Reporting on the proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Deutsche Welle (DW) wrote,” As 17 judges prepared to deliver their first ruling in a landmark genocide trial against Israel, some 100 pro-Palestinian protesters were gathered outside the Palace of Peace to watch on a big screen. "No Genocide. No ethnic cleansing. Nowhere," read one banner, emblazoned with the Palestinian flag.
A few hundred metres down the road from the ornate
red-brick courthouse in The Hague, Netherlands, a similarly sized cluster of
demonstrators waved Israeli and Dutch flags, holding pictures of hostages
seized from southern Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7
One side, or perhaps even both, of those assembled
on this crisp, bright Friday was bound to be disappointed. In the end, a
nuanced ruling left both sides with reason for dissatisfaction, though the
scales tipped largely against Israel, as many had expected.
The judges were in no way ruling on whether Israel had breached the Genocide Convention or not. That decision could take years. At stake on Friday were a series of emergency injunctions requested by South Africa, which brought the case to the ICJ one month ago on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza. For the sake of brevity, I have omitted comments in Haaretz, Ynet and other local and foreign news outlets. Nonetheless, I will quote from an op-ed in The Economist: - “Genocide is a uniquely horrific crime. Not because it is the bloodiest: Stalin and Mao killed many more people in gulags and famines than the nearly 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. But the Holocaust was seen as so monstrous that the UN adopted the Genocide Convention, promising never again to allow an attempt to wipe out a group of people, or part of one, simply because of their nationality, race, religion or ethnicity.
That promise has been repeatedly
broken—in Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda, to name a few. Each new case brought
before the International Court of Justice in The Hague ought to give the world
a chance to make good on its word and help strengthen the taboo against
genocide by clarifying the obligations of countries to prevent and punish it.
Alas, South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide against the
Palestinians, heard by the ICJ, cheapens the term. It risks weakening the
taboo and body of law aimed at preventing it.”
In addition to the ‘old
soldiers’ guest speakers on Israeli TV news panels I mentioned previously, there
are a few new guest speakers, Israeli academics specialising in various aspects
of international law. Unsurprisingly, they differ in their interpretations, a phenomenon
sometimes described as ‘The Rashomon Effect.’ However, it isn’t unique to the
current difference
of opinions regarding the initial IJC ruling.
Journalists and think-tank analysts
often proffer
contradictory interpretations of a particular
event.
Apparently,
everybody and their uncle are suing us!
A complaint was lodged
against Israel this week by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Jenin claiming
that Israeli undercover forces shot and killed three hospital patients, one of
whom was receiving treatment. The complainants produced CCTV
footage as evidence showing the Israeli ‘operatives’ making their
way through a hospital corridor. They
were
disguised as Arab women wearing hijabs or hospital
staff in scrubs or white medical
lab
coats. Israeli news media outlets detailed another version
of the attack. A joint IDF, ISA (Israel Security Agency,
better known as Shabak or Shin Bet), and Israel
Police counterterrorism forces identified and killed three terrorists hiding inside
the hospital. The whole operation was carried without a hitch in just under ten
minutes. The dead men belonged to the Al-Qassam Brigades, affiliated with Hamas, designated a terrorist
organisation by the US State Department.
“ABC News reported that the IDF may have violated international law in the Jenin hospital raid. According to a Palestinian health ministry spokesman doctors and patients are granted ‘protected status’ in armed conflict under the Geneva Convention. Some experts have argued that ultimately the International Criminal Court is the body that can determine if international law was violated during the raid, but they pointed to elements of the Rome Statute, the governing treaty of the ICC, and the study on the rules of customary international humanitarian law the IDF may have violated in conducting the raid. The United States, along with China, India, Russia and about 40 other countries, did not sign the Rome Statute and are not party to the ICC rulings, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The ICC differs from the International Court of Justice in that the ICC can ‘exercise jurisdiction’ in the form of preliminary examination, investigation and, at times, ultimately trials, over ‘genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, it says. i
Israel is not a member of the ICC and rejects the court's jurisdiction. Notwithstanding that, the ICC prosecutor has investigated Israel's actions towards Palestinians in the past.” Aurel Sari, associate professor of public international law at the University of Exeter, UK, claims it’s a violation of international law to feign protected status, in this case, by dressing up as a doctor or patient, in order to elicit the confidence of adversaries and then proceed to kill or injure them. This violates the prohibition to kill or injure the adversary by resorting to perfidy.
"The
rule is part of customary international law in both international and
non-international armed conflicts, which means Israel is bound by it. Based on what has been
reported, it appears that the Israeli forces involved in the operation in the
Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin did resort to perfidy in violation of the law of
armed conflict.
It's unclear if the IDF used disguises
to gain access to the hospital or to elicit the confidence
of the adversaries they were targeting directly. The other possible
violation of international law the IDF may have committed in this case is
violating the prohibition on attacking persons defined as
‘hors
de combat’.” Aurel
Sari said. I
doubt if the IDF concurs with Aurel Sari. It’s likely that they consider the Jenin hospital
‘visit’ an hors-d'œuvre.
The ICC would ultimately be the body that could
determine if a war crime was committed or if international law was violated in
this raid. In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin
for crimes related to the invasion of Ukraine.
"To conclude that a war crime has been
committed, criminal tribunals avail themselves not rarely of years of
investigations and assessments," Robert Kolb, professor of public
international law at the University of Geneva, told ABC News.
“Intelligence estimates shared with the U.S.
conclude that around 1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza have
links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close
relatives who belong to the Islamist militant groups,” The Wall Street
Journal reported on
Monday.
The figures are worth bearing in mind the next time
you weigh the credibility of information about the Gaza Strip sourced to the
U.N. Also worth bearing in mind is that this has been going on for years. As
Bassem Eid of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group noted over a decade
ago, “In order for UNRWA to survive, they accept (Hamas’s) conditions because
they want to continue their activities.”
The new revelations were enough for the Biden
administration to suspend its funding for the agency — worth nearly $350
million in 2022 — while it investigates the allegations. As of Tuesday, other
major funders, including France, Germany and Japan, have followed suit.
“Think of it this way. The United
Nations has two agencies dedicated to the plight of refugees. One, the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees, is responsible for the well-being of nearly all
the world’s more than 30 million refugees, with a mandate to help them resettle
in third countries if they can’t go home.
The other is UNRWA, which theoretically operates
under the umbrella of the high commissioner but is really its own organisation.
No other group except for Palestinians gets its own permanent agency.
Why? In part, because neighbouring Arab countries
such as Lebanon cruelly refused to fully absorb Palestinian refugees, refusing
them not only citizenship but also, in many cases, the right to most forms of
work. In 1991, Kuwait went further by expelling hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians in a matter of days, because Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had
supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War. Think of that the next
time Arab governments profess solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Defenders of UNRWA insist that without it,
Palestinian civilians will suffer even more. But there is no reason other
international agencies can’t shoulder the burden of the immediate relief effort
for Palestinians in Gaza. In the meantime, the Biden administration and other
governments need to ask hard questions of UNRWA’s senior officials, starting
with Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini.
To wit: If Lazzarini and his deputies didn’t know
that UNRWA in Gaza was employing potentially hundreds of Hamas members or sympathisers,
what sort of oversight were they exercising? And if they did know, are they not
responsible? In either case — gross negligence or quiet complicity — they need
to resign now.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be insoluble. But it can’t be solved so long as millions of Palestinians have been turned into the world’s only permanent refugees. By doing that, UNRWA makes itself an obstacle to peace — reason enough for it to finally go away.” Wrote Bret Stephens an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He has been an opinion columnist for the New York Times and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017. Stephens was previously a foreign affairs f columnist and deputy editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the editorial pages of its European and Asian editions. At the Wall Street Journal, Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2013. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Stephens is known for his neoconservative foreign
policy opinions and for being part of the right-of-centre opposition to Donald Trump.
While IDF units continue ferreting
out Hamas terrorists in Gaza there’s a lack of consensus regarding how much of
the Hamas tunnel network is functional.
The Wall Street Journal reported that after weeks of fighting, as much as 80
percent of Hamas’s tunnel system beneath Gaza could still remain intact.
The report cites Israeli and US officials, and notes
that it is
difficult to assess how much of the subterranean labyrinth has been destroyed to date.
Some of the tunnels have been bombed, while a few have been flooded. However,
progress is slow as underground passages must be mapped and checked for booby
traps and hostages before the IDF can
destroy them.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other terror
commanders are believed to be hiding underground. The Journal cites Israeli
officials who said that the Gaza terror chief is believed to be in a command
centre in a tunnel under Khan Younis, along with some of the hostages.
Earlier this month it was reported that
senior Israeli defence officials now assess that Hamas’s Gaza tunnel network is
between 350 and 450 miles long, far longer than previously believed.
I’m adding a margin note
about concrete in general and in particular its use in the Hamas tunnel network,
relying mainly on open-source information.
“Concrete,
a mixture of aggregates like sand and gravel bonded with cement and water, is
essential for urban development.
With 68% of the global population expected to live
in urban areas by 2050, demand for concrete and hence sand mining is projected
to grow significantly. This
has tripled in the last two decades, reaching about 50 billion tons annually. Largely unregulated, sand mining poses severe
threats to river and coastal ecosystems.” Apparently, Gaza is well situated regarding the aggregates required to
make concrete. It has beaches that are partly supplied
with sand from the Nile estuary and erosion of
its delta and offshore shoals carried northward by longshore drifting. In
addition, winter rains from
the Hebron hills carry gravel and other sediments to the Mediterranean via Wadi
Gaza. The cement
required to make concrete is imported from Israel ostensibly for housing
projects, instead Hamas appropriates it to build its vast tunnel network."
At this juncture another
margin note for the purpose of recycling something I wrote a few years ago.
“Visitors
to the Beit Shean national park, whether they are wandering around on their own
or viewing the archaeological site with a tour guide usually miss the Roman
arched bridge across the Harod stream by the town's northern entrance.
The lower part of the piers on which the bridge's
arch rests are made of concrete! Not a simple burnt lime and sand aggregate,
but a mix that contains an exact proportion of Pozzolana.
Pozzolana is a fine, sandy volcanic ash and
in this case it was probably mined in Italy. It’s
a siliceous and aluminous material
which reacts with slaked lime
in the presence of water. This forms compounds possessing cementitious properties
at room temperature. Furthermore, the aggregate possesses a unique property; it
sets underwater, making it ideal for building river bridges. The Romans
perfected the use of concrete, revolutionising the construction industry in the
ancient world. Many of the concrete structures they built have survived
the ravages of time, the elements and in some places major earthquakes. Roman
engineers were the first, and until the industrial revolution, the only ones to
construct bridges with concrete.”
Back to the main text and
hopes of finally cementing an agreement that will free the hostages,
rehabilitate the Gaza periphery communities and foster (with a lot of help from
the US and regional partners) a Gaza enclave ‘under new management.’
Take care.
Beni
1st of February,
2024.
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