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By Dr Marwan Asmar

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military establishment led by Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi are determined to separate the Lebanese and the Gaza fronts.  To do that the Israelis are bombing Lebanon in all sorts of directions  right, left and center, in the south of the country, its east and of course, southern Beirut – considered the prime Hizbollah stronghold – as hard as they can to achieve their illusive objectives which are nowhere near to being realized.

Israeli air raids, bombings, killing of civilians and murder of claimed Hezbollah fighters have increased in the last 48 hours with death knocking on the door of the Lebanese. Last Monday alone Israeli warplanes killed 274 people and injured 1024 in 1100 air raids all over Lebanon with the number of those killed rising daily.

But in contrast, Hezbollah attacks – through missiles and drones – have been tough on northern Israel including its cities like Haifa, Tel Aviv, in the Galilee, Safad, Jewish colonies/settlements  and military bases have continued non-stop where reports of fires, deaths and hundreds of thousands hiding in underground shelters.

Secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah has been very clear in his approach. In this escalation which started last week through the so-called pager and wireless massacre when Israeli killed around 3000 people in the southern neighborhood of Beirut, Hezbollah quickly regrouped and started firing on the north and center of Israel in unexpected moves.

He said there will be no separation between the Lebanese and Gaza fronts until the Israeli military machine stops bombing Gaza once-and-for-all. Hezbollah and Gaza has long become an unparalleled equation, he maintains. The war must stop in Gaza so that Fadi I, Fadi II and more recently Fadi III as well as more missiles stop landing on the different and sensitive areas of Israel.

However he tried to be reasonable saying that if a settlement is reached within the Palestinian groups and be acceptable to them his party would stop firing on Israel. Nasarallah couldn’t be more clearer than that.

Meanwhile the ‘trading over the border escalation’ between Hezbollah and the Israeli warplanes continues with missile swaps and bombs continuing. Despite the war utterings from certain quarters, Israel doesn’t want a northern front as their leaders keep saying and is not expected to start a ground troop offensive into southern Lebanon because of what is being termed as their ‘debilitating’ ability and exhaustion of their soldiers after their nearly 12 months of fighting in Gaza.

But in this respect too, Nasrallah has been clear too saying if the Israeli army wants to enter south Lebanon, Hezbollah would be ready for them, going all the way of inviting them to invade and see the real force of the resistance in Lebanon that had been fighting Israel, albeit on a ‘low level’ since Israel started its war and onslaught on the Gaza Strip soon after 7 October, 2023.

All indications suggest Israeli will not be able to separate this front from the Gaza one. Though Israeli planes are in a state of bombing momentum believing if they bomb certain regions of Lebanon fiercely enough, and aim to kill their top caders by bombing south Beirut, Hezbollah will eventually give up by themselves and wrap up the war.

But the situation is particularly fluid, neither side is budging from their positions. With Hezbollah termed to be recruiting 40,000 fighters from Iraq, Syria and Yemen, it insists that this front is their to support Gaza while Netanyahu refuses to accept a ceasefire deal on the enclave.

Both parties are in “military deadlock”, while a third party, the Biden administration, is walking in the middle. Its officials right from US president Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other lowley staff stated many times they want a deal on Gaza, and don’t want the war to spread to the region, to Lebanon, possibly Iraq, Syria and even Yemen which have been up till now low key operators.

In this war first on Gaza, and now developing into Lebanon, the US has been a constant behind-the-scene player, politicking in Lebanon through its special envoy and Qatar and Egypt acting as mediators in the past months to work a ceasefire that didn’t work mainly through Israeli intransigence, Washington must take much of the blame.

This is because Washington has been a constant supplier of weapons to the Israelis in this war right after 7 October, 2023 through an active air and sea bridge to Tel Aviv. It has, till this day, been providing Israeli with technical advice on the conduct of the war with at least 2000 US military personell and many would argue, the United States has not been forceful enough with Netanyahu who worked to disrupt the talks and make sure the war on Gaza continues.

With the war switching to the Lebanese-Israeli border, it seems that the US would continue to supply Israel with weapons, increase its intransigence even further, keep up the Hamas-Hezbollah ante up and suck the region into an even bigger regional war.

Dr Asmar is an Amman-based writer on https://crossfirearabia.com/

25 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Atul Chandra and Vijay Prashad

On September 22, 2024, the Sri Lankan election authority announced that Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) alliance won the presidential election. Dissanayake, who has been the leader of the left-wing JVP since 2014, defeated 37 other candidates, including the incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) and his closest challenger Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya. The traditional parties that dominated Sri Lankan politics—such as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the UNP—are now on the back foot. However, they dominate the Sri Lankan Parliament (the SLPP has 145 out of 225 seats, while the UNP has one seat). Dissanayake’s JVP only has three seats in the Parliament.

Dissanayake’s triumph to become the country’s ninth president is significant. It is the first time that a party from the country’s Marxist tradition has won a presidential election. Dissanayake, born in 1968 and known by his initials of AKD, comes from a working-class background in north-central Sri Lanka, far from the capital city of Colombo. His worldview has been shaped by his leadership of Sri Lanka’s student movement, and by his role as a cadre in the JVP. In 2004, Dissanayake went to Parliament when the JVP entered an alliance with Chandrika Kumaratunga, the president of the country from 1994 to 2005 and the daughter of the first female prime minister in the world (Sirimavo Bandaranaike). Dissanayake became the Minister of Agriculture, Land, and Livestock in Kumaratunga’s cabinet, a position that allowed him to display his competence as an administrator and to engage the public in a debate around agrarian reform (which will likely be an issue he will take up as president). An attempt at the presidency in 2019 ended unsuccessfully, but it did not stop either Dissanayake or the NPP.

Economic Turbulence

In 2022, Colombo—Sri Lanka’s capital city—was convulsed by the Aragalaya (protests) that culminated in a takeover of the presidential palace and the hasty departure of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. What motivated these protests was the rapid decline of economic possibilities for the population, which faced shortages of essential goods, including food, fuel, and medicines. Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt and went into bankruptcy. Rather than generate an outcome that would satisfy the protests, Wickremesinghe, with his neoliberal and pro-Western orientation, seized the presidency to complete Rajapaksa’s six-year term that began in 2019.

Wickremesinghe’s lame duck presidency did not address any of the underlying issues of the protests. He took Sri Lanka to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2023 to secure a $2.9 billion bailout (the 17th such intervention in Sri Lanka from the IMF since 1965), which came with removal of subsidies for items such as electricity and a doubled value-added tax rate to 18 percent: the price of the debt was to be paid by the working class in Sri Lanka and not the external lenders. Dissanayake has said that he would like to reverse this equation, renegotiate the terms of the deal, put more of the pain on external lenders, increase the income tax-free threshold, and exempt several essential goods (food and health care) from the increased taxation regime. If Dissanayake can do this, and if he earnestly intervenes to stifle institutional corruption, he will make a serious mark on Sri Lankan politics which has suffered from the ugliness of the civil war and from the betrayals of the political elite.

A Marxist Party in the President’s House

The JVP or the People’s Liberation Front was founded in 1965 as a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party. Led by Rohana Wijeweera (1943-1989), the party attempted two armed insurrections—in 1971 and again from 1987 to 1989—against what it perceived as an unjust, corrupt, and intractable system. Both uprisings were brutally suppressed, leading to thousands of deaths, including the assassination of Wijeweera. After 1989, the JVP renounced the armed struggle and entered the democratic political arena. The leader of the JVP before Dissanayake was Somawansa Amerasinghe (1943-2016), who rebuilt the party after its major leaders had been killed in the late 1980s. Dissanayake took forward the agenda of building a left-wing political party that advocated for socialist policies in the electoral and social arenas. The remarkable growth of the JVP is a result of the work of Dissanayake’s generation, who are 20 years younger than the founders and who have been able to anchor the ideology of the JVP in large sections of the Sri Lankan working class, peasantry, and poor. Questions remain about the party’s relationship with the Tamil minority population given the tendency of some of its leaders to slip into Sinhala nationalism (particularly when it came to how the state should deal with the insurgency led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Dissanayake’s personal rise has come because of his integrity, which stands in stark contrast to the corruption and nepotism of the country’s elite, and because he has not wanted to define Sri Lankan politics around ethnic division.

Part of the refoundation of the JVP has been the rejection of left-wing sectarianism. The party worked to build the National People’s Power coalition of twenty-one left and center-left groups, whose shared agenda is to confront corruption and the IMF policy of debt and austerity for the mass of the Sri Lankan people. Despite the deep differences among some of the formations in the NPP, there has been a commitment to a common minimum program of politics and policy. That program is rooted in an economic model that prioritizes self-sufficiency, industrialization, and agrarian reform. The JVP, as the leading force in the NPP, has pushed for the nationalization of certain sectors (particularly utilities, such as energy provision) and the redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation and increased social expenditure. The message of economic sovereignty struck a chord amongst people who have long been divided along lines of ethnicity.

Whether Dissanayake will be able to deliver on this program of economic sovereignty is to be seen. However, his victory has certainly encouraged a new generation to breathe again, to feel that their country can go beyond the tired IMF agenda and attempt to build a Sri Lankan project that could become a model for other countries in the Global South.

Atul Chandra works at Tricontinental Research Services (New Delhi).

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

25 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Laurence Tubiana and Ana Toni

NEW YORK – It has been nearly ten years since countries came together in Paris and agreed finally to get serious about averting a climate disaster. But while there is an emerging consensus on the structural economic reforms needed to transform sectors such as energy, transportation, and agriculture, the necessary investments are not being made fast enough.

Instead, our governance systems are struggling to muster an adequate response to what is an increasingly obvious and severe climate and ecological crisis. Although many governments have proposed robust climate measures, these often trigger a social backlash, because they are perceived as unjust and inequitable. Many see policies that pit the old against the young, the city against the country, or the Global North against the Global South. Such controversies are tailor-made for social media, where they ripen and then rot in a hothouse of misinformation, incendiary rhetoric, and polarization.

Although the argument for the necessity of major reform has been won, the argument for how to do it fairly has not. This challenge will become only more difficult the deeper we get into the net-zero transition. Most people care deeply about addressing the climate crisis: in a survey conducted across 18 G20 countries, 71% of respondents agreed that major action is needed immediately to reduce carbon emissions. But trust in government action is lacking, with only 39% believing that their own government will act effectively.

One way to address this gap is to allow citizens participation in the elaboration and implementation of climate policies and measures designed by governments. Instead of having climate policies imposed by technocrats from above, governments should embrace approaches that combine “top-down” with “bottom-up” methods, with the latter bringing together ordinary people who are tasked with shaping a shared vision of the future.

Successful examples of those participatory methods already exist. Citizens’ assemblies in France are decision-making bodies composed of randomly selected, demographically representative individuals who deliberate on a specific issue of public concern and provide policy recommendations.

In addition to fostering consensus on divisive topics, citizens’ assemblies educate the public about complex policy issues and give citizens a direct role in decisions that affect their lives. These elements are especially important for issues like the net-zero transition, which entails major economic changes that can leave communities feeling divided. Unlike politicians, assembly members make decisions free from electoral pressures and lobbying. Notable examples include Ireland’s assemblies on marriage equality and abortion, which led to national referenda and breakthrough legislation; and France’s climate assembly, which helped shape its most ambitious climate bill to date.

Brazil’s long standing participatory approach to policymaking has also proved successful. For example, its Climate Plan is being developed through a governance structure that includes several ministries of the federal government together with representatives from the scientific community, subnational governments, the private sector, and civil society.

Moreover, a climate participatory platform (involving both digital and in-person exchanges) has been launched to invite all Brazilian citizens to propose solutions. The National Environmental Conference and the National Social and Economic Development Council, by prioritizing the Climate Plan, have further contributed to strengthening this bottom-up process.

Such methods can steer climate policy proposals away from sources of polarization, and toward opportunities for collaboration and deliberation. Among G20 countries, 62% of people favor using citizens’ assemblies for decision-making, and that number has risen above 70% in countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, and to over 80% in Kenya. More than 170 citizens’ assemblies have been held in more than 30 countries, each with the goal of accelerating climate action in ways that support a fair and just transition for all.

Drawing on the model of the World Social Forum, what we need now is a Global Social-Climate Forum, or a Global Citizens’ Assembly for People and Planet, to bring citizens together from every country, not just to chart a collective path forward, but to reimagine our politics and encourage a global ethical stock-take. This would be an opportunity for humanity to come together, to understand each other’s aspirations and anxieties, and to co-create a green transition that benefits everyone. Rather than leaving anyone behind, we can forge a new social contract rooted in solidarity, equity, and fairness.

In 2015, France and Peru established a new mechanism, the Action Agenda, because they recognized that the scale of change needed to tackle the climate crisis requires more than just government action. It also depends on the wealth of ideas that civil society – including businesses, cities, and communities – has to offer.

As countries prepare to announce their next climate commitments in 2025, we must acknowledge the critical role that ordinary citizens have to play, both individually and collectively, in addressing the climate crisis. At COP30 and beyond, we must provide a dedicated space to hear every voice, and to ensure that the transition is not only fast but fair. Failing that, we will not achieve our common goals. That is why Brazil is committed to making COP30 (in November 2025) the People’s COP, and to giving every person on Earth the opportunity to participate in shaping our common future.

Laurence Tubiana, a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a professor at Sciences Po.

Ana Toni is National Secretary for Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil.

24 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By M K Bhadrakumar

It came as a disappointment that the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud dismissed a joint petition filed by a distinguished group of intellectuals that the supply of arms from India to the Israeli military during the Gaza war is in violation India’s obligations under international law coupled with Articles 14 and 21 read with 51(c) of the Constitution.

The petitioners pleaded that the court had on previous occasions held that India is under obligation to interpret domestic law in the light of the obligations under the conventions and treaties that it has both signed and ratified. However, the apex court took note that this is an issue of foreign policy. The government is off the hook.

But an even more explosive issue devolves upon the reports that pucca Indians or people of Indian origin have been recruited by the Israeli army to fight in the war. At a minimum, the government is obliged to ascertain from the Israeli government the veracity of such reports. It is a huge issue since over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 100,000 injured in Israel’s military operations so far.

Doesn’t the government realise that this is adding to the growing perception internationally that the current government is ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘anti-Muslim’? Governments come and go but such stigmas eventually become the burdens of history once the West Asian region’s oligarchies disappear and get replaced by representative governments going forward.

Anyone who is a believer in the forces of history would sense that without a radical rethink of national policy, Israel faces a dismal future of strategic defeat. To be sure, the West Asian region is on the cusp of change. Last week, Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Damascus officially resumed its mission after a 12-year hiatus of wasted time as financier and mentor of the jihadi forces who spearheaded the Western project for regime change in Syria. The reintegration of Syria into the Arab world, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the BRICS membership of Iran, the Persian Gulf countries and Egypt, the diminishing influence of the United States in the West Asian region, the isolation of Israel — these are emblematic of the winds of change sweeping the region.

In such a transformative period, how could India possibly cling to the world of yesterday with a regional policy anchored on its special relationship with Israel? On the one hand, we are moralising that ‘this is not an era of wars’ while on the other hand, the government is giving robust support to Israel in its horrific war against the Palestinian people.

Again, the religious dimension to the fratricidal strife in Manipur is already drawing the attention of Christian countries, although this is the first time that the Meitei, who are predominantly Hindu, live mostly in and around the state’s capital city Imphal, and the Kuki — who are mainly Christian and inhabit the surrounding hills — clashed against each other… Many have pointed out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to visit the state or make a comprehensive statement. In a devastating article that neatly overlapped the high-profile visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Germany, the Deutsche Welle — a national broadcasting station, by the way — continued that apart from the militarisation of that tiny state, the Indian government has no policy.

What do we do with such brutal criticism? We either stomach it when it originates from powerful Western countries such as Germany or the US (or the United Nations), or become hysterical when Iran compares the situation in J&K with Gaza. Perhaps, India is the only country in the Global South which behaves so cynically. When the aristocrats in our political class wax eloquently that ‘India matters’ as a world power, they overlook that we live in a veritable glass house in the age of the Internet in which information travels around the world in seconds. One can hear the derisive suppressed laughter in the Western world when we strut around on the global stage as ‘Vishwaguru’.

Suffice to say, India’s policy during the past 11 months of the Gaza war has become a mystery wrapped in an enigma. The only plausible explanation is that Israelis who are adept at the art of political blackmail are exploiting the government’s Achilles’ heel, that is Haifa Port, which is in the eye of the storm in the region, to manipulate our foreign policy.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus:“Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

24 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Israel launched a massive attack on Lebanon on Monday killing 492 people, including 35 children, 58 women and two medics in over a thousand separate airstrikes.

Monday’s mass killing far outstripped the intensity of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, during which 1,000 people were killed during an entire month.

Israel’s bombings followed its mass terror attack last week, in which thousands of pagers and other communication devices exploded throughout Lebanon, killing 37 people and injuring thousands.

In language echoing that used to justify the ongoing Gaza genocide, which has already officially killed more than 41,000 people, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari declared, “Hezbollah uses the civilian population and civilian homes as a human shield for its terrorist activity.”

Israel’s massacre in Lebanon prompted mass evacuations from Southern Lebanon to the capital city of Beirut. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the population of Southern Lebanon to evacuate, claiming that they would be allowed to return to their homes.

But the real plans of the Netanyahu government and its imperialist backers were spelled out by Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism, who called for Israel to carry out a land grab in Southern Lebanon.

“Lebanon, even though it has a flag and even though it has political institutions, does not meet the definition of a country,” he said. “The drawing lines of Sykes and Picot, which were based on the distribution of areas of influence and resources between Great Britain and France, did not survive the test of time.”

In a testament to the scale of the military operation now being conducted, Israel’s National Unity Party Chairman MK Benny Gantz declared, “We must act not only against Hezbollah but also against the sovereign state of Lebanon, which bears responsibility for terrorism emanating from its territory.”

This massive escalation is being coordinated in real time with the United States, which is funding, arming and politically supporting it.

In a press briefing Monday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder reported that “Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Saturday and Sunday evenings Eastern Time.

“During both calls, Secretary Austin reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself,” said Ryder. “The Secretary also made clear that the United States remains postured to protect US forces and personnel in the region.”

Ryder announced that the United States would be sending additional US troops to the region. Currently, about 40,000 US troops are deployed throughout the Middle East, including in Iraq and Syria. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is currently deployed in the region, while the USS Harry S. Truman is currently underway to the area.

While the Biden administration has publicly claimed that it is seeking a de-escalation of tensions and a “ceasefire,” the reality is that it is funding, enabling and encouraging Israel’s role in both the Gaza genocide and its wider attacks in the Middle East.

In July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation from Democratic and Republican members of both houses of Congress, followed by separate meetings with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. After her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris, the Democrats’ candidate for president, declared, “I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah”—an effective green light to expand the war beyond Gaza.

The US press, moreover, is beginning to give a hint about the scale of Israel’s plans. In an article published Monday, New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger wrote, “Netanyahu is no longer satisfied with carrying out periodic brush-backs of Hezbollah’s power. In his view, Oct. 7 changed everything and the time has come to solve the problem once and for all—both in Gaza and in Lebanon.”

In other words, Israel and its imperialist backers have seized upon the October 7 attacks to carry out not only their “final solution” of the Palestinian question but to completely reorganize the Middle East under imperialist domination by provoking a region-wide war.

US imperialism sees this war as one front in a global struggle targeting Russia and China, aimed at securing US domination all over the globe.

Just days after launching his massacre in Lebanon, Netanyahu will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, which is being turned into a war summit by the imperialist powers.

Ahead of the summit, a group of UN officials issued a statement condemning the catastrophe created by the Israeli siege and bombardment of Gaza. It declared:

More than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority of them civilians, including women, children, older persons, and at times entire families—have reportedly been killed, and more than 95,500 have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. … More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, healthcare, education, electricity, and fuel—the basic necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out.

With the expansion of the war into Lebanon, not only the people of Gaza but broad sections of the population of the Middle East risk a similarly catastrophic fate.

24 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ida Audeh

I told them Ali is 6 years old. They gave me an 18 kilogram bag of body parts.

—A parent who survived the Gaza City massacre at al-Tabin school, Aug. 10

You Arabs, I don’t know what to say about you. Children are dying under the rubble. Their hands are severed, their legs are torn, their heads are crushed. To every Arab and foreigner who sees us: What blood runs in your veins? From what clay are you made?…I have one word to say: I will not forgive you in this life or the next.

—A child who witnessed the Al-Daraj massacre in Gaza City on Aug. 10, reported on Resistance News Network

Israel’s agenda—of leaving historic Palestine empty of Palestinians—has been advanced from an ultimate, distant goal to an urgent, immediate one.

—Jonathan Cook, writing in Middle East Eye on July 19

For nearly a year, the world has watched in horror and disbelief as Israel has bombed, executed and starved the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and demolished everything they have worked so hard to create—universities, hospitals, homes, neighborhoods, institutions, communities and neighborhoods. Much of that horror stems from incredulity that countries that might have stopped Israel’s genocidal rage have chosen to either passively do nothing or, like the United States and Germany, actively aid and abet the genocide by providing the ammunition and offering diplomatic protection to the killers. In such a sickening context, it is no surprise that the people around the world sympathize with the Palestinian people—how can they not, when citizens turned journalists are, at great personal risk, livestreaming their own genocide, sending videos and images out to the world in hope that they will arouse the world to act?

People around the world stand in solidarity with Palestinians at this moment of tremendous suffering. But solidarity that does not support the Palestinian resistance misses the meaning of this moment and is no solidarity at all.

Palestinians are doing more than enduring a savage, ongoing genocide, unprecedented in recent times. They are also waging an anti-colonial struggle. It is truly remarkable that from the Gaza Strip—a piece of land only 139-square-miles large, besieged and blockaded for 17 years and under repeated assault even before this genocide—fighters have emerged who are determined to ensure that their people take their place among the nations of the world. During the first month of the war, Israel dropped the equivalent of two nuclear bombs on Gaza. And now, one year later, the Palestinian resistance is still strong; no area of the Gaza Strip is safe for Israeli soldiers to roam. Not a single Israeli war aim has been achieved.

ISRAEL UNMASKS ITSELF AS A RUTHLESS KILLING MACHINE

An Electronic Intifada story published on July 15 tells of Muhannad al-Jamal, who was detained by Israeli soldiers, together with his mother, who was on a stretcher. Her stretcher was placed on the ground, and he watched as an Israeli tank ran over her. When he was able to escape, he returned to his mother and found that wild dogs were eating her flesh.

By December 2023, UNICEF estimated that at least 1,000 Palestinian children had lost a limb—a limb that was amputated without anesthesia, because Israel has denied medical supplies to Gaza’s hospitals. On average, 10 children a day undergo amputations in Gaza without anesthesia.

And in a concentration camp set up in Israeli territory just outside the Gaza Strip, Palestinian captives are tortured and starved and also undergoing amputations of limbs—by Israelis who are not surgeons, and who have access to anesthesia but prefer not to use it when operating on Palestinian bodies.

Israel has been brutal in the way it has dismembered the land of Palestine. It severed 78 percent of the territory when it created the state in 1948, and in 1967 it focused on the remaining 22 percent, severing Gaza from the rest of Palestine, making Jerusalem inaccessible to most Palestinians, and fragmenting the West Bank through a combination of control and land grab mechanisms: more than 200 Jewish-only colonies, more than 700 checkpoints and road barriers, and a Separation Wall that encloses communities and separates Palestinians from one another. All of these mechanisms make it easy for Israel to lay siege to Palestinian towns and villages as it is doing right now.

But if Israel has been brutal in its desecration of the land of Palestine (and the current war in Gaza rises to the level of ecocide), it has been positively savage in the ways it has dismembered and otherwise abused Palestinian bodies. It is hard to get reliable data about the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza because so many bodies are buried in the rubble.

The Palestinian Health Ministry gives an estimate of almost 40,000 dead as of Aug. 1. However, a June 19, 2024 article published in the Lancet argued that the true figure could be higher than 186,000, if one considers direct and indirect deaths (e.g., deaths caused by conditions that would not be fatal under normal circumstances). If that estimate is correct, and assuming a prewar population of 2.2 million, Israel killed a whopping 8 percent of the population of Gaza in 10 months of livestreamed genocide aided materially and enthusiastically by the United States and Germany, two unrepentant countries with several genocides under their belts.

Israel appears to be toying with more than 2 million residents in Gaza, ordering them around from one area of the Gaza Strip to another, claiming that one area is safe and then strafing it when it reaches capacity, declaring (to one another, but not to Palestinians) that some areas are no go zones and then killing Palestinians who wander into them. Wherever Israel goes, it burns and dismembers Palestinian bodies—in displacement camps, U.N. shelters, schools, hospitals, bakeries, mosques and churches.

A little girl, no older than 10, looks into the camera and tells how her father left the family to get flour one day: “He was gone for a long time. My cousin came to us and told us that the tower had been bombed and my father and uncle had been martyred. The next day their bodies were brought to us. My father’s eyes had been gouged, his tongue cut.”

—Quds Feed (Telegram channel), January 22, 2024

Children as young as five express a preference for death, the head of Doctors Without Borders told the U.N. Security Council in February. Many have seen their family members dismembered before their eyes. It is common to see adults carrying bags of body parts for burial.

HELPING THEMSELVES TO PALESTINIAN BODY PARTS

On Nov. 26, 2023, the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that Israel was stealing bodies from mass graves and then returning them. Medical professionals who examined the returned bodies found that some of them were missing organs—livers, kidneys, hearts and corneas.

In fact, reports of organ theft date at least to the First Intifada, when Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli occupation army and then released to the family hours or days later, only after securing promises that the burial would be conducted quicky and at night. In her 2014 book Over Their Dead Bodies, Israeli doctor Meira Weiss disclosed that organs taken from dead Palestinians were used in medical research. The former head of Israel’s Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, Yehuda Hess, reported that Israel helps itself to “human tissues, organs and skin” from Palestinians it kills. Back in 2008, CNN reported that Israel is a key player in the global (and illegal) trade in human organs. It is a safe bet that many of those organs are taken from Palestinians it kills—which demonstrates Israeli ingenuity in finding ways to turn its killing of Palestinians into a money-making venture.

DEMANDING THE RIGHT TO RAPE PALESTINIAN BODIES

There is no way to sugar coat this: Israelis openly assert the right to rape Palestinians.

In Sde Teiman, a torture center in Israel, Gazan men are tortured, often to death—not to extract information about the resistance (which they are unlikely to have anyway), but as an end in itself. Sometimes Israeli civilians are invited to film the torture on their phones.

In these black sites, Palestinians are beaten, urinated on, experimented on, operated on without anesthesia, starved and raped. Reports have surfaced, not only from released Palestinians but also from Israeli whistleblowers, that Palestinian men are raped with sharp objects. In one publicized case of a gang rape that was livestreamed, Israeli civilians and Knesset members rushed to free the alleged rapists from where they were being held for questioning, defending the rights of Israeli soldiers to do that and more.

Electronic Intifada reported in 2017 that the Chief Rabbi of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, had advocated in 2002 that Israeli soldiers be allowed to rape non-Jewish women during wartime, apparently as a way to keep their morale high. The same rabbi was equally tolerant of genocide. What differs today is that Israelis are willing to take to the streets and to discuss in the Knesset their right to rape, in yet another indication of the depraved Israeli national psyche. Israel is alone among nations where its army’s savagery is known to and fully endorsed by the majority of the population.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE

The Palestinian militias resisting Israel’s killing machine in Gaza include several groups operating under a joint command: Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, by far the largest fighting force; the Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades; Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades; the Popular Resistance Committee’s Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s National Resistance Brigades. In the West Bank, the Lions’ Den and Mujahideen Brigades are active as well.

Axios reported on May 14, 2024 that Hamas had 30,000 to 40,000 fighters at the beginning of the war and cites “Israeli intelligence assessments” that claim that 18 out of 24 fighting battalions have been dismantled. A June 6, 2024 article published on the Reuters site cited U.S. officials who claimed that the resistance relies on only 9,000 to 12,000 Palestinian fighters in Gaza. It is not clear what these assessments are based on; certainly the performance of the resistance does not suggest a diminished fighting force. In fact, a study by CNN in early August found evidence of a Hamas resurgence; using Israel’s estimate of 24 Hamas battalions, CNN analysts studied 16 of them in northern and central Gaza and found that only two had been “destroyed.”

The resistance claims that it cannot absorb all the volunteers wanting to fight since the war began. This sounds credible: since Israel targets civilians, one is equally likely to be killed in a displacement camp as in combat, so taking up arms to defend your community against the invaders does not expose you to additional risk. And then, there is the rage factor: Israel believes that killing civilians puts pressure on the resistance to accept unfavorable conditions for a ceasefire, when in fact the opposite is true. The fighters are local, not foreign imports (and according to some reports, 60 percent of them have been orphaned in previous Israeli assaults on Gaza); their families are being slaughtered, their children starved, their towns demolished, and everywhere the stench of decomposing bodies hovers. All of these conditions fuel rage and stiffen the backbone. If Israel unleashes such demonic savagery when it faces resistance, one can imagine what it is capable of doing if its power were not being challenged.

The resistance has been sustained for almost a year already, and there is no evidence of combat fatigue, as there is in the demoralized Israeli army. Israeli soldiers are effective demolition forces, dynamiting universities and hospitals, and they wantonly destroy homes and take selfies with blindfolded Palestinians, but they cannot find the Israeli prisoners of war and show no sign that they are even trying to.

The Palestinian resistance in Gaza is nothing short of epic. It uses weapons it makes locally, which bear the name of leaders who helped develop them or those it wishes to honor. In the operations videos released by the resistance, discussed in weekly Electronic Intifada podcasts by military analyst Jon Elmer, we see that fighters plan complex operations meticulously and are deliberate about their choice of weapon, displaying confidence. We see the fearlessness with which they place explosives on tanks, making it back to their base before the tank explodes. We see the skill with which they use the massive rubble created by Israel’s destruction of buildings to hide their advances. We see them hold their fire when medical evacuations take place, even though the enemy has made it a point to destroy hospitals, commandeer sections of them for variable lengths of time, and leave mass graves in its wake.

PALESTINIANS FIGHT FOR MORE THAN JUST AN END TO THE GENOCIDE

Some supporters of Palestinians who are appalled by the genocide in Gaza may be reluctant to vocally support the Palestinian resistance because it is led by Islamist parties. It is past time that such supporters get over their squeamishness. Palestinian society, by and large, is not a secular society, and so it is unlikely to produce a secular resistance that gains widespread traction, as the Islamists have managed to do. If one truly supports Palestinian rights and opposes colonialism, then one must support the fighters who put their lives on the line to defend those rights against the combined forces of Israel, the U.S., Germany, and other weapons suppliers and political allies.

The reasons for that reluctance need to be examined. Some people might have genuine differences with the political ideology of Islamists, but even that is not sufficient reason to withhold support from movements that are fighting a savage enemy against such overwhelming odds. Others, perhaps the majority, think of themselves as secular and thus as a matter of principle can’t support those with an ideology rooted in faith. Such people need to explore whether their “principled opposition” is really just another way of saying that they share their government’s disdain for Islam. Finding oneself on the side of the U.S. government on a foreign policy issue should give one pause: the U.S. government has never supported any people’s just rebellion against an oppressive regime. Even Israel’s killing of 234 unarmed Palestinian civilians during the 2018-19 Great March of Return in Gaza did not prompt the U.S. to rebuke Israel. No form of resistance by people in the Global South against Western hegemony, whether armed or unarmed, is acceptable to the U.S.

This is precisely the moment to break out of the parameters of discourse permitted in Western countries. People are rebelling against all structures and policies that keep them oppressed and that benefit only the ruling class, ranging from unending wars to income inequality, racialized policing, and environmental catastrophe. The attempt to hold up Hamas as a bogeyman to be defeated must be rejected out of hand, because the twin genocidaires promoting this propaganda line—Israel and the United States—cannot be trusted: they will always demand acquiescence to their power.

The Palestinian resistance fights for a cause—an end to foreign colonization, an end to Israeli impunity, which threatens every single non-Jew in historic Palestine. They fight to free the more than 9,000 Palestinians being tortured in Israeli prisons and to relieve the torment of their families. They fight to live freely on their land and to watch their loved ones thrive. Israelis on the other hand fight to maintain the principle of Jewish supremacy in Palestine—a principle that never made sense in the Arab world and cannot be defended in the 21st century.

Palestinians are tired of being at the mercy of a vicious and supremacist entity that kills, maims, rapes, starves and immobilizes them and desecrates the land. They are determined to end this foreign domination now. It is past time to bring such an unnatural regime to an end. Just as apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany were stripped of the ideologies that made them so toxic, Palestinians fight for a country free of the toxicity of Zionism, from the river to the sea. It is a just goal, a noble goal, and it is within sight.

Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report. This article was first published onthe Washington Report on Middle East Affairs website on September 11, 2024.

22 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Brett Wilkins

As Israel followed up its remote bombings of communications devices in Lebanon with airstrikes on Beirut, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency session Friday during which officials urgently called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that the Middle East is on “the brink of catastrophe.”

“We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told representatives of the 15-member Security Council (UNSC) during the session.

“It is not too late to avoid such folly. There is still room for diplomacy,” DiCarlo stressed. “I also strongly urge member states with influence over the parties to leverage it now.”

Officials voiced alarm over this week’s remote bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices Israel said belonged to members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group, which killed at least 37 people including two children and wounded thousands more. While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, U.S. officials have attributed the attacks to their key ally.

“These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the council.

[https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/1837242058261811318]

“This has unleashed widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon, already suffering in an increasingly volatile situation since October 2023 and crumbling under a severe and longstanding economic crisis,” Türk added. “This cannot be the new normal.”

Speaking during the meeting, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “unfathomable” Israeli electronic attacks “represent a serious unprecedented event in the history of wars” and warned that “no one in this world is safe anymore.”

Habib demanded the council condemn Israel’s “terrorist attack” and asserted that “accepting what happened amounts to opening a Pandora’s box,” with countries and militant groups carrying out similar bombings around the world.

“This is the moment of truth,” he added.

French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière told the Security Council that “the risk of an open war with potentially tragic consequences is growing every day.”

“Such a prospect must be avoided at all costs,” he added. “It is urgent that all parties work towards de-escalation.”

Deputy U.S. U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood defended Israel, asserting that “no member of this council facing a terrorist organization on its border would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its territory.”

However, some experts said that the Israeli device bombings were acts of terrorism under international law.

There was no hint of de-escalation as Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area of Beirut on Friday, killing at least 31 people, including multiple Hezbollah commanders, and wounding at least dozens of others. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said that the dead include three women and seven children.

During a Saturday television interview, Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kisch falsely proclaimed that “there is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon.”

“The way things are progressing at the moment, Lebanon will be annihilated,” he vowed. Pressed on the genocidal implications of the word “annihilated,” Kisch said, “Lebanon as we know it will not exist.”

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1837483041360695761]

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have traded limited—yet deadly and destructive—cross-border fire since October 7, when Israel retaliated for Hamas-led attacks by launching a war for which it is currently on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice in The Hague.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel’s bombs, bullets, and blockade have killed and maimed more than 147,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 351 days. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and invasion, which, along with the ” complete siege” on the coastal enclave, has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

22 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

A sprawling, highly fortified Russian arms depot located north of Moscow exploded in a giant fireball Wednesday night, against the backdrop of an escalating media and political campaign demanding that Ukraine be allowed to strike Russia with NATO weapons.

The explosion marked one of the largest strikes on a Russian arms depot since the start of the war. The arsenal in Toropets, located 300 miles north of Ukraine and 230 miles west of Moscow, reportedly housed long-range missiles and glide bombs.

The massive blast registered on earthquake monitors, and NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed the entire arsenal on fire.

The Washington Post reported that an official from Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, took credit for the attack, declaring the arms depot was “literally wiped off the face of the Earth,” and that the operation involved “more than 100 drones.”

Meanwhile, the Tver regional government said in a Telegram post that “a fire started as a result of drone debris falling while air defense forces were repelling an attack.”

Neither the Ukrainian explanation of a major coordinated drone strike nor the Russian explanation of drone fragments lighting a fire aligns with previous Russian statements about the arsenal’s defensive capabilities.

In 2018, when the site was renovated, the Russian Ministry of Defense declared the site met the “highest international standards” and could defend against weapons from missiles and “even a small nuclear attack.”

How a hardened facility built to withstand a strike by a nuclear weapon could have been completely destroyed by drones carrying, at most, a few dozen kilograms of explosives each, has not been explained.

Moreover, the town is significantly closer to Latvia, a NATO member, than it is to Ukraine, leading to speculation—as yet without evidence—that the strike could have been launched from Latvia.

The attack takes place against the backdrop of an escalating campaign by the US media and political establishment to allow Ukraine to carry out long-range strikes against Russia using NATO weapons.

Unlike Ukraine’s kamikaze drones, the UK’s Storm Shadow missile carries a payload of nearly 1,000 pounds and is capable of penetrating hardened targets.

Last week, the Guardian reported that “British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia.”

While an announcement about the move was expected last week at a meeting between US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, no announcement was made at the time.

Instead, US and UK media outlets began raising the suggestion that the US could simply authorize the strikes in secret, without making any such announcement. As the Economist wrote at the time, “There is unlikely to be a public announcement. A decision may be quietly communicated to Kyiv, to downplay its significance and to keep it secret. It may not be until targets in Russia are struck with Western missiles that a change will be confirmed.”

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared, “If this decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries, in the conflict in Ukraine.” He added, “Their direct participation, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”

Former Russian President Dimitri Medvedev added that “formal prerequisites” exist for turning Kiev into a “giant gray melted spot,” in a threat to retaliate against attacks on Russia using nuclear weapons.

Regardless of these warnings and threats by Russian officials, the NATO military alliance is openly advocating such strikes.

Over the weekend, Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, argued that NATO had the legal right to facilitate strikes against the Russian mainland. “Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation,” Bauer said.

He continued, “You want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer that is, as we see, very often operating from Russia proper into Ukraine.”

He added, “So militarily, there’s a good reason to do that, to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistic lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front. That is what you want to stop.”

On Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg added his name to calls for strikes on Russia in an interview with the Times of London. “There have been many red lines declared by him before, and he has not escalated, meaning also involving NATO allies directly in the conflict,” Stoltenberg said. “He has not done so because he realizes that NATO is the strongest military alliance in the world.”

In a separate series of remarks to the British media, Stoltenberg declared, “We have a full-scale war in Europe launched by Moscow. There are no risk-free options in the war. But I continue to believe that the biggest risk for us will be if President Putin wins in Ukraine.”

On Thursday, UN officials announced that Ukrainian President Zelensky would address the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday. Zelensky will also meet next week with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss a purported “victory plan” for the war against Russia.

Zelensky’s visit comes amid a series of military setbacks for the Ukrainian military in Russia’s continued offensive in the Donbas. Against the backdrop of a potential collapse of the Ukrainian military, the US-aligned media and political establishment are agitating for an escalation of US involvement in the war as a means to turn the tide.

An op-ed published Wednesday in Politico concluded, “the Ukrainians are ceding ground in the eastern Donbas region and fighting off massive drone and missile attacks on their largest cities. They need a morale and momentum shift. Lowering the restrictions on missile use could help.”

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Never in its history of war, and military occupation has Israel been so incapable of developing a coherent plan for its future, and the future of its victims.

Even a quick glance at headlines in international media reveals the depth of the Israeli dilemma. While Tel Aviv continues to carry out a genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, it seems to have no idea what to do beyond simply destroying the Strip and its people.

Even the country’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, who could soon be officially wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), indicated on multiple occasions that Israel has no post-war plan in Gaza.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the Cabinet, and have received no response,” Gallant said in the clearest possible language last May.

Others suggest that Netanyahu and his far-right government might have a plan but, in the language of the Washington Post, it is a ‘no workable plan’ or, according to Vox, “is no plan at all”.

Netanyahu’s ‘not workable’ plan, or ‘no plan’ at all, is inconsistent with the wishes of the US administration.

True, both Israel and the US are in full agreement regarding the war itself. Even after Washington had finally begun shifting its position from wanting the war to continue, to asking Netanyahu to conclude his bloody task, American weapons have continued to flow at the same rate.

The Americans, however, are not convinced that destroying Hamas, fully demilitarizing Gaza, taking control over the Gaza-Egypt border, shutting down the UNRWA refugees’ agency and the ‘de-radicalization’ of the besieged Palestinian population is the right approach.

But Netanyahu himself must have already known this, if not at the very start of the war, at least nearly a year into the genocide. His exhausted army kept moving from one phase to another, declaring ‘tactical victories’, without achieving a single strategic goal in Gaza.

The most optimistic estimation of the Israeli army is that their war, which has practically destroyed all of Gaza, has resulted in a stalemate. A more sober reading of the war, according to former Israeli Prime Minister General Ehud Barak, is that Israel must end it before “sinking into its moral abyss”.

Yet, more delusional plans, pertaining to both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, continue to be leaked to the media.

The first major leak was a taped recording of a speech by extremist and very influential Israeli minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich.

“I am telling, it is mega-dramatic. Such changes change a system’s DNA,” Smotrich told a group of Israeli Jewish settlers last June, according to the New York Times.

The minister’s “carefully orchestrated program” hinges on transferring the authority of the West Bank from the occupation army to a group of civilians under the leadership of Smotrich himself. The goal is to seize more Palestinian land, expand the illegal settlements and prevent any possible continuity of a viable Palestinian State.

In fact, the plan is already underway. On May 29, Israel  appointed Hillel Roth, a close ally of Smotrich, as the deputy in the West Bank Civil Administration.

The plan for Gaza is another episode of cruelty, but also delusional. It was revealed in an article by the editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, on September 9.

Aluf Benn wrote that Netanyahu’s plan also consists of the hiring of an Israeli ‘governor of Gaza’, Brigadier General Elad Goren, who became the ‘Head of Humanitarian-Civilian effort’ in the Strip on August 28

Using a combination of tactics, including starvation, military pressure and the like, Netanyahu wants to drive the population of northern Gaza to the south in preparation of formally annexing the region and bringing back Jewish settlers.

These are not the only plans that have been leaked or, at times, communicated openly by Israeli officials.

At the start of the war, such ideas as ethnically cleansing the Gaza population into Sinai were advocated openly by Israeli officials, and were also the main topic of discussion in Israeli evening news programs.

Some Israeli officials spoke of fully occupying Gaza, while others, like Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, floated the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb.

The plan of totally evacuating Gaza did not work simply because Palestinians would not leave, and Egypt had rejected the very insinuation that ethnically cleansing Gazans was an option. Additionally, the total depopulation of northern Gaza also did not work, partly because Israel was massacring civilians in both north and south at comparable rates.

Israel’s new plans will not succeed in achieving what the original plans have failed to achieve, simply because Israel continues to face the same obstacle: the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

However, much can still be learned from the nature of the Israeli schemes, old and new, mainly the fact that Israel regards the Palestinian people as the enemy.

This conclusion is not only gleaned through statements by top Israeli officials, including President Isaac Herzog himself, when he said that “an entire nation out there (..) is responsible”.

Almost every Israeli scheme seems to involve killing Palestinians in large numbers, starving them or displacing them en masse.

This means that the Israeli war has always been a war against the Palestinian people. The Palestinians themselves know it. Shouldn’t the rest of the world also know it by now?

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

On September 18, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution that demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. The resolution used strong language, saying that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that it is “under an obligation” to end its “unlawful presence” in the OPT “as rapidly as possible.” The resolution was submitted by the State of Palestine, which was recognized as a bona fide part of the United Nations only in June of 2024 as part of the global disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The result was predictable: while 43 countries abstained, 124 voted for the resolution and only 14 voted against it (with the United States and Israel at their head). It is now perfectly legal to say that Israel’s occupation of the OPT is illegal and that this occupation must end immediately.

The UNGA resolution follows the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024. This ICJ ruling argued that Israel’s continued seizure of the OPT is illegal and that it must be ended immediately. The language of the ICJ is very strong: “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.” There is no ambiguity about this statement, and none in the UNGA resolution that followed.

Rains of Heaven

Going from one village to another in Palestine’s West Bank, I was shown broken water cistern after broken water cistern. Each time the story was the same. Palestinians, starved of water by the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territory (OPT) and by the Israeli military, try their best to harvest rainwater in cisterns. But each time the Israelis find out about this ancient human practice, the Israeli military shows up and destroys the cisterns. It has become part of the ritual of the Israeli occupation. After the 1967 war, the Israeli government issued Military Order 158 (November 1967) and Military Order 498 (November 1974) which forced Palestinians to seek permits from the Israeli military before they could build any water installation.

During one of these visits, an elderly Palestinian man asked me if I had read either the Torah or the Bible. I told him that I had read bits and pieces of the Bible, but not systematically. He then proceeded to tell me a story from Deuteronomy about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, where they had been enslaved. Egypt, they are told, was a land of milk and honey, while the land before them—Palestine—is a land that suffers from a lack of water. The Jews would have to rely upon the “rains of heaven” and not the rivers that irrigated Egypt. These rains of heaven, said the elderly Palestinian man, “are denied to us.”

Israelis who live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank consume on average 247 liters of water per person per day, while the Palestinians can access at most 89 liters per person per day (the World Health Organization or WHO minimum amount is 100 liters per person per day). It bears repeating to say that the Israelis live in illegal settlements. This illegality is not made in moral terms but in terms of international law. Several United Nations Security Council resolutions have said that Israel is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as it extends its settlements in the West Bank: Resolution 446 (March 1979), Resolution 478 (August 1980), and Resolution 2334 (December 2016). The 2024 ICJ ruling and the new UNGA resolution underlie the illegality. We did not need more laws to clarify the situation, but it does help that the new statements are unequivocal.

Water in Gaza

A decade ago, the only time I was in Gaza, I was horrified by the lack of basic water supplies. Wadi Gaza, which runs through the Gaza Strip, is the culmination of rivers that stretch into the West Bank (Wadi al-Khalil) and rivers that run into the al-Naqab desert (Wadi Besor). It would be an act of foolishness to drink from Wadi Gaza or from the coastal aquifer, most of which was polluted by insufficient sewage services in Gaza long before this genocidal war. Most people in Gaza, even in 2014, bought water from expensive private tankers. There was no other choice.

If the situation in Gaza was objectionable a decade ago, it is now beyond belief. The average Palestinian in Gaza, who has been forcibly ejected from their homes (most of them bombed), now survives on an average of 4.74 liters of water per person per day (that is 95.53 liters less than the WHO-mandated minimum for a person to survive). Since October 2023, the daily use of water amongst the Palestinians of Gaza has declined by 94 percent. The scale of the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure is overwhelming (as shown by the UN Satellite Centre). In April 2024, only 6 percent of Rafah’s water and sanitation infrastructure showed signs of damage, but by June, the Israelis had destroyed 67.6 percent of all the infrastructure. It has been clearly demonstrated that the Israelis are targeting the basic elements of life, such as water, to ensure the annihilation of the Palestinians in the OPT.

And so, this is precisely why the UNGA voted overwhelmingly for Israel to exit from the OPT and cease its annexationist policies. The Israeli government responded with defiance, saying that the resolution “tells a one-sided, fictional story” in which there is no violence against Israel. However, what the Israeli government ignores is the occupation, which frames the entire conflict. A people who are occupied have the right to resist their occupation, which makes the violence against Israel important to register but not central to the argument. The ICJ and the UNGA say that Israel’s occupation must end. That point is not addressed by the Israeli government, which pretends that there is no occupation and that they have the right to annex as much land as possible even if this means ethnic cleansing. Cutting access to water, for example, is one of the instruments of that ceaseless, genocidal violence.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org