[Prefatory Note: This post consists four journalistic pieces that were initially published in April and May leading up to the fourth in the sequence of massive military operations against Gaza in each instance falsely presented as ‘defensive.’ These operations resulted in large casualties and were further justified as ‘counter-terrorism’because the alleged target was Hamas, a terrorist organization. Somehow, this latest attack on Gaza was more fairly reported in the Western press, and let to the most convincing show of Palestinian unity in a period of crisis. It also was an event that weakened Netanyahu’s hold on power, not because of objections to his hardline policies, but due to distaste for his personality and character, and a coalition is poised to form a new government awaiting only confirmation by the Knesset on June 9th.]
IDF Operation ‘Guardian of the Walls’: Prelude, Aftermath, Prospects
- Responses to Questions from Daniel Falcone (May 11, 2021)
1) Why is it that American politicians cannot say the words ‘Israeli apartheid
As an international crime, apartheid is a collective crime against a distinct race, that is one step down in severity from
genocide. There is a major distinction. As the South African antecedent experience illustrates, apartheid is reversible, although the material and psychological harms suffered by its victims is not. As death is the core of genocide, it is as a practical matter irreversible, and its legacy lingers as the instance of the Holocaust illustrate. In fact, Israeli apartheid may be partly understood as an unintended consequence of the Holocaust. Israel probably could not have been successfully established without widespread international support, which would not have been so forthcoming without the shame of liberal guilt of the West in doing so little to oppose the extreme antisemitism and racism of Nazi Germany, including closing their doors to Jewish refugees.
In any event, the Palestinian people were made to pay the price of Nazi wrongdoing in the form of the imposition of a non-Palestinian state in their homeland at the very time when European colonialism was unraveling elsewhere in the world. In such a setting it was to be expected that Palestinian society would resist, and that Israel’s security would depend on effective means of repression. Such an interaction was accentuated by the characteristics of the Zionist Project that sought a Jewish state that was governed in accordance with democratic principles. Given the premise of such ethnic politics, this induced an ethos of ethnic cleansing to ensure stable Jewish demographic control of the state in what had been Palestine. It also meant discriminatory treatment of immigration and residency, denying Palestinians basic rights while giving Jews many privileges based on identity alone. Such discrimination is crudely exposed in the grant to Jews worldwide of an unrestricted right of return and immediate access to Israeli citizenship could
American mainstream political arenas and media are frightened and intimidated by the prospect of being labeled as antisemitic. The widely relied upon IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Anniversary) definition of antisemitism would easily result in any allegation of apartheid being treated as proof positive of antisemitism. This is so, despite respected studies concluding that Israel’s practices and policies satisfy the definition of apartheid as set forth in the 1973 UN International Convention on Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. And despite the Rome Statute (2002), the treaty governing the operations of the International Criminal Court regarding in Article 7(h) apartheid as one type of crime against humanity.
This inhibition on describing apartheid as ‘apartheid’ has been eroded by two 2021 reports confirming the apartheid allegation. The first report is by B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights NGO, that characterizes Israeli apartheid as the imposition of Jewish dominance upon the Palestinian people in the territory governed by Israel, that is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea that encompasses both Israel proper and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. (This is Apartheid, 12 Jan. 2021) The second report by Human Rights Watch reaches the apartheid conclusion after an exhaustive examination of systematic Israeli racial discrimination and reliance on inhuman measures resulting in Palestinian victimization in furtherance of the Zionist Project of maintaining a Jewish state. (A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, 27 April 2021) Back in 2017 I co-authored a report with Virginian Tilley, under UN auspices (Economic and Social Commission for West Asia or ESCWA) that investigated the apartheid allegation and concluded that Israeli practices and policies were an instance of apartheid, which we felt was best understood in relation to the Palestinian people (including refugees and exiles) rather than confined to territory. (Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,
March 2017)
2) How, in your estimation, will Biden respond to the “Jerusalem crisis?”
On the basis of past behavior and the initial statements of close advisors, it is most likely that Biden visors will call for calm, while making one-sided and unconditional criticisms of the rockets and artillery shells from Gaza fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as ‘provocations’ and ‘escalations’ of the underlying conflict. The one-sidedness is almost certain to be underscored by refraining from any criticism of Israeli responses, which are almost certain to be disproportionate in terms of casualties, devastation, and firepower.
The one-sidedness will be further highlighted by the absence of direct reference to Israeli provocations in Jerusalem such as right-wing settlers marching through East Jerusalem shouting ‘death to the Arabs’ or municipal plans to expel a series of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem on the basis of flimsy legal pretexts. The admitted goal is to prepare the way for further Jewish settlements, which is regarded by almost every Palestinian as a continuation of the ethnic cleansing that began in 1947, and has occurred periodically in 74 ensuing years. The Palestinian steadfastness (sumud) in Sheikh Jarrar is epitomized by their slogan ‘we will not be erased.”
Biden places a high priority on sustaining a bipartisan image in the conduct of foreign policy, especially with respect to Israeli policies. He has already indicated that the United States will accept Trump’s unlawful initiative of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, will not question the unlawful annexing of the Syrian Golan Heights, and applauding the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries so heralded as triumphant diplomatic achievements during the last stage of the Trump presidency.
Although there is some friction from a small group of Democrats in Congress resulting from such an imbalanced approach, it is strongly endorsed by both political parties and by the powerful lobbying influence of AIPAC. Leading Biden foreign policy representatives have made clear that the $3.8 billion military aid package will not be affected by negative findings in the annual country reports of the State Department, which signals a green light for Netanyahu’s aggressive approach to relations with the Palestinians.
3) The media still repeats in the passive voice, “21 killed by Israel’s Retaliatory strikes”. Has any dimension of the press coverage improved however in your estimation?
There is a subtle change in the coverage of the liberal print media, as highlighted by the New York Times and Washington Post. Instead, of reporting only Palestinian violence as objectionable there is more of a tendency to place nominal blame for periodic crises on both parties. I regard this as conveying a distorting image of symmetrical responsibility shared equally by Palestine and Israel while overlooking the structural realities of gross inequality arising from Israeli oppression and expanding territorial claims. It is always deceptive to treat the oppressor and the oppressed as if equal. As here, the oppressor acts contrary to applicable international law and elementary morality while the oppressed is countering by exercising rights of resistance and suffering the deprivation of basic rights. Of course, the tactics of resistance should be scrutinized by reference to legal and moral constraints, but without losing sight of overwhelming structures of dominance and the far greater harm done by state violence than by the violence of resistance.
4) Just hours ago, it was reported that “Israel launches airstrikes after rockets fired from Gaza in day of escalation.” This headline conveys that the situation is somehow symmetrical and the media’s interest in maintaining a false balance. Is this a correct observation?
As my last response suggests, one of the worst flaws in liberal journalism is to treat asymmetries as if symmetrical. Such a practice has been notorious in relation to the so-called ‘peace process’ or Oslo diplomacy where the Palestinians are made to share equal responsibility with the Israelis. This is so despite Israel making clear that its acceptance of ‘peace’ with the Palestinian people depends on Palestine giving up its inalienable right of self-determination as well as claims to having its capital in Jerusalem or challenges to extensive Israeli armed settlements unlawfully established.
5) I have a friend who recently wrote, “Israel, as an ethnostate is [on the verge of] committing suicide.” This in reaction to May 7th’s headline “Palestinians, Israel police clash at Al-Aqsa mosque; 53 hurt”. What kind of political consequences do you perceive the Israelis to suffer?
There is an ambiguity in your friend’s assertion of Israel being on the verge of committing suicide. Is this because Israel is encountering difficulty in the enforcement of its claims as an ethnocracy to occupy all of the ethno-religious space? Or is it because Israel has been compelled to challenge the red line of Islamic identity, by forcibly entering Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, attacking and injuring hundreds of Muslim worshipers, thereby threatening what it sought to achieve by the normalization agreements. Time will tell.
It remains to be seen what this latest flareup will produce by way of effects. One alternative is a Third Intifada that is sustained sufficiently to uphold claims to preserve the Palestinian identity of East Jerusalem. Another alternative is for Israel to mount a massive attack on Gaza in response to the 300 rockets that have allegedly targeted Jerusalem and southern Israel in the vicinity of Ashkelon and Ashdod in recent days of a similar or greater intensity to such prior attacks as in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014. With the West, especially the U.S. singling out the rockets from Gaza, despite the far greater human injury inflicted on the Palestinians in the Jerusalem incidents, the scene is set for Israeli violence in Gaza to be treated as ‘defensive’ or even as ‘self-defense.’
The unresolved Israeli domestic political turmoil is not to be discounted as an influence, tempted Israeli escalation. Netanyahu is thought to have better chances of surviving as Israel’s leader if the security agenda again becomes prominent.’
(2) Jerusalem: Bloody Polarization
The events of the past week revealed the deep fissures of the Israeli
Apartheid state. Right-wing Israeli extremists, referred to ‘Israeli nationalists’ by most
Zionist media, staged a demonstration some days ago that featured the slogan ‘death to the Arabs.’ Israeli security forces countered by attacking the Palestinian resisters, wounding hundreds, and reportedly using non-lethal weapons to inflict maximum injuries, with many head wounds reported, including eyes shot out.
In the background were fanatical efforts in April and early May by Israeli settlers to Judaize the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, evicting four Palestinian families. The Israeli High Court deferred ruling on these controversial moves for a month in light of the tensions in the city.
This riotous atmosphere was further inflamed when Israeli security personnel forced their entry to Al-Asqa Mosque compound where Muslim worshippers were present in large numbers on the last Friday of Ramadan. More injuries resulted as well as the defiling of the third holiest Islamic site in the world. Jordan called the Israeli behavior ‘barbaric’ and the UAE objected officially despite the recent normalization agreements. The magnitude of this interference with religious observance have led some to call the pre-Gaza encounter the ‘Ramadan Intifada.’
The latest episode is associated with the march route celebrating the unlawful annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 War, coupled with Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the expanded city limits of Jerusalem now that Israel controlled the entire city. The Knesset established May 12 as Jerusalem Day to acknowledge the unification of the city under its control, supposedly heeding the words of Psalm 122: “Built-up Jerusalem is like a city that was jointed together.” On the advice of Israeli security forces, backed by Benny Gantz, the Defense Minister, the proposed route of the march was revised to exclude passage through the Damascus Gate, which was regarded as a flashpoint, likely to provoke renewed Palestinian resistance and Israeli police violence. At the last moment, the Israeli authorities bowed to international pressure and redirected the settler demonstrations away from the Damascus Gate, which would assuredly have resulted in confrontations between unarmed Palestinian
Youth and violent settlers alone among West Bank residents permitted to carry arms.
This is in the spirit of Netanyahu’s response to the mayhem, which is to say that Jerusalem is our capital and we will do want we want in the city. This signals an acceptance of the legitimacy of the settler violent efforts to push for further the ethnic cleansing of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem through eviction notices and intimidation based on discriminatory Israeli laws and thuggery as to Palestinian residency and property rights.
Netanyahu, speaking on TV at an event celebrating Jerusalem Day, defiantly voiced support of settler claims and of Israeli security behavior in violently suppressing Palestinian oppositional activity and Ramadan worship. “We firmly reject the pressure not to build in Jerusalem. To my regret, this pressure has been increasing of late,”
“I say also to the best of our friends: Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and just as every nation builds in its capital and builds up its capital, we also have the right to build in Jerusalem and to build up Jerusalem. That is what we have done and that is what we will continue to do.”
I also take note of the silence of the UN, which once again fails to uphold its responsibilities for Israeli compliance with International Humanitarian Law as embodied in the Fourth Geneva Convention governing Belligerent Occupation.
U.S. officials, including Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, calls for calm of both sides, which a meaningless whisper in the face crisis conditions prevailing in Jerusalem.
(3) Daniel Falcone Questions (June 3, 2021
- Can you comment on the US role in the ousting of Netanyahu?
The U.S. Government while vocal in denouncing leaders of rival countries, is discreet when it to friends, above all Israel. There are undoubtedly some private conversations
among influential persons in both countries, suggesting that sustaining friendly
relations would be easier without the belligerent discourse and political style of Netanyahu. Other Israelis are as resolutely right-wing but less confrontational, and one suspects that the Biden Administration would rather try its luck with a post-Neetanyahu leadership, no matter what its outlook on such questions as settlements, a state for Palestine, or a nuclear deal with Iran.
2) What is the game plan for the Israeli government moving forward?
It appears that if this so-called center/right coalition headed by Yair Lapid and Naphtali Bennett takes over the leadership of Israel for the next four years, it will not change its position on relations with Occupied Palestine or with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. It will focus on the internal economic agenda, improving secular-religious relations, and promoting closer relations with Arab neighbors by implementing the ‘normalization agreements’ and seeking to additional such agreements within the Middle East. I feel that formal annexation of portions of the West Bank will also be deferred by Israel to avoid friction with the U.S. and Europe.
On the restoration of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Israel will likely offer less
opposition than Netanyahu, but seek to exert influence in similar directions, seeking to impose more restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and possibly conditioning the removal of sanctions on Iranian discontinuance of work on precision missile technology or support for Hamas and Hezbollah. It should be appreciated that Bennett is scheduled to serve as prime minister of Israel for the next two years, and he has been an impassioned advocate of settlement expansion and an uncompromising opponent of establishing a Palestinian state. Bennett favors what he calls ‘autonomy on steroids’ to be exercised by Palestinians on 40% of the West Bank.
3) Does this leadership shift signal anything to the rest of the world about authoritarianism?
I think Israel is such a special case of a hybrid state, combining an apartheid regime subjugating the Palestinians with democratic constitutionalism for the Jewish citizenry of the country, that this prospective leadership shift doesn’t signal any wider trend of departure from international authoritarian leadership. This is especially true as the political shift is almost totally about the personality and character of Netanyahu, and not any fundamental shift in policy or in governance. The issue of Palestinian governance is not even part of the main coalition-building conversation. I suppose there could be surprises. Maybe the small Islamic Arab party that belatedly joined the anti-Netanyahu coalition hints at this possibility, but it seems more motivated by the desire to get rid of Netanyahu than anything more substantive.
4) How can we expect the media to cover the change in leadership?
I would imagine that the mainstream media would share much of my assessment, perhaps giving more emphasis to a less stressful relationship with the U.S. and EU, and
possibly the UN. There will likely be a more hopeful tone about this transition demonstrating Israel’s democratic character. Also, more discussion of Netanyahu mixed record during his years in office as the longest serving prime minister, as well as his legacy and recent fall from grace.
As Bennett is known to be a more pleasant and diplomatic in style, hewill be presented to the public as more compatible with Biden. Possibly also, the media will give greater influence to the more secular and supposedly moderate outlook of Lapid, both as the leader of the coalition process and scheduled to succeed Bennett as prime minister in two years. Given the rightest consensus in the Knesset, estimated to be as 100 of its 120 members, it is not likely that there will be any expectation of changes of significance with respect to Palestine. There is an outside chance that more civil society pressure will cause some fracturing of this status quo consensus on Palestine, especially if global pressures grow from BDS, the UN, and governments and internal tensions in Israeli/Palestinian relations mount. .
(4) Is the Tide Finally Turning in Favor of the Palestinians
Repetition or Change?
The latest Israeli violence, at first glance, seemed just like the prior massive attacks on Gaza of 2008-09, 2012, and 2014. There were large number of primitive rockets fired by Hamas in Israel’s direction that fell harmlessly or were intercepted by the Iron Dome, causing minor damage. In its turn, Israel
Inflicted widespread death and destruction by bombs, artillery shells, missiles fired from land, sea, and air, which once again terrorized the totally vulnerable people of Gaza 24/7 for from May 10-21.
As in the earlier attacks, there were calls from almost everywhere for a ceasefire to halt the carnage, including at the UN Security Council. As before, these pleas were spurned by Israel and blocked by the United States. Denunciations of Israel’s attack without action came from Arab governments. As is its habit, the U.S. provided the shield that allowed Israel to continue with the attack against the weight of world public opinion, giving the familiar lame excuse: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Further, anything goes, since Gaza is controlled by Hamas, ‘a terrorist organization’ by the Western moral compass, which amounts to signaling to Israel that anything goes, and international humanitarian law is not applicable to such an adversary.
When the smoke cleared in Gaza, 90,000 Gazans were displaced with their homes destroyed, over 1900 wounded, at least 243 dead, including 66 children. In contrast, Israel suffered 12 fatalities, including two children. Without minimizing the loss of life, the contrast reflects differences in military technology, tactics, and relative vulnerability of Israelis and Gazans, and Israel’s brazen indifference to the loss of Palestinian lives despite protestations to the contrary.
Nothing seemed changed. Hamas was still in firm control of Gaza with its
Impoverished population of over two million living in a permanent lockdown, borders were armed on the Israeli side and almost all Palestinians unable ever to leave the tiny, blockaded enclave where over 50% are unemployed and 80% are dependent for life support on humanitarian assistance.
It would seem that there is nothing new to report. We are left to speculate as when to expect the next cycle of violence. Yet this time maybe these appearances of repetition are deceptive.
Beneath the Surface
In the past few months Palestine has won notable victories in the symbolic domains of political struggle, which contrary to conventional wisdom,
often determine the eventual winners more than combat zones.
The International Criminal Court in a Pre-Trial Chamber decided that its Prosecutor could launch a formal investigation is Israel’s international crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza that occurred since 2014. It was evident that the Prosecutor had ample evidence of specific crimes associated with disproportionate violence in the 2014 attack on Gaza, the use of excessive violence in dealing with the 2018 Great March of Return at the Israeli border, and in relation to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Even if not a single Israeli official is ever prosecuted by the ICC, this validation of Palestinian allegations of Israeli wrongdoing, and what is more Israel knows it. Why else would Netanyahu greet such a decision with the simplistic dismissal of ‘pure antisemitism’? Israel has long insisted that the UN was biased, but has never before smeared an international institution that had given it the benefit of the doubt while conducting a legal proceeding.
An even bigger Palestinian victory was recorded by mainstream reports finding that Israel was guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinians under their authority. Both the leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, and the most influential global human rights NGO, Human Rights Watch, issued reports documenting their central conclusion that Israeli policies and practices constituted apartheid. The recommendations of the reports call for application of international criminal law and confer on all countries a legal responsibility to take steps to suppress and oppose apartheid.
These developments are of great victories in what I have called the Legitimacy War dimensions of conflict. Reviewing the record in anti-colonial wars since 1945 it becomes clear that the side that prevails in such a legitimacy war fought to gain command of the high ground of law, morality, and public approval, usually goes on to control the political outcome. The French lost the Indochina and Algerian wars despite having superior weaponry, and the U.S. totally dominated the battlefield in Vietnam and yet lost the war.
The most relevant legitimacy for Palestine involves the collapse of the South African apartheid regime despite its effective monopoly of security capabilities. It collapsed because of the combination of non-violent resistance and global solidarity efforts rooted in anti-racist civil society initiatives prompting the apartheid leadership to reevaluate their options. They decided it was better to dismantle apartheid and take their chances with constitutional democracy than
to go on living as an international pariah state.
Palestinian Symbolic Victories Impact on the Future
The just concluded Israeli military operation, code named Guardian of the Walls, exhibited some impacts of these Palestinian symbolic victories. The most salient can be. noted:
–signs of division within Israel that never before were visible during prior military operations;
–an opinion poll showing that 72% believe the ceasefire came too early, suggesting that the Israeli leadership bowed, after all, to international pressures,
including from Washington;
–increasing expressions of Palestinian Arab-Jewish communal violence in Israeli towns;
–more balanced treatment of the violence by Western media platforms, with unprecedented coverage of the daily misery of Palestinian lives under occupation;
–widespread condemnation of collective punishment inflicted on the blockaded civilian population of Gaza in the midst of the COVID pandemic and a badly degraded medical and health system;
–new signs of Palestinian unity in reaction to Israeli violence within Jerusalem, including intrusions on worship during Ramadan, right-wing settler violent provocations protected by Israeli police, and protests by massed Palestinian refugees on the borders with Lebanon and Jordan;
–weakening support for Israel and rising criticism of unconditional U.S. support of Israel;
–increasing support in many countries for BDS and other civil society initiatives, as well as solidarity moves by labor unions and religious groups seeking boycotts and sanctions to promote a just peace for Palestinians.
A Sharpeville Moment?
In retrospect, many felt that the Sharpeville Massacre was the turning point that led in the end to the demise of apartheid in South Africa. The incident arose from a protest at the provincial police facility in the township of Sharpeville by Africans against the pass laws used to enforce segregation and limit mobility. 69 unarmed protesters were killed by the police, many shot in the back while fleeing the scene. The incident exposed to the world what apartheid meant.
Of course, even if history proves that Guardian of the Walls was a turning point, it does not mean that Israeli apartheid is on the verge of collapse. The Sharpeville massacre occurred in 1960, yet it was not until the early 1990s that apartheid was dismantled. It often takes a long time for prophetic writing on the wall to be registered in historical happenings.
The Palestinian ordeal is certainly not over, but for the first time we can envision it ending!
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Health and Human Rights in Gaza: Shame on the World
27 Nov[Preliminary Note: This post devoted to health and human rights in Gaza. It is based on a video presentation some weeks ago to a conference on this theme held in Gaza. It makes no effort to update by reference to the latest cycle of violence sparked by the targeted assassination of Baha Abu-Ata, an Islamic Jihad military commander, on November 12. I feel strongly about the issues raised by this post not only because I have witnessed living conditions in Gaza and have friends in Gaza who have endured hardship and injustice for so long without losing their warmth or even their hope. My contacts with Gaza and Gazans over the course of many years has been at once inspirational and deeply dispiriting, a deep insight into the deficiencies of the human condition coupled with an uplifting glimpse at the spiritual courage of those so severely victimized.
Reflecting on the terrifying destiny bestowed upon the people of Gaza I became ashamed of stultifying silences, especially of those governments and their leaders in the region and those countries with a historical responsibility (the UK) and with geopolitical leverage (the US). I also take alarmed note of the refusal of the mainstream media to accord attention to the misery so long endured by the people of Gaza. If ever the norm of ‘the responsibility to protect’ was applied according to humanitarian need, Gaza would be at the top of the list, but of course there is no list, and if ever there were one, given the present international atmosphere, Gaza would remain among the unlisted! This neglect of the people of Gaza is so acute as to extend the web of criminal complicity far beyond the borders of Israel.]
Health and Human Rights in Gaza: Shame on the World
I want to begin by offering my greetings to all those here today. I dearly wish that conditions in Gaza were different, enabling me to share the experience of the conference directly with you by taking part directly and actively. The theme of the conference touches the policies and practice of Israeli abuse that have been victimizing the people of Gaza for such a long time. The population of Gaza already faced a lamentable situation ever since the occupation began in 1967, but it has grown far worse since the Gaza elections of 2006, as reinforced by the changes in political administration that occurred in the following year. Israel’s policies have been systematically cruel and abusive, disregarding the legal standards and moral values applicable to the behavior of an Occupying Power. These standards and values are embodied in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL).
Upholding the right to health is among the most fundamental of human rights, first articulated in the 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization: “The right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.” This right is further articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially in Article 25, and then put in a treaty form by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966. The deliberate interference with the right to health is among the worst imaginable collective abuses of a people subject to belligerent occupation. Israel, which relies on an apartheid regime to maintain control over the Palestinian people in the face of their internationally protected right of resistance, has been particularly guilty of behavior that hasflagrantly, consistently, and intentionally encroached upon and violated the right to health of the entire civilian population of Gaza in a variety of ways.
The Great March of Return epitomizes the brutalities of Israeli occupation policy, which include a shocking disregard of the physical and mental health of the Palestinian civilian population taking part in the demonstrations. It also offers us a metaphor for the abuses of the right to health and other rights of the Gaza population regarded as a collective entity. This pattern of abuse occurs in the context of persistent and courageous Palestinian acts of resistance in support of their right of return to their homeland, a right affirmed at the UN and clearly established in international law, which Israel has refused to uphold for seven decades, that is, ever since the Nakba. In the face of such a failure of international procedures to uphold Palestinian rights, a recourse to a politics of self-reliance seems reasonable, and in fact the only path presently capable of yielding positive results. The people of Gaza have waited long enough, indeed too long, without having their most basic international rights protected by the organized world community.
A preliminary matter is whether, as Israel alleges, it is relieved of all international legal obligations to the people of Gaza as a result of its supposed ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in 2005. From an international law perspective, the physical removal of IDF occupying troops from the territory of Gaza and the dismantlement of unlawful Israeli settlements did not affect the legal status of Gaza as ‘occupied Palestinian territory.’ Israel has maintained tight control over Gaza, which has included massive military attacks in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014, as well as frequent uses of excessive force, unlawful weapons and tactics, and disregard of the constraints of law. Despite ‘disengagement’ Israel maintains effective and comprehensive control over Gaza’s borders, air space, and offshore maritime waters. In fact, as a result of the blockade in existence since 2007, the occupation is more intense and abusive than was the oppressive form of occupation that existed in Gaza prior to disengagement. From the perspective of IHL and IHRL, Israel is fully obligated under international law in exercising its role as an occupying power, and its claims to the contrary are legally irrelevant. Unfortunately, due to geopolitical realities and the weakness of the UN, these Israeli claims continue to have a political relevance as Israel’s obligations are unenforced and mostly ignored, creating an unacceptable situation in which Israel enjoys de facto impunity and escapes from all procedures of accountability provided by recourse to international law and international judicial institutions.
It is also important, in our view, to understand the significance of the findings of the 2017 ESCWA report prepared by Virginia Tilley and myself. We concluded after examining the evidence that Israel maintains an apartheid structure of control over the Palestinian people as a whole, which of course includes the population of Gaza. Our main point is that Israel uses a variety of means to subjugate and victimize the Palestinians so as to establish and sustain an exclusivist Jewish state in which, according to Israel’s Basic Law of 2018 gives only Jews authority to claim a right of self-determination. To circumscribe the right of self-determination by exclusionary racial criteria is a virtual acknowledgement of an apartheid ideology.
It needs to be more widely appreciated that apartheid is a Crime Against Humanity, according to Article 7(j) of the Rome Statute that governs the operations of the International Criminal Court. The criminal character of apartheid had been previously confirmed by the 1973 UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. If apartheid is indeed present then all governments have themselves legal and moral obligations to join the effort to suppress and punish. As with IHL and IHRL, the criminalization of apartheid is not acted upon by formal intergovernmental mechanisms due to roadblocks erected by geopolitics and the related weakness of the UN, but this does not mean that the designation is politically and morally insignificant. Since governments refuse to act, the responsibility and opportunity for law enforcement falls on the peoples of the world to do what the formal framework of world order is incapable of doing.
Such an anti-apartheid grassroots surge occurred with respect to the South African regime of apartheid, producing an entirely unexpected reversal of approach by the Afrikaner leadership of the country resulting in the release of Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years of captivity followed by the largely peaceful transition to a multiracial constitutional democracy with human rights promised to all regardless of race. Such an outcome was considered impossible across the entire political spectrum in South Africa until 1994 when it actually happened.
We cannot guarantee, of course, that history will repeat itself and liberate the Palestinian people from their century-long ordeal, but neither can we foreclose the possibility that the combination of Palestinian resistance and global solidarity will have an empowering, liberating effect. In part, the Palestinian national movement is the last great unfinished struggle against European settler colonialism. Looked at in this way, the Zionist Project through the establishment of Israel temporarily reversed the flow of history in Palestine for a series of complicated reasons, but the final fate of Palestine remains in doubt so long as Palestinian resistance is sustained and solidarity robust. In this regard, the Great March of Return is a powerful sign that Palestinian resistance here in Gaza continues to offer inspirational energy to those of us throughout the world who believe that this particular struggle for individual and collective justice by an oppressed people is what human rights are most fundamentally about.
The Great March is a perfect metaphor for both the theme of this conference and of the struggle that motivated the defenseless residents of Gaza to demand this most basic right to return to their homeland from which they have been wrongfully and forcibly displaced. This demand was impressively reasserted every Friday for more than a year in the face of Israel’s vindictive reliance on excessive force since its inception in March 2018. Israel from the very beginning of the protests adopted an approach of excessive force based on terrorizing the demonstrators by resorting to lethal violence in an harsh effort to punish and destroy this formidable creative challenge to Israeli apartheid/colonial control. Israel’s aim seems to be a vain and unlawful effort to undermine the Palestinian will to resist that has survived decades of confinement, discouragement, and unspeakable abuse.
At the same time, such a criminal response by Israel to this anguished claim of right by the people of Gaza was also the culminating expression of Israel’s assault on the physical and mental health of the civilian population of Gaza. It is hardly surprising that the burdens created by 20,000 injured Gazans have overwhelmed Gaza’s already stressed medical capabilities. Many of those injured received life and limb threatening gunshot wounds, causing serious infections and frequently requiring amputation. This crisis situation in health care was aggravated by shortages of needed antibiotic medicines, and by the dismal experiences of those injured Gazans requiring specialized attention that could be obtained only outside of Gaza. Those so desperately in need of medical treatment external to Gaza faced almost impossible difficulties obtaining required exit and entry permits that Israel often even withheld under normal circumstances. In relation to those wounded at Great March events the situation was far worse. Israel was more unwilling to grant exit permits to those wounded in the Great March, discriminating against any Palestinian who dared to protest peacefully against the denial of the rights to which every human being on earth is entitled. Such an abuse is criminally escalated in relation to Gazans who are supposed to be especially protected by virtue of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and IHL more generally. Instead of protection, the Israeli approach has been one of imposing prolonged collective punishment not only on Palestinian resistors but on the entire population of Gaza in direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and not for a short interval associated with special circumstances, but over the course of decades.
Beyond these exceptional conditions associated with the medical fallout from the Great March, Israel by failing to protect the civilian population of Gaza under conditions of rightless prolonged occupation is guilty of several additional forms of collective punishment each of which has an adverse impact of Gazan health. These adverse effects consequences result from its maintenance of a vindictive blockade, the periodic application of excessive force well beyond any reasonable security justifications, and the application of policies and practices reflective of the apartheid/colonial character of its approach to the Palestinian people, which has long assumed a sinister form in Gaza. The health results are disastrous as confirmed by reliable statistical measures of the physical and mental condition of the population, as exhibited by the unavailability of safe drinking water, the existence of untreated open sewage, the frequency of long power outages that interfere with the operation of hospitals and medical equipment, and by studies documenting the high incidence of severe trauma experienced by many residents of Gaza, including young and particularly vulnerable children. For those of us who have visited Gaza even under what could be described as ‘normal’ conditions, we came away wondering how anyone could endure such stress without experiencing a traumatic reaction.
This severe infringement on the right to health of the people of Gaza should be the occasion of outrage in the international community, and receive appropriate media attention, but Israel’s deliberate and massive violations of IHL and IHRL are shielded by geopolitics from censure and sanctions on the part of governments and at the UN, a reality further obscured by a compliant mainstream Western media that is misled and manipulated by a carefully orchestrated Israeli propaganda campaign that presents its criminally unlawful conduct as reasonable behavior undertaken to uphold the national security of a sovereign state, an aspect of its legal right to defend itself against what it labels as a terrorist enemy. Such Israeli propaganda falsifies the realities of the situation in multiple ways, but creates enough confusion outside of Gaza to divert attention from the suffering imposed upon the Palestinian people as a whole, and the civilian population of Gaza in particular.
Against this background, it becomes clear that grassroots solidarity efforts to expose these truths and exert nonviolent pressures on Israel by means of the BDS Campaign and other initiatives are essential contributions to the ongoing resistance struggles of the Palestinian people. And unlike the South African response, Israel with its sophisticated global outreach has tried by every means to discredit such global solidarity work, even going to the extent of using its leverage overseas to criminalize participation in BDS activity by encouraging the passage of punitive laws and the adoption of restrictive administrative policies in Europe and North America.
Let me end these remarks by saying that despite the seeming imbalance of forces on the ground, history remains strongly on the side of the Palestinian struggle against this Israeli apartheid regime. Much of the world realizes that the brave people of Gaza have long been in the eye of a dreadful and seemingly endless storm. It is my honor to support as best I can your struggle for the realization of the right of self-determination. Despite present appearances to the contrary, I am confident that justice will prevail, that Palestinians will achieve their rights, and surprise the world as did the opponents of South African apartheid a generation ago. It is my hope that I will live long enough to visit Gaza in the future at a time of liberation and celebration. In the meantime, I wish you a successful conference.
Tags: collective punishment, Criminal Complicity, Gaza, Health, Human rights