Gaza in ruins presents a tale of resilience and ruthlessness

By any measure, Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza qualify the occupation state to be accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Its clear “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” the population underscores the former term and “forcibly removing or displacing the population” the latter. Statistics show that both are still in play, ruthlessly so. The Gaza health ministry issued a list naming more than 30,000 Palestinians of the 43,000 killed by Israel, with the first 13 pages consisting of children under one year old. According to the UN, 1.9 million people — or 90 per cent of the population — have been displaced intentionally across the Gaza Strip.

The institutionalisation of international law was meant to protect indigenous populations from foreign incursions. Yet, the incursion has taken place in occupied Palestine, the foreigners are the new natives, and the indigenous people, they say, are actually foreigners with no claim to be the owners. Depriving natives of their own land is no longer, it seems, considered to be a crime. This crime against humanity has been normalised. Although it’s the Palestinians’ right to resist the Israeli occupation, what the regional and international powers are doing suggests that they are simply there to be spectators, not only since 7 October last year, but also since 1948 and even before.

Starvation has been weaponised by the Israelis

UN resolutions have failed to bring about a ceasefire, with the US in particular using its immoral veto to protect Israel, which is left to act with impunity. The result is that Gaza is in ruins; it looks apocalyptic; humanitarian aid is blocked by the occupation state and its illegal settlers, with insufficient getting through to people in desperate need; and starvation has been weaponised by the Israelis.

READ: Israel pushing Palestinians in northern Gaza to ‘certain death’: Palestine

Despite its withdrawal of troops and settlers in 2005, Israel is still the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, in practice and in terms of international law. It has controlled Gaza’s nominal borders, territorial waters and airspace for decades; nothing and nobody gets in or out without a green light from the Israelis. The Palestinians, however, are nothing if not resilient. In fact, their resilience has been highlighted over the past twelve months as the genocide plays out in real time on social media.

And yet, on the pretext of “self-defence”, Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as genocide. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a free hand and a blank cheque from the US, which supports him with finance, weapons, ammunition and diplomatic cover at the UN. Not content with destroying Gaza, and increasing the oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Netanyahu is pushing for a regional war with his invasion and bombing campaign in Lebanon, ostensibly against Hezbollah, but with his sights focused on Iran. The fact that the US has just sent an anti-missile system and troops to Israel — albeit just 100, if we are to believe what Washington tells us (and who does?) — should worry us all.

The claim that the US-Israel relationship is rooted in “shared values” comes as no surprise.

The US itself is a settler-colonial state, and Zionism as a settler-colonial movement is thus a very American thing, even more so than global peace and humanity. This is why the US pays lip-service to human rights and democracy; such rights don’t apply to Palestinians. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is more important than human lives as far as US politicians dependent on Zionist campaign donations are concerned.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has still not issued the arrest warrants requested by the court’s own Chief Prosecutor for Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant, and we will have to wait years for the International Court of Justice to rule on the South African allegation of genocide against the occupation state. The simple fact is that the Palestinians cannot afford to wait that long for peace and justice and, ultimately, freedom from an immoral and unjust occupation. So-called self-defence can never justify genocide.

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