Genocide of Palestine

Imagine life under these conditions: Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self-determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished.

Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centres, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences and walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build colonies for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from colonising conquered land.

Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment and enough food and clean water. Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed and being victimised by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier.

Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground and from the air. Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed, arrested, incarcerated, tortured and slaughtered on any pretext, including for your right of self-defence. Having no rights on your own land in your own country for over six decades and counting. Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed Arabs and extremists. Victimised by a slow-motion genocide to destroy you.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Israel has conducted state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians for decades and intensively in Gaza. In a September 2006 Electronic Intifada article titled "Genocide in Gaza" he wrote:

"A genocide is taking place in Gaza....An average of eight Palestinians die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralysed. [It's become] a daily business, now reported [only] in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts. The chief culprits are the Israeli pilots who have a field day," like shooting fish in a barrel. Why not, they're only Muslims, so who'll notice or care.

International law expert Francis Boyle does and in March 1998 proposed that "the Provisional Government of [Palestine] and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice [ICJ] in the Hague" for violating the Genocide Convention. He stated that "Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people [and the] lawsuit would....demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world."

Israel is a serial human rights international law abuser. The UN Human Rights Commission affirms that it violates nearly all 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and is guilty of grievous war crimes. The Commission also determined that as an occupying power, Israel has committed crimes against humanity as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter.

Geneva, Nuremberg and other international human rights laws guarantee what Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: that everyone "has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Article 6 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also affirms it in saying that every "human being has the inherent right to life." Official Israeli policy is to deny it to Palestinians under occupation, especially Gazans under siege.

On November 5, it was egregiously tightened after Israel closed all commercial border posts and banned virtually all permissible items - previously severely restricted and in limited amounts.

'Catastrophe'

On November 21, Haaretz reported that Karen Abu Zayd, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) commissioner-general, said Gaza faces a humanitarian "catastrophe" if Israel maintains its blockade. She called the current closure the gravest since the early days of the Second Intifada eight years ago. "It's been closed for so much longer than ever before...and we have nothing in our warehouses...It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster." Out of Gaza's 1.5 million population, UNRWA provides vitally needed rations for 820,000 of its refugees, and the UN World Food Programme aids another 200,000 people. They supply about 60 per cent of daily needs, now effectively shut off and nearly exhausted - including food, medicines, fuel, and other basic essentials.

On November 17, 31 containers of food and medicines were allowed in through Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) border post, southeast of Rafah. It was closed, along with other border posts, for the previous two weeks. These amounts are hugely deficient and amount to less than 10 per cent of what entered Gaza before Israel's June 2007 imposed siege.

Also allowed in was 427,000 litres of fuel or barely enough to operate Gaza's power plant for a day. It is effectively shut down, and at least 30 per cent of the population is without electricity and around 70 per cent experiences lengthy power outages for days or weeks.

On November 20, AP reported that Israeli officials "stood by [their] decision to shut cargo supplies into the Gaza Strip, brushing off pleas to ease the blockade from United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon." Of course, the Strip has been mostly isolated since Israel's imposed siege 18 months ago that created a humanitarian crisis now intensified.

Why this was so was stated to the Jerusalem Post by senior IDF General Amos Gilad: Because "Hamas is committed to the destruction of the state...It [also] wants to take over the PLO." Unmentioned are the facts that refute this assertion. After Esmail Haniyah became Hamas prime minister in 2006, he offered the Bush administration peace and a long-term truce in return for an end to Israel's (illegal) occupation. He was rebuffed in the same way he was from Israel for the same offer.

Again why so? Israel and Washington are allied in a joint enterprise and need enemies, aka "terrorists". While maintaining an illusory "peace process", none whatever exists nor is any effort made to address equity for the Palestinians. What matters is joint-control of the region. Israel as the local hegemon. America as part of its world empire and all vital resources in it, especially oil, of course. In January 2006, it was policy again after Hamas won a resounding democratic majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). As a result, they and the Palestinians paid dearly. Israel, America and the West ended all outside aid, imposed a crippling economic embargo and sanctions, and politically isolated the ruling Hamas government. An intensive crackdown followed that continues to this day - regular interventions, attacks, ruthless repression, and the imposition of a medieval siege on Gaza, now intensified.

Wheat shortage

On November 19, the territory's largest flour mill shut down for a lack of wheat, and the UN suspended cash grants to 98,000 poor Gazans because of a shortage of Israeli currency.

The world community has been silent. Conditions continue to deteriorate, and Christian Aid is speaking out. It accused Israel of collective punishment in violation of international law. Under Fourth Geneva's Article 33:

"No protected person [under occupation] may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measure of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited [as well as] reprisals against protected persons and their property."

Costa Dabbagh from the Near East Council of Churches (a Christian Aid partner) says "Simply letting food into Gaza is not enough," and precious little is arriving. Its people "are fed and kept alive without dignity and the international community should be blamed for it." It is "not acceptable to be waiting for food to come. [Gazans] want to live freely with Israel and other countries in peace. [They are] not against any individual or government [but] are against imprisonment."

They are also against starving, extreme deprivation, no effective outside aid, and no support from the world or other Arab leaders on their behalf. At the moment, three of five mills have stopped operating, and the two others are about to for lack of wheat. Several bakeries are closed for lack of flour, fuel, cooking gas and electricity.

Of Gaza's 72 bakeries, 47 produce Syrian bread (the most popular kind); 29 of them stopped operating; eight others are at partial capacity; 10 bake Iraqi bread, and 15 others different varieties and pastries. None are in full operation, and all may have to close for lack of supplies and power. Gazans are being strangled and starved.

Health facilities are also in crisis and their patients endangered because of their limited ability to provide services. In addition, 45 vital medicines are embargoed and unavailable. Another unconscionable act.

Shifa Hospital is Gaza's largest and seriously hampered. Besides a lack of power, medicines and other supplies, its equipment needs repair and has no readily available spare parts. Its main generator is in disrepair. Its MRI machine cannot operate without electricity. It is short on gas for disinfection and to prepare food for patients.

Concern is growing that much other essential equipment may also stop working or have to shut down for lack of power.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. He lives in Chicago.