Zionist Impunity Challenges States to Act Decisively to Halt Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

Israel continued to carry out massacres in Gaza. (Photo: Jehad Abu Shamala, via Eye on Palestine)

While the world’s attention is fixed on the outrageous daily rituals by bloodthirsty Israelis committing hideous massacres in Gaza, concurrently, the Zionist regime has also intensified its unlawful and violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.

Since the beginning of this year, Israeli occupation forces and settler militias have carried out close to 12,000 assaults against Palestinian citizens and their properties.

According to stats recorded by Palestinian sources, Israel grabbed more than 800 dunums (197 acres) of Palestinian land under various pretexts, issuing 36 orders for land seizure for military purposes and one order for land expropriation under the pretext of road construction and expansion.

Press TV quotes a source saying that “the majority of these demolition orders were concentrated in the following governorates: Al-Khalil with 145 orders, Ramallah with 131, Qalqilya with 49, and Ariha with 46″.

Though the statistics fail to capture the human tragedy unfolding in occupied Palestine, the reality is that Palestinians have been subject to such vile conduct by the occupying regime ever since the Nakba of 1948.

Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.

In his book titled “The Atlas of Palestine”, Palestine’s foremost historian and researcher, Salman Abu Sitta, has documented detailed records of what happened to these 530 villages.

Indisputable evidence has led many human rights organisations, including the Human Rights Watch (HRW), to accuse Israel of “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians”.

Indeed in a damning investigation, HRW documented a range of Israeli abuses, including extensive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, administrative detention, and the denial of citizenship to Palestinians.

Notwithstanding hundreds of investigative reports by an array of well-respected human rights organisations running into thousands of pages of damning testimonies, the so-called international community has thus far failed to reverse the devastating injustice caused by the Nakba.

However, October 7 marked a turning point when Hamas launched the Al-Aqsa Flood to not only reclaim the honour and dignity of Palestinians, but also to awaken the world to the injustice of the settler colonial regime.

We are now at a point, after 21 months of continuous barbaric genocide, where Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are forcibly confined to less than 15 per cent of the enclave.

Approximately 2.3 million people are crammed into suffocating conditions, each with less space than that allocated to detainees in Guantanamo Bay, reports Euromedmonitor.org.

“As the Israeli genocide enters its twenty-second month, the reality on the ground is no longer one of mere bombing and killing, but of a comprehensive process of erasure of the Gaza Strip. Residents are now treated as detainees in a mass detention facility, confined to a stifling area of no more than 55 km², under strict military surveillance and direct targeting.

“This follows Israel’s conversion of approximately 85 per cent of the enclave into restricted zones through evacuation orders or unlawful military control.”

We are reminded by media coverage, despite Israel’s military embargo and denial of journalists’ entry to Gaza, that the masses of the population are trapped in the confines of the Strip.

Facing relentless bombardments and drone attacks around the clock, they are mercilessly and against all civilised norms deprived of water, food, shelter, and healthcare, and forcefully barred from returning to their bombed homes.

“This is part of a deliberate policy that reflects a genocidal process by Israel to uproot the people and erase their physical and demographic presence through mass killing, forced displacement, starvation, and systematic destruction of life”, reports Euromedmonitor.org.

Since South Africa lodged its historic case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to hold Israel accountable for the crime of genocide, and the subsequent warrants of arrests issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against war criminals Netanyahu and Gallant, a question raised by many is “what more can be done?”.

Euromedmonitor.org is adamant that much more is required and should be pursued by states. An urgent priority is to urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade.

Given the imminent threat of famine, this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid.

The UN has to undertake its mandate to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip.

More importantly, it urges countries with universal jurisdiction courts – South Africa being one – to issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.

“They must also hold accountable their citizens found to have committed violations against Palestinians, in line with their national and international legal obligations and within their territorial or personal jurisdiction”.

Furthermore, it argues that the International Criminal Court (ICC) must expedite its investigations and issue arrest warrants for every Israeli official involved in international crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.

“These crimes must be formally recognised and treated as acts of genocide. States Parties to the Rome Statute are reminded of their legal obligation to fully cooperate with the Court, ensure the implementation of the arrest warrants, and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com