The unceasing violence across Palestine

As the ceasefire has come to an end, it appears Israel will return to their repressive tactics in the Occupied Territories, where a future eruption of conflict is likely, writes Dr Rashad Seedeen.

THE HUMAN COST of Israel’s war on Gaza has become increasingly difficult to fathom. Air strikes and a ground assault into Gaza have left over 14,800 Palestinians dead, with over 6,000 being children. Currently, over 1.7 million or 80 per cent of Gazans are internally displaced.

The violence has not been limited to the Palestinian people. Over 100 UN refugee aid workers have also been killed in air strikes, the deadliest in the UN’s history. Furthermore, at least 57 journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Since 11 October, Gaza has experienced a full electricity blackout. Multiple hospitals have been hit by air strikes, with only four small hospitals (out of a possible 24) still operational in Gaza’s north. Over 50 per cent of schools in Gaza have been hit by Israeli air strikes.

Amnesty International have levelled multiple accusations of war crimes at the Israeli Government. In particular, Amnesty International has provided comprehensive evidence of war crimes in five instances, including attacks on civilian homes, a market, and a refugee camp. Another two instances included attacks upon a refugee camp and a church.

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According to Amnesty International:

Israeli forces carried out attacks that violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with 2.1 million people living in a space that is only 41 kilometres long and 13 kilometres at its widest, with some parts being as narrow as just five kilometres. Yet with this being the case, Israel has chosen to use some of the most high-impact, indiscriminate bombs in the history of modern warfare, including 900-kilogram bombs.

The New York Times has reported that Gazan deaths of women and children in the last two months is twice as high as Ukraine in the last two years.

In a six-day period, Israel dropped over 6,000 bombs on Gaza. This exceeds Operation Inherent Resolve, where the U.S.-led coalition dropped over 2,500 bombs a month in Syria and Iraq and the number of bombs dropped on Afghanistan by the U.S. in a year. Marc Garlasco, a former U.S. senior intelligence analyst with the Pentagon and a weapons expert in warfare, has stated that Israel’s bombing campaign only has comparisons with the Vietnam War and World War II.

Hostilities between Hamas and the Israeli government were triggered by a coordinated Hamas attack that killed over 1,200 Israeli soldiers (IDF) and civilians with over 200 taken as hostages. As the attack involved the deliberate killing of civilians and hostage-taking, there is little debate that this was an act of terror and a war crime, condemned as such by the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

However, the latest outbreak is part of a historically common pattern: structural and direct forms of violence are perpetrated upon Palestinians over an extended period until eventually, Hamas carries out some kind of counter-attack, usually in the form of terrorism to maximise impact. This is then followed by a disproportionately violent military response from Israel that incurs a huge civilian cost. This cycle of perpetual violence has been repeated five times in the 16 years since Hamas took power.

Yet the systematic subjugation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine has its origins in the violent dispossession of Palestinian land in 1948, commonly referred to as Nakba.

Israel’s ongoing repression of Palestine has been characterised as genocide by law organisations like the Centre for Constitutional Rights, the former ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, a collection of UN experts and historians alike.

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Human Rights Watch has declared that Gaza has become an "open-air prison" due to the strict limitation of movement imposed by Israel and Egypt (which controls a border to Gaza). Even before the war, access to electricity and drinkable water was highly restricted ensuring that human suffering was common.

The continual loss of land and homes through settler expansion is a persistent concern that Human Rights Watch has called the ‘unilateral annexation of additional parts of the West Bank’. Such concerns are justified considering the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, presented to the UN General Assembly, in September of this year, a map of the "New Middle East" with Palestine completely erased.

The possibility of armed violence is ever-present. In 2018, Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition into crowds at the Great March of Return, a series of non-violent protests demanding the right of return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the blockade. The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry found that over 6,000 people were shot by Israeli soldiers, with 189 killed.

The findings included that such acts ‘may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity’. A legal case brought before the Israel Supreme Court seeking compensation for one of the victims of this violence was rejected, solidifying the denial of basic legal rights to Palestinian people.

It is the common practice of the IDF to arrest men, women and children arbitrarily. Each year it is reported that between 500-700 Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted by the Israeli military court, with some as young as 12 years old.

Amnesty International has documented the widespread use of torture of detained West Bank Palestinians in Israel for decades. Furthermore, the use of ‘administrative detention’, a form of arbitrary confinement that can be indefinitely extended, has dramatically increased in the West Bank since 7 October.

In 2012, a booklet of 30 ex-Israeli soldier testimonies outlined the systemic misconduct towards arbitrarily arrested Palestinian children providing an even more detailed picture of the all-encompassing culture of repression ingrained in Palestinian life.

Internationally, Israel is diplomatically shielded from possible United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions through the United States’ regular use of their veto power. Of the 36 vetoed resolutions involving the Israeli-Palestinian situation, the U.S. has used their veto power 34 times to protect Israel from any form of criticism and deny support for Palestinian statehood. As such, Israel has been able to carry out its program of repression without any form of substantial diplomatic consequence.

Even so, such tactics have not translated into the results that Israeli authorities seek. This was admitted as much by the former head of Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency, Ami Ayalon, who led several military operations in Palestine.

Ayalon noted:

The more we employed our vast military superiority to pound the Palestinian population, the more Hamas grew in strength… The irony… overwhelmed me… To kill terrorist leaders without addressing the despair of their supporters is a fool’s errand and produces more frustration, more despair, and more terrorism.

Put simply, Israel’s violence of today is producing the insurgents of tomorrow.

If peace is to finally return to Palestine, a political solution based on justice and enshrining the full democratic rights of all Palestinian people must be instituted. This can only happen if we recognise and respect the common humanity of the Palestinian people, a basic value that has been tragically missing for far too long.