November 25, 2023
Genocidal crimes under any pretext are all kosher for the apartheid State of Israel
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
The leaders of the apartheid state of Israel and their western backers, all with blood in their hands against the indigenous natives in vast territories of Asia, African and the Americas, have tried to portray their genocidal war crimes against the Palestinian people as an inalienable right of self-defense. Can they invoke such a right?
U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, recently answered the question in an address to the Australian Press Club. She said categorically that Israel cannot “claim the right of self-defense against a threat that emanates from the territory that it occupies, from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation.” “The right to self-defense can be invoked when the state is threatened by another state, which is not the case,” she said.
Albanese was referring to a 2004 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which said the construction of Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank was illegal. The ICJ rejected the Israeli argument to build the wall, saying it could not invoke the right to self-defense in an occupied territory.
“The death of a reported 4,710 children, attacks on healthcare, the withholding of water and electricity – these cannot be merely justified as a ‘right to self-defense’,” said Iain Overton, executive director of the London-based Action on Armed Violence, which conducts research and advocacy on armed violence against civilians.
He added that for Israel to claim this right without being challenged “would be a mockery of the international humanitarian law.”
Armed conflicts are governed by international humanitarian law (IHL), a set of rules contained in international agreements like the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 as well as other agreements and conventions meant to ensure that all member nations subscribe to a list of fundamental rules during conflicts.
In the current conflict, though, experts said Israel’s actions violated all of the four main principles of IHL: distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality between anticipated loss of civilian life and damage and the strategic military advantage of an attack, legitimate military purposes and the humane treatment of all individuals from civilians to detainees and hostages.
Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, said, “It is also obvious that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza since October 7.”
As a matter of fact, Israel has been committing such war crimes since its existence.
International humanitarian law insists that medical units must be protected. Similarly, international law also disallows attacks against places that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as drinking water installations and farmland.
Attacking schools and hospitals during the conflict, as Israel has done, is ﾓone of the six grave violationsﾔ, according to the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
Yet Israel has been unrelenting in these attacks despite facing heavy criticism. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza a “graveyard for children” on November 7.
One in every fifty people living in the Gaza strip has been killed or wounded in the past six weeks. The killing of so many civilians cannot be dismissed as collateral damage. “Not in a refugee camp. And not in a hospital,” the UN human rights chief said.
He further said, “And never in my career of working in many crisis situations around the world have I met such an outpouring of fear, anger, and despair. The people of Gaza, who for years have been profoundly impoverished behind barbed wire fences, are enduring bombardment by the Israeli Security Forces of an intensity rarely experienced in this century.”
The utter destruction since October 7 of the northern and central parts of Gaza, including its entire infrastructure, once again unmasks the evil intent of the barbarous settler colonial state of Israel. Its genocidal acts have thus far resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from the half of Gaza. Even the southern Gaza is not immune from Israeli attacks.
No one should be surprised either with the escalation of latest genocidal violence when we recall that Netanyahu brandished a map of the Middle East in his UNGA speech in September that showed the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel.
Truly, the Israeli leaders since its unholy birth in 1948 have never been sincere about the establishment of a Palestinian state, living side by side. Its border remains non-demarcated, and its occupied territories always growing. Mass deportation and periodic mass-slaughters have been the key means to ethnically cleanse the Occupied Territories of its Indigenous people, who are culturally different.
Thus, it is no surprise that as the negotiation for a temporary ceasefire was going on, Israel has bombed 300 places, including refugee shelters in southern Gaza, on Thursday alone, killing at least 200 Palestinians. In the last few days, several Palestinians have also been killed in the Occupied West Bank. The military and police raids of residential homes and destruction of Palestinians properties have accelerated multi-fold. Four Palestinians, which included two children, were killed on Saturday, November 25, 2023, in the Jenin refugee camp. Those trying to return to their homes on Saturday in bombed-out northern Gaza have been shot and injured by Israeli snipers in the midst of the temporary truce.
Another 90 Palestinians have been taken as hostages – euphemistically called ‘detained’ – by Israel within just 24 hours preceding the exchange of the detainees, while their homes are damaged in the Occupied West Bank. Even the pictures of the Ka’ba hung on the walls of residential homes are smashed by the intruding Israeli soldiers who want to maximize their pains by every means.
In a two-tiered apartheid system, justice is denied to the Palestinian victims. They are reminded 24/7/365 to live with such a discriminatory system or leave unless they want to be killed or evicted by force.
The Palestinian detainees freed Friday included twenty-four women and fifteen male teenagers, most of them charged with stone-throwing and “supporting terrorism,” a broadly defined accusation that underscores Israel’s long-running apartheid colonial-settler crackdown on young Palestinians.
While the Israeli families can celebrate the safe return of the Jewish detainees released by Hamas, the Israeli government has ordered police to shut down celebrations over the release of Palestinian detainees. Israeli security forces unleashed tear gas canisters on the crowds on Friday, sending young men, old women and small children sprinting away as they wept and screamed in pain.
“The army is trying to take this moment away from us but they can’t,” Mays Foqaha said as she tumbled into the arms of her newly released 18-year-old friend, Nour al-Taher from Nablus, who was arrested during a protest in September at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. ”This is our day of victory.”
“As a Palestinian, my heart is broken for my brothers in Gaza, so I can’t really celebrate,” said Abdulqader Khatib, a U.N. worker whose 17-year-old son, Iyas, was placed last year in “administrative detention,” without charges or trial and based on secret evidence. “But I am a father. And deep inside, I am very happy.”
This is the ugly face of “Israeli democracy” that the West needs to see to understand why the Palestinian youths rebelled on October 7 in the concentration camps of Gaza.
In violation of international law, ‘mass detention’ has long been used by Israel as a weapon of war and occupation. It should be mentioned that around 8,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails, according to Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners' Affairs. Nearly 2,200 of these are under ‘administrative detention’, i.e., they can be held indefinitely without any charges. Some three hundred of these prisoners are children, aged between 8 and 18; their crime - throwing stones at the settler occupation forces. Some eighty-five prisoners are women.
It is also important to note here that more than a million cases have been launched since 1967 by the settler colonial administration as part of unceasing harassment of the Palestinian people.
While the people’s eyes were glued to the TV screens watching IDF’s barbarous war crimes inside Gaza, some 3,100 Palestinian civilians have lately been arrested and more than two hundred Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces across the West Bank since October 7. Up to 2,070 arrests were documented in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in the month of October alone.
It is obvious that as a settler colonial entity, Israel has no qualms about arresting and killing Palestinians while they promise to release a small fraction as a result of the latest truce. Those Palestinians who would be released in the latest truce may soon end up in the prison cells again. That is the nature of cruel Israeli justice meted out against the Palestinians.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told Reuters last week that Israel had been ramping up arrests ahead of a hostage deal. “Israel is preparing for an exchange of prisoners, and they are arresting as many people as they can simply because they are preparing for such a deal,” Shtayyeh said.
Only the coming days will once again unmask the hideous face of Netanyahu government.
Mondoweiss – November 25, 2023
‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 50: First Israeli and Palestinian hostages released as Gaza takes stock of devastation
Thirty-nine Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons on Friday, as aid trickles back into Gaza amid calls for a full-fledged ceasefire to address the full scope of humanitarian devastation. Spain, Belgium, and the UK have strong words for Israel.
BY MONDOWEISS PALESTINE BUREAU
Casualties
- 14,854 killed*, including 6,150 children, and more than 36,000 wounded in the Gaza Strip
- 226 Palestinians* killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
- *This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 23. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip (particularly in northern Gaza), the Gaza Ministry of Health has not been able to regularly update its tolls. The Government Media Office in Gaza has since become the main source for tolls in the enclave. Tolls have also not been regularly updated in the occupied West Bank.
Key Developments
- Thirty-nine Palestinian women and children from occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank were released from Israeli prisons on Friday, with dozens more scheduled to be released on Saturday.
- Israeli forces nonetheless cracked down on Palestinians welcoming the return of Palestinian prisoners, injuring at least 31 people outside Ofer prison in the West Bank, and raiding homes of three women ahead of their release in East Jerusalem, threatening their families not to celebrate.
- In exchange, 13 Israelis and 11 Thai and Filipino citizens who had been abducted by Palestinian resistance groups on October 7 left Gaza, and were reportedly in good physical condition.
- Palestinians in Gaza have taken advantage of the four-day truce to take stock of the devastation, as well as receive some desperately needed aid, albeit in insufficient quantities.
- Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates the toll to stand at 20,031 killed in Gaza, including 8,176 children. The Gaza Ministry of Health has stopped updating its own toll due to the breakdown of the communications and healthcare systems in Gaza, although the latest official toll from the Government Media Office in Gaza is 14,854 killed.
- A Palestinian doctor was shot and killed by Israeli forces during an overnight raid in the West Bank town of Qabatiya.
- Israeli forces raided a number of towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, detaining at least 19 Palestinians.
- Palestinian resistance group says it killed two Palestinians in Tulkarem alleged to have collaborated with Israeli forces.
- Spanish and Belgian premiers call for full ceasefire in Gaza and raise the possibility of recognizing a Palestinian state, sparking Israeli ire.
- An Israeli-owned container ship is hit by a drone in the Indian Ocean, with no reported injuries.
First hostage swap takes place amid Israeli restrictions
The temporary truce entered its second day on Saturday, which marked day 50 of the war — as long as the 2014 war, which had been, until nearly two months ago, largely viewed as the most devastating Israeli onslaught on Gaza since the beginning of the blockade.
The most discussed development of the first day of the pause in fighting was the exchange of hostages held by Palestinian resistance groups and Israel. Twenty-four people — 13 Israeli women and children, 10 Thai nationals, and one Filipino citizen — who had been held by Palestinian groups in Gaza since October 7 were taken to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, before being flown into Israel and taken to a number of medical centers for check-ups, where they were said to be in good physical condition. Another 20 citizens from Thailand, the country which represents the largest group of foreign agricultural workers in Israel, are believed to still be in Gaza.
Meanwhile, 39 Palestinians — 17 teenagers, two of them girls, and 22 women from occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, all named by Al Jazeera here — who had been detained by Israel before the current violent onslaught, were able to return home on Friday.
However, Israeli forces set stringent rules for the release of Palestinians, forbidding any celebrations.
At leastﾠ31 Palestinians, including two children and a journalist, were injured by Israeli forces on Friday, who shot live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, and tear gas at the crowd gathered outside of Ofer prison in the central West Bank in anticipation of the release of 28 prisoners there.
Meanwhile, 11 Palestinian prisoners returned home in occupied East Jerusalem. Earlier in the day, Israeli forces had raided the homes of three of the women to threaten their families if they celebrated their return.
According to AFP, another 39 to 42 Palestinians are expected to be released on Saturday in exchange for 14 Israelis. In total, 150 Palestinians and 50 Israelis are expected to be freed in the span of four days as per the truce agreement.
Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam quoted Qaddura Fares, the head of Palestinian Commission for Prisoners and Former Prisoners Affairs, as saying that, unlike previous prisoner swap deals, this one had ensured that the Palestinians released had their Israeli record officially expunged — theoretically lessening the odds that they may be detained by Israel once again for the same charges. A number of those released, however, had been imprisoned under Israel’s widespread and denounced policy of administrative detention, held without charges or trial.
Tensions remained high in anticipation of the release of more Palestinian captives on Saturday. According to a statement from Qaddura Fares, Palestinian resistance factions were upset over Israel allegedly “tampering” with the list of the released prisoners. Among some of the accusations included not abiding by the agreement to release the women and children in order, starting with the prisoners who had been in prison the longest. Another report by Al Jazeera English West Bank Correspondent Nida Ibrahim said that at least one mistake on the list was not rectified, when it included the name of a boy who had already been released prior to the hostage exchange.
At least 7,000 Palestinians, including 200 children and 62 women, were detained by Israel as of early November, according to prisoners rights group Addameer — with some 3,000 Palestinians detained since October 7, in a ratcheting up of incarceration of Palestinians that has been denounced as collective punishment.
Many of the Palestinians released from Israeli prisons on Friday in the exchange, as well as in recent weeks, have detailedﾠtortuous tactics and conditions in Israeli custody, reporting that they were stripped naked, beaten, and collectively punished by Israeli forces and prison authorities.
The release of 150 Palestinians, as much of a relief as it may be for their families and communities, is a mere drop in the bucket as Israeli forces continue to detain Palestinians every single day, as they have for years.
Gaza takes stock of devastation
As freed Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem paid tribute to the sacrifices of the people in Gaza, the truce has left people in the besieged enclaveﾠtaking stock of the scope of devastation of 48 days of relentless bombardment.
As bodies were recovered from under the rubble of destroyed buildings, the Gaza Ministry of Health has remained unable to confidently update its death toll for days, due to the breakdown in communications, especially in the northern Gaza Strip, and the near-total collapse of the healthcare system. The latest toll from the Government Media Office in Gaza earlier this week stood at 14,854 killed, including 6,150 children, with thousands reported missing and believed to be trapped under rubble. On Friday, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said its own counts estimated that 20,031 Palestinians had been killed, including 8,176 children, and more than 36,000 wounded.
Many Palestinians who had fled to southern Gaza sought to head back home on Friday to gauge the state of their homes or retrieve belongings, despite Israeli forces warning that they would not allow Palestinians to go back to the central and northern Gaza Strip. Just hours after the truce took effect, Israeli soldiers shot at people seeking to return home,ﾠkilling two Palestinians.
Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City, which was the site of a deadly strike on October 17, evacuated 70 wounded, sick, and medical staff on Friday towards the south, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) stated. Al-Shifa hospital, which was partially evacuated earlier in the week, and whose director has been detained by Israeli forces since, still hosts 100 patients and medical staff, for whom the World Health Organization said they were ﾓextremely concernedﾔ. The Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, another medical facility that has been severely targeted by Israeli forces, is also slated to be evacuated with the assistance of international agencies.
Meanwhile, more aid has begun trickling into the Gaza Strip, with PCRS reporting that 196 trucks carrying food, water, and medical supplies had entered the devastated Palestinian enclave, 61 of whom were headed to northern Gaza in the biggest convoy to head to the area since October 7.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 129,000 liters of fuel had entered Gaza on Friday, far less than the 200,000 liters a day the United Nations had previously said were needed.
The short pause in full-scale war has not in and of itself resolved the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where people continue to struggle to find food, water, and electricity, shortages that have had a ripple effect on the health of all people in Gaza, as Oxfam warned that babies were dying from preventable causes: “Without essential equipment and medical support, premature and underweight babies have little to no chance of survival.”
Israeli forces kill Palestinian doctor in the West Bank
Meanwhile, Israeli forces didn’t take the day off in the occupied West Bank, staging raids in a number of towns and villages.
Israeli forces killed 25-year-old doctor Shamekh Kamal Abu al-Rub during a morning raid in the Jenin-area town of Qabatiya on Saturday, during which at least two Palestinians were injured and three others were detained.
At least 19 Palestinians were reportedly detained by Israeli forces across the West Bank overnight — half as many people as were released in the hostage swap that same day. Israeli army raids were notably reported in Tulkarem, al-Bireh, Tuquﾒ, Yaﾒbad, and Qarawat Hani Bassan, during which a number of Palestinians were injured. Meanwhile, three journalists were temporarily detained near Hebron, and Israeli settlers attacked farmers in the area of Tulkarem.
In Tulkarem, Palestinian armed groups said they killed two Palestinians accused of having collaborated with the Israeli army.
International community raises pressure on Israel amid calls for full-fledged ceasefire
Foreign governmental envoys have continued to visit both Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials, with a noticeable shift in increased criticism of the scope of Israel’s violence, much to Tel Aviv’s displeasure.
The Israeli government has said it would summon the Belgian and Spanish ambassadors to Israel on Friday, after Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez spoke on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, calling for a permanent ceasefire.
“Way too many people have died, the destruction of Gaza is unacceptable. We cannot accept that a society is being destroyed the way it is being destroyed,” de Croo said, calling for a resumption of talks to achieve a political solution to the Israeli occupation: “There is no military solution to this conflict.”
Both Belgium and Spain have floated the possibility of recognizing a Palestinian state.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with a number of Palestinian Authority officials on Friday, before telling the BBC he had warned Israeli officials that “there won’t be long-term safety and security and stability for Israel unless there is long term safety, security, and stability for the Palestinian people.”
“When I met the Israeli president, prime minister and others, I stressed over and over again that they must abide by international humanitarian law, that the number of casualties are too high and they have to have that at the top of their minds,” Cameron said, adding that Israeli settler violence in the West Bank was “completely unacceptable.”
Earlier in the week, Pope Francis denounced the unleashing of Israeli violence in Gaza, saying that “we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.”
Mondoweiss – November 25, 2023
A ‘temporary ceasefire’ means realizing how much we’ve lost
For the people of Gaza, the four-day truce has only afforded them the chance to fully comprehend what they went through: "Only today have we realized that they’re gone. Only today do we feel death’s presence here."
BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ
The streets were suddenly flooded. People could now inspect the destroyed buildings in Khan Younis, in Nuseirat, in Deir al-Balah, and other cities in the south, able to venture farther away from their shelters to bring supplies for their families. Above all, they could now check in on the members of their family who were still alive, with whom contact had been severed throughout the war.
They are now able to seek each other out, to cry together over what they have lost and what they may yet lose.
The “temporary ceasefire,” if that is what they are calling it, doesn’t mean an end to the war. It simply means we are afforded more time to weep and to grieve.
Even though the fighting immediately preceding the truce was some of the fiercest since the start of the war, people were holding out hope that it would end in a ceasefire that would allow them safe passage back north to their homes in Gaza City and north of the Gaza Valley.
Yesterday in the early morning, Israeli warplanes dropped several leaflets for the people that remained in northern Gaza, warning them not to move outdoors. The Israeli army also called random cell phone numbers of registered Gaza City residents, warning them not to return north of the Gaza Valley. Both the leaflets and the phone calls sent the same message: the war is not over, and returning to your home is returning to your death.
But the families that have been torn apart by the genocide and spent over a month displaced are desperate for any word of the fate of their loved ones who remained. Many also desire to return to where their homes once stood, perhaps to salvage what they can from the rubble, including supplies, important belongings, and official documents.
Ahmad Lafi, 34, from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, fled south to Khan Younis along with his wife and two children at the start of the war, leaving behind his mother and father, his two sisters, and his two brothers. He told Mondoweiss that he lost contact with them two weeks ago, and has no idea if they are alive. Neither the Red Cross nor any other organization has been able to assist him in his attempt to find word of their whereabouts.
Yesterday, he tried to go to Gaza City with droves of other refugees seeking to do the same thing. When they reached the checkpoint on Salah al-Din Street, and before getting within 100 meters of the Israeli armored vehicles, soldiers began firing tank-mounted machine guns in the crowd’s direction.
Immediately, dozens of people fell to the ground, gravely wounded, and a few others were killed by the machinegun fire, Ahmad told Mondoweiss. They turned and ran in the other direction after that.
Later in the day, the Gaza government authorities announced the death of two martyrs from the incident, and reported over 15 people injured with live ammunition to the legs and chest.
The terms of the ceasefire allowed for the passage of people who remained in the north to the south, but the same does not apply to those wishing to go in the other direction. Analysts are saying that the lack of such a stipulation in the ceasefire’s terms means that the new military occupation of northern Gaza has been solidified.
Shaher Abu Shirbi, 42, is a father of six children and a refugee staying at an UNRWA school in Khan Younis. He had hoped that the truce would give him the chance to return to Beit Hanoun in the north.
“Even if it’s dangerous, I want to check on my house. Even if it’s demolished, I want to take one last look at it,” Shaher told Mondoweiss.
Shaher says that in the rush to flee the bombardment, he and his wife had not been able to pack that many belongings and had left behind important items such as their IDs and their children’s birth certificates. They also didn’t bring enough clothes with them and are struggling to find warmer clothes to wear as winter approaches.
Maybe these priorities don’t seem so essential to some amid all the death and destruction. But once the ceasefire took effect, regardless of what people thought of it, it had the effect of giving some people a sliver of hope. Some families that stayed in the north throughout the fighting have also chosen to remain there, even after the ceasefire is over. But those families have received little reprieve from the truce because it only afforded them the chance to fully comprehend the extent of what they lost.
Shahd Matar, who lost two of her brothers during an airstrike in the Jabaliya refugee camp, where she and her family still live, wrote on Facebook during the ceasefire:
“The truce, for us, turned our house into a funeral home, as people started to go to each others’ homes to express their condolences. For the first time during the war, and since the death of my two brothers, our neighbors and friends streamed in to express their condolences to me and my mother,” she said.
“But my mother has taken to sitting in one corner of the house, and she can’t stop crying,” Shahd continued. “Only today have we realized that they’re gone. Only today do we feel death’s presence here.”
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
