The picture above is doing the rounds on the internet labelled as a Palestinian child victim of US-backed Zionist bombing in Gaza. In fact, it seems that it depicts a Syrian child injured by Russian and Iranian-backed Asadist barbarism. No matter – the two are interchangeable today. Both are fighting hyper-violent tyrannies rooted in the Sykes-Picot carve-up of bilad ash-Shaam. And while Zionism bombs Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Asad’s forces continue to bomb Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp, Damascus. The film below shows some of the aftermath of this bombing. Below that we reprint an article by novelist Ahdaf Soueif, in which she describes the changed Arab environment meeting the latest aggression on Gaza, and points out that Israel’s action is in part aimed to take “the heat off Bashar al-Assad’s murderous activities in Syria.”
[youtube http://youtu.be/1GMBos0g_eQ?]If you click here, you can listen to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. You can hear explosions, drones and ambulances. This is the soundtrack of the lives of Palestinians there now. They’re recording it and transmitting it, and their friends all over the world – particularly the Arab world – are listening to it live.
We are also reading the tweets and blogs the young Gazans are putting out, and taking a good look at the images they’re posting – like the one of Ranan Arafat, before and after. Before, she’s a pretty little girl with green eyes, a green halter-neck top and green ribbons in her hair. After the Israeli bomb, she’s a charred and shrunken figure. Her mouth is open. A medic lifts – for just a moment – her blue hospital shroud.
In that hospital, Shifa in Gaza City, we watched the Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Kandil, this morning. For the first time in 42 years an Egyptian prime minister was where we Egyptians wanted him to be. For the first time a government official was telling the truth when he said he spoke for the Egyptian people. And he was spot on when he referred to the Egyptian people first, before the Egyptian president.
Since he won the presidency, Mohamed Morsi has tried to be a pragmatic politician. He pressed on with “security co-ordination” with Israel in Sinai; he started sealing up the tunnels that provide a lifeline to the besieged Gazans; he rejected the proposal of a free trade area on the borders between Egypt and Gaza; and he sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv with a fulsome letter to Shimon Peres. And so he found himself uncomfortably cosied up with remnants of the Mubarak regime and aficionados of the military government.
The rank and file of the Muslim Brotherhood and their Freedom and Justice party had a hard time justifying the actions of their man in the presidential palace to the rest of the country. Progressives and liberals mocked them for their big talk on Palestine all the years they were in opposition, and their resounding silence now they were in power. Skits about Morsi’s “love letter” to Peres appeared online and parodies on Cairo walls.
Now, the Israelis have pushed him – pushed him perhaps into a position where he’ll find himself more at ease in his presidency, and more in tune with the people. Large groups of young Egyptians have been heading for Gaza; my youngest niece is one of them. Like the efforts of the world’s civil society to send ships to Gaza, young Egyptian civilians with a passion for freedom are going to support their friends. And on a more “official” level, medics and pharmacists have already arrived there. Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, a presidential candidate and doctor, has gone – as he did in 2008 during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead“, long before he had political intentions. The Arab Doctors’ Union has called for donations and volunteers.
Israel has always sold itself to the west as a democracy in a sea of fanaticism. The Arab spring has undermined that narrative, possibly fatally. So Israeli politicians have been pushing hard for a war against Iran and, in the interim, they’ve gone on a killing spree in Gaza. If they had wanted to instigate violence against themselves they could not have done better than to assassinate Ahmed al-Jaabari, the Hamas commander who’s prevented attacks on Israelis for the past five years. With his killing they’ve raised the probability of these attacks resuming, as is happening now. They can then try to hijack the narrative of the Arab spring and wind the clock back to “Islamist terrorists v civilised Israelis”. Meanwhile, they take the heat off Bashar al-Assad’s murderous activities in Syria – and, of course, score hawkish points for Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak before the coming elections.
But they have served to remind the world that Israel is a democracy where politicians may order the murder of children to score electoral points. Palestinian children, true. But the citizens of the world don’t make racist distinctions. On Thursday there were protests for Gaza across the world. They continued today. And there will be many more.
In every Arab country where the people rise up to demand their rights, they demand action on Palestinian rights as well. Tunis has just announced that its foreign minister is heading for Gaza. In Jordan today, hundreds of thousands were on the streets and, as well as demanding the fall of their own regime, they’re also calling for justice for Palestine. Protesters are out in Libya. In Egypt, people are heading for Rafah. We are heading for true representation of the people’s will in the region and, in the coming years, governments will need to follow the road shown to them by their people.
Glenn Greenwald
A Palestinian man carries a wounded child at a hospital following an Israeli air raid in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 17, 2012. Photograph: Moiz Salhi/AFP/Getty Images
Saturday 17 November 2012
The Obama administration’s unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel is a key enabling force in the conflict
A central premise of US media coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza – beyond the claim that Israel is justifiably “defending itself” – is that this is some endless conflict between two foreign entitles, and Americans can simply sit by helplessly and lament the tragedy of it all. The reality is precisely the opposite: Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does. This self-flattering depiction of the US as uninvolved, neutral party is the worst media fiction since TV news personalities covered the Arab Spring by pretending that the US is and long has been on the side of the heroic democratic protesters, rather than the key force that spent decades propping up the tyrannies they were fighting.
Literally each day since the latest attacks began, the Obama administration has expressed its unqualified support for Israel’s behavior. Just two days before the latest Israeli air attacks began, Obama told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas “that his administration opposes a Palestinian bid for non-state membership of the UN”. Both the US Senate and House have already passed resolutions unequivocally supporting Israel, thus earning the ultimate DC reward: the head-pat from Aipac, which “praised the extraordinary show of support by the Senate for Israel’s struggle against terrorist attacks on its citizens”. More bipartisan Congressional cheerleading is certain to come as the attacks continue, no matter how much more brutal they become.
In reflexive defense of Israel, the US government thus once against put itself squarely at odds with key nations such as Turkey (whose prime minister accused Israel of being motivated by elections and demanded that Israel be “held to account” for mounting civilians deaths), Egypt (which denounced Israeli attacks as “aggression against humanity”), and Tunisia (which called on the world to “stop the blatant aggression” of Israel).
By rather stark contrast, Obama continues to defend Israel’s free hand in Gaza, causing commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg to gloat, not inaccurately: “Barack Obama hasn’t turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years” (indeed, there are few more compelling signs of how dumb and misleading US elections are than the fact that the only criticism of Obama on Israel heard over the last year in the two-party debate was the grievance that Obama evinces insufficient fealty – rather than excessive fealty – to the Israeli government). That the Netanyahu government knows that any attempt to condemn Israel at the UN would be instantly blocked by the US is a major factor enabling them to continue however they wish. And, of course, the bombs, planes and tanks they are using are subsidized, in substantial part, by the US taxpayer.
If one wants to defend US support for Israel on the merits – on the ground that this escalating Israeli aggression against a helpless population is just and warranted – then one should do so. As I wrote on Thursday, it’s very difficult to see how those who have cheered for Obama’s foreign policy could do anything but cheer for Israeli militarism, as they are grounded in the same premises.
But pretending that the US – and the Obama administration – bear no responsibility for what is taking place is sheer self-delusion, total fiction. It has long been the case that the central enabling fact in Israeli lawlessness and aggression is blind US support, and that continues, more than ever, to be the case under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The US is not some neutral, uninvolved party. Whatever side of this conflict you want to defend – or if you’re one of those people who love to announce that you just wish the whole thing would go away – it’s still necessary to take responsibility for the key role played by the American government and this administration in enabling everything that is taking place.
Media coverage
Due to extensive travel the past few days, I’ve been subjected to far more television news coverage than is probably healthy, and it’s just been staggering to see how tilted US media discourse is: Israeli officials and pro-Israel “experts” are endlessly paraded across the screen while Palestinian voices are exceedingly rare; the fact of the 45-year-old brutal occupation and ongoing Israeli dominion over Gaza is barely mentioned; meanwhile, every primitive rocket that falls harmlessly near Israeli soil is trumpeted with screaming headlines while the carnage and terror in Gaza is mentioned, if at all, as an afterthought. Two cartoons perfectly summarize this coverage: here and here.
On a related note, the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill was interviewed on Tuesday night after a Sundance Institute panel on political documentaries which I moderated. Scahill, who is working on a documentary entitled “Dirty Wars” about the US violence in Yemen and other parts of the Muslim world, spoke for 12 minutes to We Are Change about Obama’s terrorism and foreign policies; I highly recommend it:
UPDATE
According to Haaretz, Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, said this about Israel’s attacks on Gaza: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.” Let me know if any of the US Sunday talk shows mention that tomorrow during their discussions of this “operation”.
Greetings World.
For far too long, Anonymous has stood by with the rest of the world and watched in despair the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of the Palestinian people in the so called “Occupied Territories” by the Israel Defense Force. Like so many around the globe, we have felt helpless in the face of such implacable evil. And today’s insane attack and threatened invasion of Gaza was more of the same.
But when the government of Israel publicly threatened to sever all Internet and other telecommunications into and out of Gaza they crossed a line in the sand. As the former dictator of Egypt Mubarack learned the hard way – we are ANONYMOUS and NO ONE shuts down the Internet on our watch. To the IDF and government of Israel we issue you this warning only once. Do NOT shut down the Internet into the “Occupied Territories”, and cease and desist from your terror upon the innocent people of Palestine or you will know the full and unbridled wrath of Anonymous. And like all the other evil governments that have faced our rage, you will NOT survive it unscathed.
To the people of Gaza and the “Occupied Territories”, know that Anonymous stands with you in this fight. We will do everything in our power to hinder the evil forces of the IDF arrayed against you. We will use all our resources to make certain you stay connected to the Internet and remain able to transmit your experiences to the world. As a start, we have put together the Anonymous Gaza Care Package – http://bit.ly/XH87C5 – which contains instructions in Arabic and English that can aid you in the event the Israel government makes good on it’s threat to attempt to sever your Internet connection. It also contains useful information on evading IDF surveillance, and some basic first aid and other useful information. We will continue to expand and improve this document in the coming days, and we will transmit it to you by every means at our disposal. We encourage you to download this package, and to share it with your fellow Palestinians to the best of your ability.
We will be with you. No matter how dark it may seem, no matter how alone and abandoned you may feel – know that tens of thousands of us in Anonymous are with you and working tirelessly around the clock to bring you every aid and assistance that we can.
We Are Anonymous
We Are Everywhere
We Are Legion
We Do Not Forgive
We Do Not Forget
To the oppressors of the innocent Palestinian people, it is too late to EXPECT US
________________________
Live Updating: http://tmblr.co/ZNMTdvXOLg0b
Nov 16, 2012
For Gaza friends and others: How to stay connected if the internet is shut down
Actions: Emergency global actions for Gaza
Israel forces have been attacking Gaza, destroying power grids, destroying infrastructure and killingcivilians. They intensified the brutal attack after two home made rockets landed in Tel Aviv. Hospitals in Gaza are at the breaking point trying to deal with casualties while under siege for years. But resistance forces in Gaza also reported dowing an Israeli jet. Israeli authorities are caught lying to their own people about the extent of damage coming from the resistance (e.g. saying the rockets were intercepted and did not fall while Israeli citizens see them fall, fires breaking and ambulances rushing in. I myself heard the sirens blaring in the settlements of Gush Etzion and heard the thud of one largeb rocket (presumably of the long range Fajr type). But now for an analytical comment.
Is history repeating itself? The Israeli attack on Gaza this week is happening between the US Presidential elections and the Israeli (early) elections. The attack on Gaza four years ago also happened after the US elections and before Israeli elections. Some Israeli citizens thus put an advertisement in an Israeli paper titled “No to the election war!” Netanyahu and company today are trying to repeat what Olmert and company tried to do four years ago: pound Gaza into submission while gaining right-wing votes.
This attack could also be a test of preparedness for a coming war on Iran (Gaza is weaker than Lebanon or Iran). Early results show that the Israeli hasbara spin machine failed to make the attack on Gaza appear as “self-defense” and will fail at all its other goals just like happened in 2006 and 2008. During the last attack on Gaza four years ago Israeli forces murdered 1400 Palestinians including nearly 400 Children in a period of just three weeks. It was and remains a difficult propaganda task to hide the scale of atrocities against natives especially when all human rights groups and the UN describe such actions as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In Gaza just in the last 48 hours, the martyred Palestinians included two babies 10 and 11 months old. Netanyahu hopes the Zionist media network and his bombing campaigns succeed in 2012 at what they failed to achieve in 2008. Israel as an occupier/colonizer hopes to get away with murder while labeling any resistance from the occupied people as “terrorism.” In the age of instant communication it is difficult.
After repeated aggressive wars (e.g. in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1982, 2000, 2006, 2008, and now 2012), the world is finally waking up. People of the Arab world who engaged in real democratic revolutions now demand real change. It is symbolically significant that high level officials from Egypt and Tunisia traveled to Gaza during the current attacks.
People know that Israeli lobbies like AIPAC (whose website was hacked by Anonymous this week) keep pushing for wars including an illegal war on Iran in the same way as they pushed for the illegal war on Lebanon and Iraq before. The latter war was foisted on the Western public using lies (connections of Iraq to terror actions of 11 September 2001 and weapons of mass destruction). The war cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and $3 trillion in direct cost to US taxpayers. People know that Gaza is still under occupation per international law as the UN itself reported.
Even Israeli spokespersons and an Israeli document released by court order showed Israel is engaged in collective punishment of Gaza population, a crime against humanity per international law. The UN warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if the Israeli siege of Gaza continues. Israel also continues to target any and all humanitarian ships trying to break the siege.Israeli politicians find it convenient every few years to launch a massive war to keep the “home-front” scared and united and hope to bolster their political careers.
“Rooting out terrorism” and keeping “Israeli citizens safe” are now seen even by Israelis as simply propaganda. Israeli intelligence reports submitted to the Israeli government showed that Hezbollah became even stronger after the Israeli attacks of 2006 and that Hamas came out stronger after the Israeli attack in 2008. Impoverished Gaza is teaching all lessons. Olmert and Livni discovered that war crimes do not necessarily translate into votes.
A more important lesson that may take longer to sink in is that safety does not come from oppression and ethnic cleansing, the two pillars of Zionism. Safety comes from justice. Israel is a racist apartheid and militarized state that caused the largest remaining refugee population on earth (7 million of the 12 million Palestinians are refugees or displaced). Peace can come by acknowledging wrongs and engaging in restorative justice.
After the return of the Palestinian refugees (including the one million in Gaza) to their homes and lands occupied in 1948, we can all live here regardless of religious or other backgrounds in one secular democratic state. I suspect the Israeli immoral and cruel attacks on Gaza will hasten this inevitable outcome.
The great John Mearsheimer has a brilliant piece on the LRB Blog. It is the most comprehensive historical and political analysis of recent developments in Gaza. Two passages in particular bear highlighting. The first one is about Israel’s long-standing strategy:
John Mearsheimer
Israel’s leaders have a two-prong strategy for dealing with their Palestinian problem. First, they rely on the United States to provide diplomatic cover, especially in the United Nations. The key to keeping Washington on board is the Israel lobby, which pressures American leaders to side with Israel against the Palestinians and do hardly anything to stop the colonisation of the Occupied Territories.
The second prong is Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s concept of the ‘Iron Wall’: an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinians would resist the Zionists’ efforts to colonise their land and subjugate them in the process. Nonetheless, he maintained that the Zionists, and eventually Israel, could punish the Palestinians so severely that they would recognise that further resistance was futile.
Israel has employed this strategy since its founding in 1948, and both Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence are examples of it at work. In other words, Israel’s aim in bombing Gaza is not to topple Hamas or eliminate its rockets, both of which are unrealisable goals. Instead, the ongoing attacks in Gaza are part of a long-term strategy to coerce the Palestinians into giving up their pursuit of self-determination and submitting to Israeli rule in an apartheid state.
The second passage is about the timing of this particular assault:
The timing of the present operation is easy to explain. For starters, President Obama has just won a second term despite Netanyahu’s transparent attempt to help Mitt Romney win the election. The prime minister’s mistake is likely to have hurt his personal relations with the president and might even threaten America’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel. A war in Gaza, however, is a good antidote for that problem, because Obama, who faces daunting economic and political challenges in the months ahead, has little choice but to back Israel to the hilt and blame the Palestinians.
The Israeli prime minter faces an election of his own in January and asMitchell Plitnick writes, ‘Netanyahu’s gambit of forming a joint ticket with the fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party has not yielded anything close to the polling results he had hoped for.’ A war over Gaza not only allows Netanyahu to show how tough he is when Israel’s security is at stake, but it is also likely to have a ‘rally round the flag’ effect, improving his chances of being re-elected.
A Palestinian woman makes the victory sign during the funeral of a child killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza last week. Photograph: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images
Friday 16 November 2012
In the nations of the Arab spring, people are now rising up to demand Palestinian rights as well
If you click here, you can listen to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. You can hear explosions, drones and ambulances. This is the soundtrack of the lives of Palestinians there now. They’re recording it and transmitting it, and their friends all over the world – particularly the Arab world – are listening to it live.
We are also reading the tweets and blogs the young Gazans are putting out, and taking a good look at the images they’re posting – like the one of Ranan Arafat, before and after. Before, she’s a pretty little girl with green eyes, a green halter-neck top and green ribbons in her hair. After the Israeli bomb, she’s a charred and shrunken figure. Her mouth is open. A medic lifts – for just a moment – her blue hospital shroud.
In that hospital, Shifa in Gaza City, we watched the Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Kandil, this morning. For the first time in 42 years an Egyptian prime minister was where we Egyptians wanted him to be. For the first time a government official was telling the truth when he said he spoke for the Egyptian people. And he was spot on when he referred to the Egyptian people first, before the Egyptian president.
Since he won the presidency, Mohamed Morsi has tried to be a pragmatic politician. He pressed on with “security co-ordination” with Israel in Sinai; he started sealing up the tunnels that provide a lifeline to the besieged Gazans; he rejected the proposal of a free trade area on the borders between Egypt and Gaza; and he sent an ambassador to Tel Aviv with a fulsome letter to Shimon Peres. And so he found himself uncomfortably cosied up with remnants of the Mubarak regime and aficionados of the military government.
The rank and file of the Muslim Brotherhood and their Freedom and Justice party had a hard time justifying the actions of their man in the presidential palace to the rest of the country. Progressives and liberals mocked them for their big talk on Palestine all the years they were in opposition, and their resounding silence now they were in power. Skits about Morsi’s “love letter” to Peres appeared online and parodies on Cairo walls.
Now, the Israelis have pushed him – pushed him perhaps into a position where he’ll find himself more at ease in his presidency, and more in tune with the people. Large groups of young Egyptians have been heading for Gaza; my youngest niece is one of them. Like the efforts of the world’s civil society to send ships to Gaza, young Egyptian civilians with a passion for freedom are going to support their friends. And on a more “official” level, medics and pharmacists have already arrived there. Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, a presidential candidate and doctor, has gone – as he did in 2008 during Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead“, long before he had political intentions. The Arab Doctors’ Union has called for donations and volunteers.
Israel has always sold itself to the west as a democracy in a sea of fanaticism. The Arab spring has undermined that narrative, possibly fatally. So Israeli politicians have been pushing hard for a war against Iran and, in the interim, they’ve gone on a killing spree in Gaza. If they had wanted to instigate violence against themselves they could not have done better than to assassinate Ahmed al-Jaabari, the Hamas commander who’s prevented attacks on Israelis for the past five years. With his killing they’ve raised the probability of these attacks resuming, as is happening now. They can then try to hijack the narrative of the Arab spring and wind the clock back to “Islamist terrorists v civilised Israelis”. Meanwhile, they take the heat off Bashar al-Assad’s murderous activities in Syria – and, of course, score hawkish points for Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak before the coming elections.
But they have served to remind the world that Israel is a democracy where politicians may order the murder of children to score electoral points. Palestinian children, true. But the citizens of the world don’t make racist distinctions. On Thursday there were protests for Gaza across the world. They continued today. And there will be many more.
In every Arab country where the people rise up to demand their rights, they demand action on Palestinian rights as well. Tunis has just announced that its foreign minister is heading for Gaza. In Jordan today, hundreds of thousands were on the streets and, as well as demanding the fall of their own regime, they’re also calling for justice for Palestine. Protesters are out in Libya. In Egypt, people are heading for Rafah. We are heading for true representation of the people’s will in the region and, in the coming years, governments will need to follow the road shown to them by their people.
• Comments for this article will be switched on in the morning
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) calls on the international community to intervene to immediately end the Israeli “Operation Pillar of Defence”, launched on Wednesday 14 November.
Operation Pillar of Defence must be seen within the broader context of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. An occupation which has changed since the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlements in 2005, but that is still effective through the continuous control by Israel of the Gaza Strip’s ground, sea and air spaces.
The RToP wishes to remind that since 1967, almost one hundred Security Council resolutions have urged Israel to put an end to the occupation of the Palestinian Territories, to no avail. The current escalation of violence is therefore to be seen as a consequence of the military occupation of the Palestinian Territories by Israel and of the international community’s lack of will to force Israel to abide by its international legal obligations.
Israel invokes its right of self-defence against the launch of Palestinian rockets to Israel but the continued occupation of a part of the Gaza Strip by Israel in violation of the Security Council resolutions and of the UN Charter (Art. 25) becomes itself a permanent Israeli aggression against Palestine justifying a right of self-defence of the Gaza people (cfr. A/RES/3314, Art. 1 and 3; UN Charter, Art. 51).
Furthermore, the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza strip since June 2007 amounts to collective punishment of a civilian population forbidden by Art. 33 of the 4th 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
Testifying during the recent New York session of the RToP, Jeanne Mirer, President of the International association of Democratic Lawyers, highlighted some of the most salient impacts of the Israeli blockade on the life of the 1.6 million people living in the Gaza strip:
– 95 % of the industrial establishments are closed of have suspended their activities, the remaining 5% work at 25 to 50 % of their capacity,
– Fishing boats are not allowed to go further than 3 miles off the coast, and risk being shot at even when they respect these distances. This severely impacts on their fishing capacity.
– Israel has unilaterally established all along the border a “no go” buffer zone which deprives the Gaza Strip of 35% of its agricultural land.
– The lack of drinkable water in the Gaza Strip is due to Israel’s practices and policies towards Gaza:
1. Israeli military operations against Gaza destroyed or rendered useless pipes and sewage: therefore, such operations amount to attacking objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population and violate Rule 54 of customary international humanitarian law;
2. the Israeli blockade of Gaza is an impediment to the repair of these hydraulic systems (violation of Rule 54 quoted here above);
3. the Israeli kibbutz located in the upper stream of the wadi Gaza, a river flowing from the West Bank to Gaza, capture most of its waters and violate the customary principle of the “reasonable and equitable” use of transboundary waters (1982 Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses, Art. 2, 2, c; 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, Art. 5; these conventions do not bind Israel but they express international custom).
Such grave violations of International Humanitarian Law by Israel entail the international community’s obligation to ensure compliance by Israel with international law. These obligations originate from common Art. 1 of the Geneva Conventions, which provides that “the High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances”.
In the current launching of the new Israeli assault on Gaza, it is important to state that contrary to Israeli claims, the escalation of violence started when Israeli forces conducted an incursion into Gaza on 8 November, opening fire towards an open area which lead to the killing of a 13 year-old boy.
Moreover, while the IOF is arguing that it focuses only on military targets, it has been proved during operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 that such so-called “surgical attacks” are impossible in such a tiny densely-populated area where there is no safe space and no bomb shelters. Attacks can thus only lead to the death of innocent civilians. Such indiscriminate military attacks on civilian population are forbidden under international Humanitarian law.
The UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict that followed the “Cast Lead operation” had stated that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity had been committed. This never led to any further inquiry and no international sanctions were applied against those responsible. Such impunity allows Israel to launch this new military operation that will most certainly lead to an important number of civilian deaths and injuries, and aggravate the dire living conditions that the Gaza population has been enduing since the beginning of the blockade.
Throughout its international sessions, the RToP highlighted the responsibilities and omissions of third states and international organizations regarding Israel’s recognized violations of international law. Today, the RToP can only but reaffirm that only third party involvement for a full recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination could lead to a just and durable peace in the region. The way the international press is currently covering the “operation Pillar of Defence” and most official statements that are coming through from various western governments are not giving prospect for this to occur in the short term.
The RToP therefore calls for the mobilization of international public opinion to condemn this situation and use all available tools available to civil society to put pressure on their governments and members of parliament, so that they ensure compliance by Israel with international law.
Pierre GALAND
RToP General Coordinator
November 16 2012
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