The people of Gaza deserve our support

Words lose their meaning when the human conscience sinks to a new low of barbarity and falsehood. What Israel has done in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza has little to do with self-defence or preservation. John Dugard, renowned international law professor who has served on many UN bodies and international inquiries, has comprehensively debunked the myth of Israel’s right of self-defence.

In fact, what Israel has committed is a month-long orgy of massacres in which Palestinian civilians holed up in refugee camps, hospitals and UN schools were slaughtered indiscriminately. The notion of Israeli Defense Forces launching pinpoint attacks is patently a lie, given the very high number of civilian deaths including those of children as a result of repeated hits on UN compounds. The UN said that the Israelis were given advance information of the locations of those premises. 

While the Israeli Defense Forces, made up of reservists and settlers living in the occupied Palestinian land, were using some of the most lethal weaponry, families inside Israel set up their sofas on hilltops. As the Guardian newspaper reported, they came out with bottles of bear, soft drinks and snacks to cheer, whoop and whistle as the sun was about to set over the Mediterranean, and bombs came down on Palestinian slums a few miles away. Many spectators had smartphones to record explosions, or to take pictures of themselves, grinning and thumbs up, against a background of black smoke.

At the same time, the Israeli government’s spokesman-in-chief, Mark Regev, was telling the world in bulletin after bulletin that people in Israel were in mortal danger of Hamas rockets, hiding in underground bunkers and shaking with fear.    

That our moral decline has sunk to these depths is a sad reflection on humanity. Bloodshed in Gaza by Israel’s firepower has become almost a ritual in recent years. Even so, the violence this time, and gloating in Israel, go against claims more than before that Israel is a civilised democracy wedded to western values of liberalism and the rule of law.

Let us take the rule of law and claims of the Israeli military’s professionalism. In his Al Jazeera opinion column, John Dugard writes about a dark contradiction. The Israelis accept that Gaza is not an independent state like Lebanon and Jordan, but assert that Gaza is a “hostile entity”. Dugard rightly points out that such a concept is unknown in international law.

Israel cannot explain this strange contradiction of its own making – a device to have it both ways. Gaza is separated from the West Bank and thus more isolated, but remains part of the occupied Palestinian Territories. For despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the strip in 2005, Gaza’s land and sea borders are sealed by Israel on three sides, and by Egypt on the remaining fourth. There is no freedom of movement, because all travel and transportation between Gaza and the rest of the world can take place only when Israel and Egypt permit. So people resort to underground tunnels at great risk to themselves.

Such tight control of 1.8 million people by two most powerful countries in the region can only be described as occupation, as the International Court of Justice and other United Nations bodies have recognised. Israel has a legal duty under law to respect civilian life. Yet by restricting movement and supplies, and bombing civilian targets and what infrastructure is left there, Israel continues to commit crimes under international law.

It is undeniable that those living in Gaza have the right to resist occupation and the right to self-defence under such intolerable conditions. Any ceasefire that becomes yet another means of continued occupation is utterly meaningless and deceitful. Governments and leaders who support Israel’s right to defend itself are surely lacking the basic sense of reality, for it is actually the population of Gaza that has a legitimate right of defence. This writer’s deep sympathies are with Gaza’s residents.

The United States and President Barack Obama in particular bear a heavy responsibility for the carnage. Israel stands accused of committing gross violations of international humanitarian law and law governing occupation before the world. Still, Israel continues this behaviour with impunity. The primary reason is the certainty that the United States will block any meaningful attempt to condemn and hold Israel accountable.

Obama’s parroting of “Israel’s right to defend itself” is shameless and cynical. His disregard for Israel’s crimes against Gaza, and the West Bank, is callous. Here we have a US president who brazenly repeats the Israeli prime minister’s slogans of war against millions of Palestinians living under occupation. He then goes on to bomb Iraq, ostensibly to protect a few hundred American lives, and members of the Yazidi minority from Islamist insurgents, whose rise is a direct consequence of America’s wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other places.

The man is supremely manipulative and a lazy thinker. The truth which he must surely know is how many Christians and Jews, indeed other minorities, have been killed or have fled Iraq since the 2003 US invasion of that country.

Others are also culpable, too. The British Prime Minister David Cameron’s silence over the bloodshed in Gaza goes against the growing unease in his own Conservative Party, and the public at large. The European Union is incapable of taking a stand independent of the United States. And we have a Secretary-General of the United Nations who cannot stand up to American pressure.

South America has shown more guts. Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and El Salvador have all condemned Israel, and recalled their ambassadors. But India’s Hindu nationalist-dominated government has restricted debate in parliament because of close defence and intelligence ties with Israel.

The government asserts that there is no change in India’s long-standing policy in support of the Palestinians’ rights. But when a newly-elected government is reluctant to allow a proper debate in parliament in a democracy, its moral authority is eroded. Credibility is an essential ingredient of the national interest. A government must understand that when its credibility is questioned, other aspects of its foreign relations are at risk.

Thankfully, India has a functioning democratic system, and a diverse population with more than 180 million Muslims in the country. So when the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to launch an investigation into the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the Indian government chose to stand with a clear majority supporting the inquiry.

The United States was alone in voting against the Human Rights Council resolution. Still, Washington remains determined to block any attempt to hold accountable its Middle Eastern outpost where it matters – in the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice. In this unequal war, the people of Gaza deserve our support.

- Deepak Tripathi is a writer with a particular reference to South Asia, the Middle East, the Cold War and America in the world. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

This views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

Photo credit: Palestinians sit under a tent they erected by the rubble of houses, destroyed by Israeli army (AA)