The Forcible Transfer of 85% of Palestinians in Gaza Is a Crime Against Humanity
The biased chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court condemns Hamas but ignores Israel’s atrocious crimes.
Since the October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 people in Israel, the Israeli occupying forces have killed more than 17,000 Palestinians, over 7,000 of them children, and wounded more than 46,000. Close to 1.9 million people — about 85 percent of Gaza’s population — have been forced to flee their homes and squeeze into roughly one-third of the Gaza Strip.
The vast majority of people in Gaza have been displaced and are on the verge of starvation.
On October 13, in anticipation of its ground invasion into Gaza, Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south within 24 hours. Although that was an impossible deadline to meet, half the population of Gaza was forcibly transferred in response to the evacuation order. Then, Israeli forces carpet-bombed the north, striking homes and hospitals. Much of the area was reduced to rubble.
“It is inconceivable that more than half of Gaza’s population could traverse an active war zone, without devastating humanitarian consequences, particularly while deprived of essential supplies and basic services,” said Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, on October 13.
Israel ordered Gazans in the south to evacuate on December 3. But there is nowhere for them to go. The Israeli border crossings are closed and the Rafah Crossing from Egypt is heavily restricted. Many people are sleeping in the streets and on sidewalks. “Images from Gaza on [December 3] showed plumes of dark smoke rising above a rubble-covered landscape and bloodied children wailing in dust-covered hospital wards,” according to a New York Times report. “Mourners stood beside rows of bodies wrapped in white sheets.”
“Under international humanitarian law, the place where you evacuate people to must, by law have sufficient resources for their survival — medical facilities, food and water,” said United Nations Children’s Fund spokesman James Elder in an interview with the Times. “That is absolutely not the case. They are these patches of barren land, they are streets or corners or any space in a neighborhood, half-built buildings. The common thing they have is no water, no facilities, no shelter from cold and rain, and particularly no sanitation.”
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, said the Israeli military campaign has created “apocalyptic” conditions and ended meaningful humanitarian operations. “This is an apocalyptic situation now, because these are the remnants of a nation being driven into a pocket in the south,” Griffiths noted.
Forcible Transfer Is Crime Against Humanity, War Crime and Genocide
The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) lists the forcible transfer of population as a crime against humanity “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.” Israeli forces have mounted a widespread and systematic attack against the civilians in Gaza.
Forcible transfer under the Rome Statute “means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law.” There is no legal or moral justification for Israel to forcibly displace 85 percent of the population of Gaza.
The Rome Statute also classifies the “transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” as a war crime.
Moreover, forcible transfer may constitute the crime of genocide under the Rome Statute. Consistent with the Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute classifies “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” as genocide when done with genocidal intent.
Numerous statements by Israeli officials have demonstrated their intent to commit genocide by ethnically cleansing all or part of the population of Gaza. They have vowed to “eliminate everything in Gaza” and turn it into “a city of tents.”
In addition, forcible transfers “of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive” by the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
The Rome Statute also considers the crime of extermination to be a crime against humanity “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.” Extermination, according to the statute, “includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life … the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.” On October 9, the Israeli government escalated its 16-year siege of Gaza to a “complete siege,” slaughtering civilians and cutting off their food, water, fuel and electricity.
Nakba 2.0
In 1948, Israel carried out the Nakba (or “catastrophe”), a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their land in order to create the state of Israel. Mass atrocities and dozens of massacres killed roughly 15,000 Palestinians. The Nakba caused the forced displacement of 85 percent of the Palestinian population.
Israel is reprising the Nakba of 75 years ago. “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Israeli security cabinet member and Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter declared on November 11. “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it will end.”
Today’s Nakba has already surpassed the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with 85 percent of Gazans displaced and more than 17,000 Palestinians already killed. Israel shows no sign of ending its assault on the Palestinian people and those numbers are rising every day.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Displays Blatant Israel Bias
The ICC has failed to meaningfully investigate Israeli leaders for their crimes under the Rome Statute.
In 2021, then-ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, announced the opening of a formal investigation into war crimes committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, during and since “Operation Protective Edge,” Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza which killed 2,251 Palestinians.
After conducting a five-year preliminary examination, Bensouda had found a reasonable basis to believe that Israeli officials had committed the war crimes of willful killing, willfully causing serious injury, disproportionate use of force and transfer of Israelis into Palestinian territory. Bensouda determined there was also a reasonable basis to investigate possible war crimes by Palestinians, including intentional attacks against civilians, using civilians as human shields, willful killing and torture.
Today’s Nakba has already surpassed the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
But in spite of the seven-year probe into “the situation in Palestine,” the ICC has made no significant progress toward holding Israeli leaders criminally accountable.
There is also a blatant double-standard in the ICC’s treatment of the situations in Ukraine and Palestine. In March, one year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, current ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that the pre-trial chamber had issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.
Craig Mokhiber is a longtime international human rights lawyer who resigned his post as director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights due to the UN’s failure to address what he called the “text-book case of genocide” taking place in Gaza. He characterized the difference between the ICC’s treatment of Palestine and Ukraine as “a stunning inconsistency.”
On December 3, Khan visited Israel and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. He issued a statement condemning Hamas for its “egregious breach of fundamental principles of humanity through the taking and continued holding of children.” He also decried “the significant increase in incidents of attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.”
But Khan did not criticize the Israeli government for its genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including killing thousands of Palestinians, bombing civilian infrastructure, and forcibly transferring (now 85 percent) of the population of Gaza.
Khan made a milquetoast statement that Israel’s response to Hamas’s attacks is “subject to clear legal parameters that govern armed conflict. Conflict in densely populated areas where fighters are alleged to be unlawfully embedded in the civilian population is inherently complex, but international humanitarian law must still apply and the Israeli military knows the law that must be applied.”
On December 6, I joined dozens of scholars and practitioners of law, international relations and politics in signing an open letter to the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties urging them to investigate Khan’s “lack of impartiality and non-discrimination.”
We wrote that Khan’s statement “demonstrated selective application of international criminal law, and an extralegal interpretation of its principles.” Khan, we noted, “seems to have already concluded that international crimes have been committed by Palestinian armed groups, thereby undermining the fundamental rules, including on the presumption of innocence and relevant standards.”
In our letter, we pointed out that Khan used the adjective “innocent” to describe Israeli civilians but did not use the same adjective to refer to Palestinians, and he made no reference to the “risk of genocide in Gaza.”
We called on the Assembly of States Parties to “ensure that the Prosecutor disburses resources on the basis of investigative needs as opposed to politically-motivated prioritization, and urged it to expedite its investigation into the Situation in Palestine.”
UN Secretary General Invokes “Most Powerful Tool” in UN Charter
On December 6, UN Secretary General António Guterres sent a letter to the Security Council urging it to declare a humanitarian ceasefire so that “the means of survival can be restored, and humanitarian assistance can be delivered in a safe and timely manner across the Gaza Strip.” He said, “We cannot wait” and condemned the “appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Guterres invoked the rarely used Article 99 of the UN Charter which says the secretary general “may bring to attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” Guterres wrote. “Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs.”
On December 8, the Security Council convened in response to Guterres’s entreaty. Guterres informed the council, “There is no effective protection of civilians. The people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival. But nowhere in Gaza is safe.”
Guterres said, “I urge the Council to spare no effort to push for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, for the protection of civilians, and for the urgent delivery of life-saving aid.”
The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the protection of Palestinian and Israeli civilians, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
Once again, the U.S. has provided Israel with political and diplomatic cover for its war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/10/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
Israel-Gaza war live updates U.S. to sell tank ammunition to Israel; aid groups warn of mass starvation in Gaza
Updated 2 hours ago
- Key updates:
Several U.S. allies distanced themselves from the Biden administration’s decision to block the U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the United States was “right and just” to exercise its veto. Washington’s envoy, Robert A. Wood, said the text was “rushed” and lacked condemnation of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.
U.N. chief António Guterres warned Sunday that the Security Council is “paralyzed by geostrategic divisions,” severely undermining its “authority and credibility.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the U.S. veto of the cease-fire resolution made it complicit in “genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.”
The Israel Defense Forces pressed on with its offensive across Gaza, claiming to strike 250 targets in the past day, including underground tunnels in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. On Sunday, the IDF said it deployed an artillery unit inside Gaza for the first time in the war, signifying a further expansion of Israel’s military presence.
The World Health Organization’s executive board adopted a resolution calling for the passage of life-saving aid inside Gaza, including the access of medical personnel. It was the first time that a resolution was adopted by consensus within the United Nations system since Oct. 7, according to the WHO. During the special session of the board, the United States had earlier said that it “can’t accept” the draft of an emergency motion and that the administration was “disappointed” that the resolution text did not mention the Hamas attack on Israel.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned after backlash over remarks she made at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses. Magill came under intense criticism last week after her testimony, in which she declined to state plainly that a call for genocide against Jews would violate the university’s code of conduct.
At least 17,997 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 49,229 wounded since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 1,200 people were killed in Israel during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.
Protests erupt as U.S. vetoes UN ceasefire resolution in Gaza:
Public outcry follows the U.S. veto of a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, intensifying tensions over the ongoing conflict.
https://time.com/6344440/us-vetoes-un-resolution-gaza-ceasefire-backlash/
U.S. Receives Backlash For Vetoing U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Ceasefire
The U.S. is facing criticism from the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank, and other global leaders and organizations, after it vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The security council held an emergency meeting on Friday after U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99, a rare move to force a vote on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, where two million people are displaced. The Hamas-run health ministry says 17,000 people have been killed under an Israeli campaign to eliminate the militant group after its Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and took an estimated 240 hostage. More than 100 remain in captivity.
The U.S. vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire put forward by the United Arab Emirates and backed by more than 90 Member States at a meeting in New York City. Compared to 13 council members’ votes in favor, the U.S. was the sole veto. The U.K. abstained.
The U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert A. Wood told the council he voted against an “imbalanced resolution that was divorced from reality that would not move the needle forward on the ground in any concrete way.”
He said the U.S. still could not understand why the authors declined to include language condemning “Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack” and specifically reports of sexual violence by militants. The resolution also failed to mention Israel’s right to defend itself, Wood said.
The U.S. proposed adding language about its role in diplomacy, increased opportunities for humanitarian aid, encouraging the release of hostages, the resumption of pauses in fighting and laying a foundation for peace, but Wood said “nearly all of our recommendations were ignored.”
Earlier in the day, Wood told the council the U.S. wants a two-state solution, but doesn’t support an immediate ceasefire as “this would only plant the seeds for the next war—because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution.”
Israel is not a member of the U.N. Security Council. The country’s U.N. ambassador said in a statement after the vote that “a ceasefire will be possible only with the return of all the hostages and the destruction of Hamas,” the Times of Israel reported.
Hamas said in a statement on Telegram that it strongly condemned the veto, adding “we consider the U.S. administration to be an accomplice in the killing of our people through its political and military support for the occupation to continue its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads an entity U.S. President Joe Biden said should govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war, also said in a statement that the veto made the U.S. complicit in “war crimes.”
“The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” the statement read.
Other countries’ ambassadors also criticized the U.S. veto. China’s representative to the U.N., Zhang Jun, called out “double standards,” arguing it was self-contradictory to condone continued fighting while “claiming to care about the lives and safety of people in Gaza.”
The Russian representative to the U.N., Dmitry Polyanskiy, claimed “our colleagues from the U.S. have literally before our eyes issued a death sentence to thousands if not tens of thousands more civilians in Palestine and Israel."
Nicolas de Rivière, the French ambassador to the U.N., said that by refusing to unify and commit to negotiations, the council was failing its mandate and the situation in Gaza would only worsen. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has previously called for a ceasefire.
A
slew of global aid and human rights organizations, including Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders and more
similarly condemned the veto, saying it would allow death, destruction and a humanitarian disaster to continue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67664804
Bowen: US uses veto but pressure for Gaza ceasefire is building
UN secretary general António Guterres has spoken about the "serious risk to the maintenance of international peace and security" in the Gaza conflict, citing the spillover of hostilities in "the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen".
He triggered Article 99, prompting a UN Security Council vote on Friday, because he believes this is a very urgent matter which must be brought to the attention of the council.
The Israeli government detests the UN and they detest the secretary general.
The Israelis rejected his description, claiming Mr Guterres is in fact the threat to world peace because he is pandering to Hamas by trying to end the fighting now, before their mission to destroy the group has been concluded.
That ill-feeling will not have improved after the secretary general also mentioned that one of the risks is that the situation in Gaza could get so bad that there would be a mass displacement of Palestinians over the border into Egypt - which is also of huge concern to the Egyptian government.
There was, Mr Guterres said, a high risk of the "total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza". And the Palestinians say that is exactly what Israel wants because it wants to get all Palestinians out of Gaza.
Journalists are not permitted by Israel to enter Gaza so I can't report from there myself, but what the secretary general is saying sounds pretty accurate from the pictures and video we can see and the people we speak to.
By all the measures you can think of, the situation there for civilians is absolutely catastrophic, as they are subjected to a remorseless military campaign. Israel says they are doing what they can to save civilian lives but insists Hamas holds responsibility for using them as human shields.
At the UN, the Americans duly vetoed this resolution calling for a ceasefire. For those concerned about the significant loss of life, that does sound a bit hollow - the Americans claim the Israelis are saying they will stick to the rules of war and avoid unnecessary civilian deaths. But, they say, there is a gap between what Israel says and what it does.
I think the strategy behind the secretary general's decision to bring a vote - which he knew would probably get vetoed - was to hurry up the inevitable moment when the Americans will say to Israel: "Enough is enough, you've had enough time and killed enough people and it's time for a ceasefire."
Some diplomats I have spoken to have said they might give the Israelis another month - I think Mr Guterres's strategy is to try and shorten that, partly by increasing international pressure and also partly by shaming the Americans into thinking that they cannot continue to hold this position as it becomes less and less tenable.
That pressure has also increased today with the publication of footage of prisoners in Gaza, held by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stripped to their underwear and being driven away in trucks. It's a cruel image of war seeing these men, which local reports on social media suggest could be as many as 700.
Those same sources, including family of some of the men, say that they were taken from a UN school where they were sheltering, and where others tried to get away and were killed.
A horrendous video circulated yesterday of six people lying dead in the street - said to be from that same area and near that same school - and one of them was a bloody corpse lying on top of a white flag he had apparently been carrying.
The IDF say they are trying to work out who is a suspect and who is responsible for those terrible attacks on 7 October - and that they are all the while observing the international law on conflict.
But for those who have little sympathy for what Israel is doing, or have lost sympathy because of the level of killing that has been carried out in Gaza, those people are saying that this is another sign of Israeli indifference to the dignity and the health of Palestinians.
The weather is chilly here now, so being forced to walk around in underwear in streets, some blindfolded as we saw in the video, and some with their hands tied behind their back, is undoubtedly unpleasant.
The Israelis say they can't avoid it - others say it's pretty savage.
Urgent need for Gaza ceasefire amid deteriorating humanitarian crisis
Civilians are confronted by continued threats from weapons, as well as starvation, thirst, and disease
Following the renewal of hostilities in Gaza in early December, Oxfam and other humanitarian groups are expressing concerns that the Israeli military attack in southern Gaza is causing destruction, danger, and civilian terror and suffering at a scale that makes any humanitarian response impossible across the entire enclave.
“Our political leaders are failing – in abject weakness – to forge a ceasefire, which is the only possible humanitarian action that now really matters,” said Oxfam Humanitarian Director Marta Valdes Garcia.
Food delivery challenges
Oxfam’s partners are confirming how dangerous conditions are in Gaza, and the challenges they face in delivering aid to civilians. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) working with Oxfam has procured 4,750 parcels of fresh vegetables and fruit they are distributing to displaced families in southern Gaza. Getting the food to people is proving challenging, says one staff person who was able to get a message to Oxfam. “We were preparing to distribute items in a specific street, and it was bombed. More than 130 people lost their lives, and they were just passing [in] the streets…”
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0cqd5VOonS/
oxfamamerica
The
humanitarian pause brought a short respite from airstrikes, bombs and
terror but it was never going to be enough to give trapped Palestinians
sufficient amounts of food, water, basic services, safety and hope that
they desperately needed.
As the fighting resumes, President
Biden and the US government must do all in its power to protect
civilians and bring an end to the hostilities. #Ceasefirenow
PARC is also reporting they are working to overcome increased prices for fuel and food, and lack of access to vegetable-producing areas in Khan Yunis, now the scene of fighting.
“This is one of the most difficult … wars we have experienced. If you look anywhere, you will find displaced people, injured people, and people sleeping in the streets, and we face many difficulties in distributing aid because there is no safe place in Gaza. Every area can be dangerous.”
Gaza ceasefire necessary to deliver aid
Marta Valdes Garcia says Oxfam is joining humanitarian groups around the world urging “diplomatic efforts to press for a lasting ceasefire, ensure access to humanitarian aid via Israel and Egypt to all those who need it, and secure the release of remaining hostages.”
The United States has an important role to play to end this conflict, says Oxfam’s America’s Associate Director of Peace and Security Scott Paul. “President Biden and the US government must do all in its power to protect civilians and ultimately bring an end to the hostilities,” he says. “US officials have specifically demanded that there be no area bombardment, no forced displacement, the continued flow of significant aid, no ‘safe zones’ – which, by implication, have rendered other areas ‘free fire’ zones – and, perhaps most importantly, that commercial activity be allowed to resume. The Biden administration must make clear that its ongoing, unlimited support for Israel is at stake.”
