Bi-Weekly Brief: January 29, 2024On January 26, the same day that a federal court in California heard from plaintiffs in the case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights charging President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin with complicity in genocide, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by a vote of 15-2 declared that Israel was ‘plausibly’ committing genocidal acts in its war on the Gaza Strip. It issued six binding provisional measures due to take place immediately, two of which (ensuring ample humanitarian assistance and preventing genocidal public incitement) were supported by Aharon Barak, Israel’s choice to participate on the panel. The Ugandan judge, Julia Sebutinde, was alone in opposing all the provisions, claiming that “there are no indicators of a genocidal intent on the part of Israel.”The ICJ called on Israel to prevent genocidal acts of killing, causing serious bodily or emotional harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group, and preventing births from taking place. It ordered Israel to preserve evidence relating to the commission of the crime of genocide and to report to the Court within a month what it had done to carry out the provisional measures.Understandably, many Palestinians expressed disappointment that the Court did not demand an immediate ceasefire. It may have declined to do so because it only has jurisdiction over member states, not non state actors like Hamas, and is not therefore in a position to order a bilateral ceasefire. As Naledi Pandor, the South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, pointed out after the ICJ order was delivered, “in exercising the order there will have to be a ceasefire. Without it, the order will not work.” The Court will now investigate the merits of the case and decide – possibly years from now – whether Israel is actually guilty of the crime of genocide. Whatever its eventual decision, Israel’s shield of impunity has for the first time been significantly pierced.
What was the Biden Administration’s reaction? It attempted to bury it.
Within an hour of the ICJ ruling, the State Department announced it was cutting funding to UNRWA because of “allegations that twelve UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.” It said it was waiting for more information from Israel on the matter, but didn’t let the lack of information prevent it from ordering an immediate halt of funding to the chief organization sheltering Palestinians in Gaza and delivering the vital humanitarian aid demanded by the ICJ. Despite the fact that the 12 employees represent a tiny fraction of UNRWA’s 13,000 workers in Gaza, at least 167 of whom have been killed in the current war, this is the story that the mainstream US media ran with in the aftermath of the historic ICJ decision, which was given scant coverage.
Within days, many more countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) had joined the US in cutting off aid to UNWRA on which more than two million people in Gaza now depend for their survival. Israel – which has long been attempting to abolish UNRWA as a step toward nullifying the status and claims of Palestinian refugees – commended the suspension of aid and said that “UNWRA will not be a part of the day after.”
A day before the ICJ ruling, Israel reportedly advanced some major defense deals with the US involving squadrons of F-35 and F-15 fighter jets and 12 Apache helicopters and a renewed supply of munitions. “At least 250 cargo planes and more than 20 ships have delivered more than 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since the start of the war,” according to the Times of Israel. On January 28, NBC News reported that the Biden administration is wondering how to use the weapons it supplies as leverage to induce Israel to reduce civilian casualties. One approach under discussion: offering more
weapons to Israel “as an incentive to take some steps that the US has requested.” Ironically, as The New York Times has reported, many of the armaments provided by the US that Israel has used against the Gaza Strip during its many military aggressions have also found their way into Hamas’ arsenal: “Years of sporadic bombing and the recent bombardment of Gaza have littered the area with thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance just waiting to be reused. One 750-pound bomb that fails to detonate can become hundreds of missiles or rockets.” The January 28 killing by drone of three US soldiers at a base in Jordan increases the potential for an all-out region-wide conflict, stoked by the Biden Administration’s dogged refusal to push for a ceasefire despite growing opposition to its stand among core supporters.
Netanyahu calls the ICJ ruling “outrageous” and continues to bludgeon Gaza
In the week before the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out intense bombardments from the air, land and sea across much of the Gaza Strip, bringing the death total to more than 26,000, possibly in excess of 33,000 (the statistic cited by Euro-Med Monitor to account for bodies under the rubble). With the obliteration on January 17 of the Al-Israa university building south of Gaza City the entire university system in Gaza has been erased. Despite the spread of starvation, Israel has blocked most deliveries of humanitarian supplies intended for Gaza City and the north. The water production of wells and small desalination plants is only a fraction of what it had been before the war, according to OCHA, which reported that as many as “50,000 tons of solid waste remain unmanaged, exacerbating environmental and health concerns.”
The current multi-pronged attack on Khan Younis, believed to be a main base for Hamas, is among the most brutal of the genocidal war. The army has besieged hospitals in Khan Younis, where health workers were forced to dig graves on hospital grounds. On January 24, it bombarded the UNRWA Khan Younis Training Center, where there were mass casualties among the 800 people taking refuge in the facility. The attacks and new evacuation orders subsequently issued by the Israeli military forced tens of thousands of Palestinians who were sheltering in Khan Younis to flee towards Rafah in the south where four times the pre-war number of residents are now sheltering, many in tented camps swamped with sewage.
Just hours after the ICJ ruling issued its ruling, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that some 200 residents had been slaughtered in the last 24 hours. The bloodletting is going on without a break, with at least 174 of Gaza’s residents annihilated during January 27-28.
Israel ratches up the takeover of all of Palestine
Under the cover of war, Netanyahu’s settler-dominated government has pursued the ethnic cleansing of much of the West Bank and is contemplating a triumphant return to the Gaza Strip. In Netanyahu’s words, “In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
According to Haaretz, “the boundary between the settlements and the army, which was blurred in any case before the war, was completely erased once hostilities began.” New armed squads of settlers formed by Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir have been issued 7,000 military weapons. These ‘regional defense units’ of settlers dressed in military uniforms violently attack their Palestinian neighbors and destroy their water wells, water pipes and other property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and steal the sheep of shepherds in order to bankrupt them. The Nov. 20th New York Times reported that “violent assaults on villages have forced at least 16 Palestinian communities – more than 1,000 people – to flee their homes since October 7.
The army has locked down parts of the West Bank and destroyed some 115 West Bank homes since October 7, mostly in refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm. It has continued to demolish water sources for agriculture, including – on January 23 – by sealing with concrete an artesian well that had served as a main source of irrigation for villagers near Qalqilya.
Since October 7, some 370 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military usingtanks, attack aircraft and weaponized drone strikes. It has intensified night raids and arrests, with 6,225 Palestinians – including 210 women and 355 children – arrested between October 7 and January 25. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, thousands of Palestinians have been held in secret locations in both Gaza and the West Bank where they have routinely been beaten, humiliated and “subjected to ill treatment that may amount to torture.” At least one detainee was tortured to death and five others have died in detention with some of their bodies appearing bruised.
While Israel brutalizes the West Bank and steadily kills both its residents and its economy, 12 members of Netanyahu’s cabinet and many of its far right friends in the Knesset were among the 5,000 attendees proclaiming victory at a “Settlements Bring Security” conference in Jerusalem which was convened to build support for reconstructing Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. At the jubilant event speakers cited the opportunity at hand “to rebuild and expand the land of Israel,” with National Security Minister Ben-Gvir proclaiming that the time was at hand to “voluntarily emigrate” the Palestinian population.