https://arab.news/wwqav
One of the strangest situations taking place in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict today is the Israeli and, to a certain extent, international attitude regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Despite Israeli efforts to claim that it is not an occupier, all the relevant UN bodies have made it clear that, in fact, what we see with our own eyes is what is happening: namely that Israel is the occupier of Palestinian territories.
Therefore, since the status is clear, what are the responsibilities of an occupying power toward the population it is occupying? International humanitarian law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention, which was issued to deal with the problems of prolonged occupations, makes it clear that the occupier has a responsibility to protect the civilian population, provide for their humanitarian needs and ensure that their cultural, educational and medical institutions are preserved.
All these issues have been violated during the 58 years of Israeli occupation. Its violations of the Geneva Conventions could fill volumes. The illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, the movement of citizens of the occupying power into the occupied territory and the building of illegal (including most recently under UN Security Council Resolution 2334) Jewish settlements are just a few of the violations.
In the Gaza context, a few issues stand out. As Francesca Albanese, the UN rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, has stated, the occupying power does not have the right to self-defense, while the right of resistance is in fact guaranteed to the people under occupation. Furthermore, detentions of people under occupation accused of any act against the occupier are supposed to take place within the occupied territory — another major violation by Tel Aviv, which has for years been holding thousands of Palestinians inside the internationally recognized borders of the state of Israel.
Moreover, the issue of the safety of civilians under occupation is also of uppermost importance, as tens of thousands of civilians and civilian institutions (including houses of worship, hospitals, bakeries and educational institutions) have been deliberately targeted. These revenge acts against Palestinians and Palestinian institutions cannot be justified, despite the unacceptable claims of solidarity of occupied people with the resistance movement.
The claim that schools and hospitals are being targeted based on the claim that they are harboring “terrorists” has also been debunked many times. There have been videos of mosques and other institutions being blown up after occupying engineers placed explosives within their empty premises. Israeli soldiers have been seen celebrating the blowing up of these buildings, further contradicting the claim that they were targeted because they were hosting combatants.
The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza have been collectively punished in a number of ways, including forcible relocation and preventing them accessing energy and other basic humanitarian needs.
Ironically, the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians in Gaza have become part of the trade-offs in the ceasefire negotiations sponsored by Qatar, Egypt and the US. The idea that the occupying power, a member state of the UN, is being asked to allow access to oil, drinking water, medical supplies, tents and other basic humanitarian needs is a scandal. Even when the International Court of Justice made a binding rule last January, in the context of the South African case, that Israel should allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, the occupying forces totally ignored this demand and continued using food and energy as a tool of pressure on the population under occupation.
The occupier has a responsibility to protect the civilian population and provide for their humanitarian needs.
Daoud Kuttab
While Israel itself refused to meet the occupied population’s humanitarian needs, it also prevented any third party from helping Gazans receive aid. Israel used the ungenuine claim that demonstrations by radical groups were preventing aid vehicles from reaching the Gaza border.
Media reports have also noted that an Israeli government body that controls the influx of aid sometimes, through bureaucracy, ends up causing deaths and illnesses as food aid goes rotten, as well as leaving entire communities without electricity or other sources of energy and heating during the extremely cold winter months.
The basic obligations of an occupying power are still part of international humanitarian law and UN member states are obliged to ensure that other members of the UN, as well as other bodies that are violating these laws, are held accountable and not given a free pass.
- Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of “State of Palestine NOW: Practical and logical arguments for the best way to bring peace to the Middle East.” X: @daoudkuttab