Israel’s Six-Month Assault on Gaza
On November 26, Israel and a number of
different Palestinian groups reached a truce on the ground in Gaza. The truce, which came after Israel rejected
an earlier truce proposal, has brought to an end, for the time being, Israel’s
six-month siege on the Gaza Strip.
In June, supposedly in response to the
kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) re-entered
the Gaza Strip where it has since carried out a series of military actions. It
claims that these are aimed at stopping rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and the armed wing of Fatah. However, over six months of these
actions, an estimated 500 Palestinians - the vast majority civilians - have
been killed with another 1,000 seriously injured. Rocket attacks on Israel from
the Gaza Strip have also continued, resulting in the death of 19 Israeli
civilians to date.
On November 1, the IDF intensified its
military campaign, targeting the Beit Hanoun area in Gaza. On November 2, at dawn, the IDF began
firing artillery shells at six homes in Beit Hanoun that, according to the IDF, had been identified as
bases for rocket attacks. The shelling killed 18 civilians, including seven
children and six women, and wounded 53 civilians. International press coverage
of the immediate aftermath of the attack made it clear that the homes targeted
were family dwellings not bases used by Palestinian forces to attack Israel.
Following widespread public outrage over the shelling, the IDF and Israeli
government officially expressed “regret” for the incident, conceded that there
were no ‘militant’ targets within the houses and promised to launch an
investigation into what went wrong.
Any analysis of the IDF tactics in Gaza, not
just in last month but since the withdrawal of Israeli settlements in August
2005, would indicate that the IDF action went exactly according to plan. The
IDF policy is clearly one of collective punishment, with Palestinian civilians
paying the price. The “shoot or bomb first” mentality of the IDF has been
documented hundreds, if not thousands, of times. The only difference with the
massacre at Beit Hanoun was
that some of it was caught on camera and broadcast around the world.
Palestinian human rights groups have responded
to the IDF assaults on Gaza with justifiable outrage and have called repeatedly
for international assistance. Following the November 2 massacre, a coalition of
11 human rights groups released a statement clearly outlining multiple
violations of international humanitarian law committed by the IDF within the
Gaza Strip. The groups called on the UN Security Council, the UN General
Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the High Contracting Parties to the
Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and
international human rights organizations to condemn this crime, investigate it
fully, and take effective action to ensure the protection of the Palestinian
people.
Response of
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Partially in response to this call, the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canadian Louise Arbour,
paid a five-day visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in
mid-November. Arbour, who visited some of the
surviving family members of the Beit Hanoun massacre, expressed her shock at the widespread
violation of the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation. For this
statement, Arbour was vilified in the North American
media and tremendous pressure was brought through diplomatic channels for her
to ‘soften’ her language. Thus, at the November 23 press conference at the end
of her visit, Arbour said that both Palestinian and
Israeli civilians were the “primary victims of the alarming deprivation of
human rights in the region.” While she noted that the situation was worst in
the occupied territories, she also made a point of equating Palestinian and
Israeli suffering, despite all the evidence, which suggests there is no
equivalency.
"I left Gaza with a sense that the right
of its people to physical integrity - their right to life - was particularly
imperiled. Beit Hanoun is
only one case in many," she said. Describing her visit to the West Bank,
she told reporters “I was struck by the severe impact that the barrier and the
system of checkpoints, road blocks, trenches and earth mounds was having on
family life and economic life, indeed, on the quality of life: in short, on
human dignity." Arbour also stressed that she
had told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas it was essential that the Palestinian Authority stop
the launching of rockets into Israel and prosecute those responsible. Firing Qassam missiles into Israel, she said, “is done only with
the intent to kill and to spread fear without discrimination. As such they are
in breach of international humanitarian law and their use must cease
immediately.”
The Israeli government responded to Arbour’s visit by pointedly highlighting her comments about
rocket attacks on Israel while ignoring her sweeping condemnation of human
rights violations in the occupied territories.
Responses
of the U.S, Canada and the International Community
For
its part, the UN
General Assembly responded to the outcry against the massacre at Beit Hanoun by passing a
resolution on November 17 condemning the Israeli aggression against Palestinian
civilians in the occupied territories. The resolution calls for an immediate
halt to Israel's ongoing military campaign in the occupied territories,
including East Jerusalem. It also demands that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan set up a fact-finding
mission to investigate the Israeli
shelling of Beit Hanoun.
The resolution, adopted by 156 votes in favour, seven
against and six abstentions, came a week after the United States vetoed a
Security Council draft resolution that would have strongly condemned Israel for
the massacre in Beit Hanoun.
The resolution was fully endorsed by the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the European Union and many African and Latin American nations. It was opposed by the United States, Israel, Australia, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau, while Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu all abstained. It is a black stain on the Canadian government that it directed Canada's representative at the United Nations to abstain on this resolution condemning Israel's massacre of Palestinians. It is even more reprehensible that at the same time that the General Assembly was voting on this resolution, Stephen Harper was loudly proclaiming himself as a champion of human rights at the APEC Summit by publicly criticizing the alleged violations of human rights by Vietnam and China.
Speaking on the resolution on behalf the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest political bloc of developing nations in
the General Assembly, Cuba's Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca
Diaz denounced the United States for blocking the Security Council resolution
on Israel. He said the NAM was forced to
call the General Assembly session because the Security Council had failed to
fulfill its responsibility in the maintenance of international peace and
security as a result of "the abuse of veto." The NAM demanded that Israel must immediately
cease its aggression against the civilian populations in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and abide by its obligations
and responsibilities under the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians
in the time of war.
At the General Assembly session, Palestinian
UN Observer Riyad Mansour
said that since 1967 this was the thirty-first occasion that the United States
had used its veto in support of Israel regarding activities in the occupied
territories. "This repeated use of
the veto sends the wrong message to Israel that it is above international law
and that it can continue to commit crimes and acts of outright aggression with
impunity," he said, adding that it also "signals to the Palestinian
people that the targeting of their civilians is acceptable and overlooked by
the Security Council since the perpetrator is Israel." Mansour reported
that in the previous week more than 80 Palestinian civilians, including 22
children, had lost their lives as a result of the "ruthless" and
extensive Israeli assaults in the occupied areas.
A number of UN agencies have recently strongly
condemned Israeli actions against civilians in Palestinian areas. For example,
a few weeks ago, John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, said that Israel
was largely to blame for turning Gaza into a "prison" and
"throwing away the key." In a
statement, he also criticized Canada, Europe and the United States for cutting
funds to the Palestinian Authority, following the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian election.
In addition, Dugard noted that the quartet of the United States, Russia, the EU and the UN, sponsors of the roadmap peace plan in the Middle East, had done little to stop Israel's attacks, which he described as a "brutal collective punishment" of the Palestinian people. "I hope that my portrayal... will trouble the consciences of those accustomed to turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the suffering of the Palestinian people," he told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Recently, the 47-member Council strongly condemned Israel for violating human rights and international humanitarian law by targeting civilians during its military operations.