Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza to death by blocking aid deliveries and yet the world is not able to do anything.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund says thousands of Palestinian children are suffering from acute malnutrition. The situation is so bad that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has asked the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on Tel Aviv’s obligations as the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
The case stems from UNGA’s Resolution 79/232 adopted on Dec 19 last year. Several countries and organisations have been delivering statements at the ICJ since April 28.
Malaysia was there for the third time to show its ironclad commitment to international law, diplomacy and justice. Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department ( Law and Institutional Reform) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said told the ICJ that Israel’s conduct in the OPT was a deliberate pattern forming part of a continuous series of violations against the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
“Israel has long failed to provide basic necessities to the OPT and has recklessly destroyed vital infrastructure, including essential educational and healthcare facilities,” she said.
Saudi Arabia’s representative, Mohamed Saud Alnassar, didn’t mince his words when he declared that the blocking of aid and the continued bombardments by Israel are “bringing about the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, displacing or killing the Palestinian population to make room for Israel to settle and annex the territory”.
International law is clear. An occupying power, which Israel clearly is, has an obligation to allow humanitarian aid.
Besides, legal instruments such as the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN Resolution 2417, make starvation as a weapon of warfare a war crime.
The international community must not allow Israel to ignore international law with impunity. Instead, it must stand united to bolster it.
Better still, help enforce the decisions of the ICJ and ICC. Rule of law isn’t a negotiating tool. None must be above the law.
The consequences of not doing anything are many, the most serious of which is to boost the Zionist regime’s impunity. Despite the ICJ ruling that Israel’s offensive against the Gazans might amount to plausible genocide and that it should immediately cease its atrocities there, the Zionist regime is bent on either bombing or starving them to death.
If this isn’t enough, Israel is calling up 60,000 reservists to intensify its military action, reports Al Jazeera. Tel Aviv’s intent is unmistakable: it wants to clear the Gaza Strip of the 2.3 million Palestinians by bombs and starvation. Israel must be stopped.
Clearly, the UN Security Council, the only world body with the legal power to halt the genocidal offensive of Israel, would veto any resolution against the Zionist regime. But certainly France and Britain can act outside the UNSC by not exporting arms to Israel.
So must the European Union, which never fails to peddle human rights to the rest of the world. If peace and justice are the goals of the international community, then, as the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres says, Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
