UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, International Court of Justice President: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Indigenous Palestinian People.
Tag: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
“For them, our very existence intimidates them and our artwork humanizes us- Palestinians- and this does not serve their purposes. They want us to be portrayed as we are in the media- terrorists, people throwing rocks- this is the picture that they have in mind, and that’s why they didn’t like this piece of artwork. And I also think it comes as part of the genocide that Israel is committing against Palestinians, which comes at all levels. So we have the daily killings, demolitions, evictions, land theft, burning of trees, and all of that. And then we have a different level which is a cultural genocide, where they steal our food and they attack our art. They don’t want the word ‘Palestinian’ to be heard in the western world.”
Over the past 15 years, the international community has donated $ 5.7bn to provide relief for Palestinians in Gaza. These humanitarian relief efforts have saved the Palestinians in Gaza from genocide. However, the international humanitarian aid has unwittingly become a means for Israel to continue with the siege and normalise it…
..In 2012, it was revealed that Israel had calculated to allow, based on a person’s average requirement, 2,300 calories a day to enter Gaza. This was just sufficient enough “not to make them die of hunger,” as Weisglass stated.. foreign aid helps Israel as an occupier deflect its responsibilities under international law, the Hague Convention and the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the Palestinian population and its property. Israel avoids its duty because humanitarian aid is preventing Palestinians from dying of hunger.
Israel’s neo-colonial blockade has ensured that, for every dollar the international community sends to Gaza, Israel enforces damage of over two dollars. The Israeli siege policy thus creates a perpetual deficit, leaving the people of Gaza in a state of permanent humanitarian crisis.
Even though doctors in Gaza knew protocols to prevent the rise of drug-resistant bacteria, persistent shortages of antibiotics meant they could not always follow them, they told reporters. Patients take incomplete courses of antibiotics or are prescribed a mix because the right medicine is not available.
Shortages of water, power and fuel for generators mean doctors cannot always meet even basic hygiene standards, making it easier for any drug-resistant infection to spread. At times doctors are not even able to wash their hands and there are shortages of gloves, gowns and chlorine tablets for disinfecting.
2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; the longest occupation in recent history. For the Palestinian people, these were five decades of de-development, suppressed human potential and denial of the basic human right to development, with no end in sight.
… UNCTAD (2015) emphasized that for Gaza to be a liveable place in 2020, enormous reconstruction efforts were urgently needed in sectors such as health, education, energy, water and sanitation. However, the humanitarian and economic situation has instead worsened since then. According to the World Bank, Gaza’s economic performance over the past two decades has been the worst in the world.
… One of the harshest consequences of occupation is an unemployment rate that is persistently among the highest in the world. In 2016, unemployment remained extremely high, at 18 per cent in the West Bank, 42 per cent in Gaza and 27 per cent in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; more than twice the regional average (ILO, 2017; World Bank, 2017). However, as high as the official rate of unemployment is, it does not fully reflect the real depth of the problem and the attendant economic suffering and waste of human resources… If the risky jobs in Israel and settlements did not exist, the unemployment rate in the West Bank would be more than 36 per cent, not much higher than the 42 per cent observed in Gaza. That is, without the problematic and vulnerable employment in Israel and settlements, unemployment in the West Bank would be nearly as high as the extremely high level in Gaza. Therefore, despite the conspicuously worse conditions in Gaza, it is crucial that with regard to the labour market, conditions in the West Bank are no less grim than conditions in Gaza. The entire economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in the West Bank or Gaza, is stifled and stripped of its capacity to produce jobs.
little has been said about the almost complete destruction of Gaza’s industry and economy. As the Israeli Minister of Interior Eli Yishai said, the objective of the last operation was to “send Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all of its infrastructure.”… These attacks – against factories, farms, farming equipment and homes – were not by chance or accidental. These attacks demonstrate once again that the target of the genocidal Israeli colonialism is the Palestinian people itself, and that the war that has been waging the last 66 years, under cover of Europe and the US, is against a nation, Palestine, that they seek to wipe off the map.
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