A few weeks ago the ICJ ruled that Israel should make more provisions to prevent genocide happening within Gaza. This was a small but important step towards proving Palestinian activists and their many allies right in their fight against the brutal and oppressive colonial regime of Israel. It has however, as expected, not yet translated into any effective action by the allies of Israel in ensuring that Israel stops its brutal and unjust war against the people of Gaza and Palestinians in general.
The US for example may be involved with the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas (1) and alleges that it “tries to moderate” the zealotry of Netanyahu’s warmongering, they crucially have not given a desperately needed ultimatum to Israel. This means that the US is still aiding the Israeli government with weapons and money.
This distinction is vital, because provisions that are argued to secure the protections of Palestinian civillians, like with the recent news that the Biden administration has given human rights provisions to the aid to Israel (2), ignore the obvious fact that the Netanyahu government has shown a structural disregard for the rights of Palestinians. These kind of conditions seem to me like nothing more than ways to ease the concerns of more progressive Democrats instead of giving real limits to supporting Israel. Because why should we expect that a regime that has shown clear intent to exterminate Palestinians should suddenly shift gears while still receiving financial support? With the kind of suffering Israel is causing (3), only a regime of sanctions and withdrawal of funds can be defended.
Israel’s war on UNRWA
Aside from the ways the US fails to effectively stop Israel, organizations that give much needed aid to Palestinians are getting gutted and marginalized in the Zionist total war against Hamas. The clearest example of this is UNRWA, an UN agency that has been important in feeding and protecting displaced and starving Palestinians during this war.
Not so long ago, Israel came out with allegations that UNRWA workers took part in the October 7th offensive by Hamas (4). A considerable number of countries responded by cutting aid to the agency, crippling the ability of the agency to administer help to a population of terrorized civilians. A population already facing acute shortages of clean water, food, access to crucial infrastructure and medicine. Though there seems to be evidence that UNRWA workers where involved in the attacks, three things need to be said about this;
Firstly, I can’t help but think that this accusation, however true it might be, is used as a political weapon by the Israeli state to not only divert attention from its own crimes (and the ICJ ruling), but also to debillitate an organization that obstructs the settler agenda of Israel. An organization that has also often reported on the inconvenient truths regarding Israeli’s deeds in the long running conflict. Secondly, the accused, approximately 12 people, are a miniscule amount of the 30.000 members of staff (13.000 of them working in Gaza). Punishing UNRWA as a whole organisation therefore seems rather disproportionate. Thirdly, is it strange that there are people allied with Hamas in UNRWA, an organization that consists of workers and volunteers who come from Gaza, have seen the prolonged terror of the Israeli conflict, and as UNRWA workers have often been the victims of Israeli agression themselves (5)?
In any case, it is typical that when a Palestinian organization gets accused of complicity to war crimes, it gets heavily sanctioned and is pilloried. But when the State of Israel is engaging in a geopolitics of colonialism and ruthless extermination, it can still count on money and weapons from the West.
The bombing of Rafah
For many months now this terrible war has raged on. With large parts of Gaza now turned into rubble, one of the final showdowns is in Rafah. Subjected to heavy bombardments, as many as 100 people in the city have been killed since Monday, including a multitude of children (6). The viciousness of Israel demonstrates how there is now clemency, no mercy or way out for the people of Gaza. People who flee for the bombing elsewhere, still pay with their lives there. This war has shown how much contempt the Israeli State has for the Palestinians that see Gaza as their home. After decades of being isolated from the rest of Occupied Palestine while being treated as second class citizens, they are now even being disowned of that compact strip of land. Of course, the Zionist far-right cannot wait for when the war is over and the Palestinians are exterminated. They eagerly wait to take the land for themselves, with full support from key ministers of the ruling government (7).
Conclusion
If no one will stop Israel and demand that they’ll be held accountable, this war will end with the total extermination and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. It will embolden the Zionist far right in their dreams of taking over all of Occupied Palestine, first with Gaza, and then the whole of the West Bank. And there is no reason to believe that any of the big nations will stop Israel. Instead, they are stuck into a political strategy that can be described as “too little, too late”.
At the same time I am exhausted from the political complexity of this conflict, how its stuck into a vicious cycle of destruction and despair. I firmly believe with all my heart that Israel is the principal agressor in this conflict, a state so strongly gripped into a kind of authoritarian fanaticism and supremacist thinking. I do however also feel the need to object to what Hamas stands for. It is an organization that is founded on an unpleasant and reactionary version of Islam, wanting to replace an authoritarian (though supposedly “democratic”) theocratic state supposedly based on Judaism with an authoritarian theocratic state supposedly based on Islam. The whole solution of this conflict should be to move to a society based on religious and political pluralism, where Muslims, Jews, Christians and other faiths should be able to live as equals amongst eachother. Also, though still very much clouded by the fog of war, I’m also hesitant to deny or minimize the accusations against Hamas regarding its use of sexual violence.
Lets all hope that Palestinian resistance against Zionist agression will be dominated by groups with a more left-wing and anti-authoritarian ideology.
What Needs To Be Done
As I said earlier, we cannot hope on politicians to stop this genocide. Though the current waves of demonstrations and actions taken to rally support around the plight of the Palestinian people are commendable, we need to escalate drastically. Even going further than the traditional strategies of the BDS movement. The action we need to take has to radically disrupt the logistical and financial web that enables Israel into waging its genocidal project. Some examples of what I mean:
- going from demonstrating at a location of a commercial enterprise that does business with Israel to occupying the (regional) headquarters of that enterprise;
- going from individualistically boycotting certain goods that are made in Israeli settlements to making their business model unprofitable through direct action;
- going from denouncing politicians who support Israel during demonstrations to disrupting their political and social events.
In summary, to drive the economic and political machinery that enables the Israeli state to a grinding halt.
We need to burst through the bubble of unaccountability that are still being taken for granted by political, religious and financial institutions who are indifferent to the suffering caused by the Zionist state. At the same time however, we need to be careful that we do not justify antisemitic attacks or harass communities that have their own history of marginalization and stigmatization.
Free Palestine, towards an end of genocide and bigotry against any group.
Sources
(1) The Guardian: Blinken Says ‘A Lot Of Work’ Remains On Gaza Ceasefire And Hostage Talks (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/07/hamas-responds-to-israel-plan-with-three-stage-proposal-to-end-gaza-war)
(2) AP News: Biden Order Attaches Human Rights Conditions To US Military Aid, Easing Democratic Rift Over Israel (https://apnews.com/article/israel-military-aid-gaza-congress-supplemental-b72ac73f0728062f22143dae1226c81b)
(3) BBC News: Israel-Gaza war: Death and Israel’s Search For ‘Total Victory’ (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68255843)
(4) NPR: What To Know About UNRWA And Allegations Its Workers Took Part In Oct. 7 (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1211781246/unrwa-aid-gaza-palestinians-israel)
(5) UNRWA: UNRWA Situation Report #69 On The Situation In The Gaza Strip And The West Bank (https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-69-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-Jerusalem)
(6) CNN: Israeli Airstrikes Kill More Than 100 In Rafah As International Alarm Mounts Over Anticipated Ground Offensive (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/12/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-rafah-ground-offensive-looms-intl-hnk/index.html)
(7) Al Jazeera: Israeli Ministers Join Gathering Calling For Resettlement Of Gaza (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/29/israeli-ministers-join-gathering-calling-for-rebuilding-settlements-in-gaza)
Recommended Reading
Time Magazine: As Israel Reckons With Killing of Hostages, Critics Worry About Routine Excessive Force Against Civilians (https://time.com/6548632/israel-hamas-war-civilians-hostages-killed/)
Jadaliyya: Internationalism Beyond the Geopolitics of States and Principled Solidarity in “Complex” Situations: Kurdish and Palestinian Solidarity (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45428)