Countercurrent – January 29, 2024
Freezing Aid to Gaza:
Israel’s International War against the UNRWA
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Imperilled, tormented Palestinians in Gaza had little time to celebrate the January 26 order of the International Court of Justice. In a case brought by South Africa intended to facilitate a ceasefire and ease the suffering of the Gaza populace, Israel received the unwanted news that it had to, among other obligations, ensure compliance with the UN Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza and permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip.
Within hours, Israel, bruised and outraged by a body its officials have decried as antisemitic and favourably disposed to Palestinian propaganda, found an excuse to flaunt the ruling. 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, were accused (not found) by Israel’s intelligence agency Shin Bet, of involvement in the Hamas attacks of October 7.
The response from UNRWA was swift. Contracts were terminated, an investigation was launched, including a full inquiry into allegations made against the organisation. The agency’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini promised, on January 27, that, “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.”
Not content with this, Israel stormily took to the campaign trail hoping to rid Gaza of the UN agency it has despised for years. UNRWA, after all, is a salutary reminder of Palestinian suffering, dispossession and desperation, its existence a direct result of Israeli foreign policy. Foreign Minister Israel Katz was severe in laying his country’s loathing for UNRWA bare. “We have been warning for years: UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace, and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza,” he stated on Shabbat. “UNRWA is not the solution – many of its employees are Hamas affiliates with murderous ideologies, aiding in terror activities and preserving its authority.” Deviously and fiendishly, Katz was dismissing the entire enterprise of aid through a UN outlet as a terroristic extension, rather than the ghastly product of Israel’s own ruthless, generational war against Palestinians. Leave it to us to oversee matters of aid: we know best.
Powers, many with military ties with Israel and sluggish about holding the Jewish State to account in its Gaza campaign, were relieved by the distraction. Rather than assessing their own export regime, the grant of licenses in the arms market in gross violation of human rights and the facilitation of crimes against humanity, an excuse to continue, and prolong the weapons transfers and assistance to Israel, had presented itself.
Within hours, nine states had added their names to the list suspending allocated aid. Australia, along with the United States and Canada, rushed to the podium to condemn UNRWA and freeze funding. The United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Finland followed.
The measure of rage could now be adjusted and retargeted. A spokesperson for the UK government was “appalled by allegations that UNRWA staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism that the UK government has repeatedly condemned.” The US State Department was “extremely troubled” and had “temporarily paused additional funding. Canada was also “deeply troubled by the allegations relating to some UNRWA employees.”
Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, despite accepting that UNRWA’s role in conducting “vital, life saving work”, “providing essential services in Gaza directly to those who need it, with more than 1.4 million Palestinians currently sheltering in its own facilities” felt a suspension of funding was wholly sensible. This, from a minister who never tires about praising international law and its profoundly sacred qualities.
The assessment by Lazzarini was one of dismay and bafflement by the speed at which the funding had been halted. “These decisions threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region including and especially in the Gaza Strip.”
The measure could almost be regarded as hysterical, given that a mere 12 individuals had been tarnished from a pool of some 30,000 members. Johann Soufi, a lawyer and former director of the agency’s legal office in Gaza, gave this assessment to Agence-France Presse: “Sanctioning UNRWA, which is barely keeping the entire population of Gaza alive, for the alleged responsibility of a few employees, is tantamount to collectively punishing the Gazan population, which is living in catastrophic conditions.”
Australian Greens Senator and defence spokesman, Senator David Shoebridge, also picked up on the grotesque twist the latest stifling of aid to the beleaguered residents of Gaza entailed. “The one temporary pause [Senator Wong] has been able to achieve is not the bombing or killing, or even weapons exports, it’s providing aid to [Palestinians].”
For Israel, the focus can now shift back to prosecuting the war against Palestinians collectively blanketed for terrorist tendencies. Meddlesome aid workers can also be put into the mix. Cut the aid, cut the means of survival. Along the way, international law can be blithely mocked and ignored by the principles of might. With grimmest irony, the provisional measures outlined by the ICJ order, which includes increased humanitarian aid to Gaza, are being frustrated by signatories to the UN Genocide Convention. The collective regime of punishment ushered in by Israel’s policy of murderous asphyxiation, and which so concerned South Africa’s legal team, can now continue.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Countercurrent – January 29, 2024
The ICJ’s Provisional Orders:
The Genocide Convention Applies to Gaza
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that gravest of crimes, considered most reprehensible in the canon of international law: genocide. The main participants: the accused party, the State of Israel, and the accuser, the Republic of South Africa.
Filed on December 29 last year, the South African case focused on its obligations arising under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and those of Israel. Pretoria, in its case, wished that the ICJ adjudicate and declare that Israel had breached its obligations under the Convention, and “cease forthwith any acts and measures in breach of those obligations, including such acts or measures which would be capable of killing or continuing to kill Palestinians, or causing or continuing to cause serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians or deliberately inflicting on their group, or continuing to inflict on their group, conditions of life calculated to bring out its physical destruction in whole or in part, and fully respect its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.
The latter words derive from Article II of the Convention, which stipulate four genocidal actions: the killing of the group’s members; the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to those group’s members; the deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of that group and imposing measures to prevent births within the group.
The sheer extent of devastation being wrought by Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza, justified by the Netanyahu government as necessary self-defence in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, led the South African team to also seek immediate provisional measures under Article 41 of the Courtﾒs statute. (The review on the case’s merits promises to take much longer.) They included the immediate suspension of the IDF’s military operations in and against Gaza, the taking of all reasonable measures to prevent genocide, and desisting from committing acts within Article II of the Convention. The expulsion and forced displacement of Palestinians should also stop, likewise the deprivation of adequate food, water and access to humanitarian assistance and medical supplies and “the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza.”
By 15-2, the court accepted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.” (Over 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, extensive tracts of land in Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.) Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”
The grant of provisional measures was, however, more conservative than that sought by Pretoria. Conspicuously missing was any explicit demand that Israel pause its military operations. That said, the judgment did little to afford Israel’s leaders and the IDF comfort from the obligatory reach of the Genocide Convention, an instrument they had argued was irrelevant and inapplicable to the conduct of “innovative” military operations.
To that end, Israel was obligated to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and submit a report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within one month.
As is very much the form, the justice from the country in the dock, in this case, Israel’s Aharon Barak, could see nothing inferentially genocidal in his country’s campaign. South Africa, he insisted, had intentionally ignored the role played by Hamas in its October 7 attacks, and “wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel.”
Inevitably, the singular experience of the Holocaust survivor, the sui generis Jewish view of trauma, used as solid armour against any possibility that Israel might ever commit genocide, became a point of contention. Genocide “is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” Israel had a firm commitment to the rule of law, and to accept that it was committing genocide “is very hard for me personally”. Tellingly, he suggested that Israel’s campaign in Gaza be examined, not from the viewpoint of the Genocide Convention but international humanitarian law.
With classic casuistry, Barak did vote for the measure requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza strip”. But having identified nothing in the way of such intent, the issue became a moot one. With some relief, Barak could state that certain measures sought by South Africa, including an immediate suspension of military operations, were rejected by the ICJ, which preferred “a significantly narrower scope”.
From the other side of the legal aisle, the South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, wished that the ICJ had grasped the nettle to order a halt in military operations. But, with some deft reasoning, she was satisfied that the only way Israel could implement the provisional measures would be through a ceasefire. Much the same view was expressed by the Associated Press: “The court’s half-dozen orders will be difficult to achieve without some sort of cease-fire or pause in the fighting.” That logic is clear enough, but the actions, given the various statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his officials alleging slander and a blood libel against their country, are unlikely to follow.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
