massacred after being rounded up in fields, as well as point-blank shootings of women and children seeking shelter in UN schools. The iniquitous objectives of this war clearly extend beyond eliminating Hamas.

The premise that fighting must continue to ensure Israel’s security is deceptive and counterintuitive. Seeds are being planted today in future generations who will likely seek vengeance. Netanyahu is sacrificing the lives of young, highly impressionable Israeli soldiers and hostages whose plight has become secondary at best, as well as prospects of a peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.

It is lamentable that not even the UN Security Council has been able to demand a ceasefire. Those directly responsible for the carnage, as well as those who intercepted calls for a ceasefire, will not be forgotten. Future election results will reverberate opinions formed from this war. The clock is ticking for those on the wrong side of history. Israel’s Military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi further echoed Netanyahu’s stance that Israel’s war on Hamas will continue “for many months”.

To envisage Gaza in three months, if Israeli aggression persists unperturbed, is unfathomable. The death toll would exceed 50,000 from air and ground strikes, disease and starvation. The Gaza Strip would need to be rebuilt from scratch, and it is extremely doubtful that Israel would foot the bill. Rebuilding would take years, especially as construction materials are blocked from entering the Strip, but would instead fall in the hands of the European Union to fund. Aid agencies would invariably provide band-aid solutions until the next flare-up whilst the UN appeases Israel against a hostile backdrop from the Israeli government, who feel unfairly criticised.

Aljazeera English: “Southern Gaza operation Israel expanding operations around Khan Younis”

At least 40 per cent of the population in Gaza comprises children under 18 years of age. Prior to 7 October, unemployment was already extremely high, linked to restrictions imposed by the siege. Disenfranchisement was pervasive. How will children in Gaza recover physically and psychologically to restore hope?

Israel argues it must dismantle tunnels and demolish the ordnance of Hamas. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is handing out guns to its own civilian population, like lollies to children. It should be noted that tunnels served as a lifeline for Gazans under siege during peaceful stretches between hostilities. They enabled a passageway for construction and goods otherwise prevented from crossing into Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would have to knock on every door in Gaza to locate all Hamas affiliates. It is an insurmountable task to identify the political persuasion and ideology of more than two million individuals at a glance. The IDF tragically mistook the identity of three of its own hostages for Hamas fighters, which resulted in their untimely demise. Additionally, Hamas is not confined to Gaza – will Israel seek to assassinate all Hamas leaders abroad? Already, this war has trickled over to Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, drawing in international players to the Red Sea.

It has stirred global outrage. How much longer will unequivocal support be granted to Israel in favour of averting a broader regional conflict or even World War III?

Netanyahu and his cabinet are fuelled by vengeance; it is like watching inconsolable toddlers throwing tantrums, but in this case, the consequences are irreversible and far-reaching. No voice of reason is capable of harnessing Israel as it unleashes its deadly rampage. Indigenous Palestinians are being nudged into the desert. Israel is attempting to rip the land from under the feet of Gazans or bury them beneath the soil.

When US President Joe Biden warned Netanyahu against making the same mistakes as the US in Iraq prior to the ground incursion, an opportunity existed to take heed. This fell on deaf ears and Biden cow-towed by supplying endless weapons. As war rages, with no foreseeable end in sight, 2024 and the future look bleak.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.