It does not matter whether the UN or Human Right Watch accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, of the massacre of almost 44,000 Palestiniansethnic cleansing or using hunger as a weapon of war. The prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accelerated his strategy of extermination in Gaza and occupation of the West Banksure that donald trump and his team, upon taking office in January, will close ranks with Israel and its plans to annex Palestine.
Before completing this strategy of total subjugation of Gaza and the West Bank, Netanyahu must offer Trump a settlement in Lebanonso that the American president-elect’s promise to “stop all wars” upon coming to power gains some success in the Middle East.
Looking ahead to January 20, when Trump will take office, Israeli PM must leave Middle East crises on trackwithout the focus of war in Lebanon leading to a confrontation with Iran that drags down the United States. In exchange, Netanyahu trusts that Washington will look the other way and let him do what he can in the Palestinian territories, whose annexation plans may already be underway.
In Tel Aviv they hope that Trump will bless the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank
This week, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrichstated that both Gaza and the West Bank will pass into Israeli hands and that the time has come, with Trump as president, to seize those territories from the Palestinians and ensure Israeli sovereignty therein.
“We were one step away from applying sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), and now the time has come to do so,” said Smotrich, also deputy head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Last May, Netanyahu and his military leadership gave in to illegal settlers in the West Bankled by Smotrich, such power in control of the lands occupied and taken from the Palestinians that in Israel there was talk of de facto annexation of those areas with the Jewish settlers as front men. Since the Gaza war began, Israeli settlers have multiplied their occupations in the West Bank, with the indispensable support of the army.
According to Smotrich this Monday, with Trump as an ally there is an “important opportunity” to make 2025 “the year of Israeli sovereignty in Samaria and Judea.” Now it remains for Trump to applaud that gesture, who already in 2017, in his previous mandate, recognized the Israeli capital in Jerusalem.
Smotrich admitted that the Government has already given orders to the Ministry of Defense and its settlement administration section to clear the way for that future takeover of the West Bank.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself denounced this Friday that The division currently established in the occupied West Bank is already “a declared annexation” to Israel.
In exchange, Netanyahu will offer Trump peace in Lebanon
For this reason, Netanyahu must pave the way for Trump and remove his concern that the crisis in Lebanon and the war against the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah could lead to a fight against Tehran.
In Lebanon, the bombings of the Jewish army continue in the south and in Beirut, but now Israelis themselves talk about a possible ceasefire that the pro-Iranian militias forced by the serious losses in their military capacity would accept.
On Thursday, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saarcommunicated to his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, the desire to “achieve a ceasefire” in Lebanon and announced that there is “progress” in the negotiations brokered by the Lebanese Government.
The interim prime minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikatistated this Friday that His Government is committed to implementing Resolution 1701 of the UN Security Councilwhich ended in 2006 the war that then also faced Israel and Hezbollah, and which establishes that the south of that country must be free of weapons that do not belong to the Lebanese State.
There will be Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, but not from the Palestinian territories
The background of what is happening in Gaza is very different. Israelis are here to stay in the Palestinian territoriesnot to withdraw after a ceasefire.
Therefore, although the Israeli army’s combats with the Palestinian Hamas militias have been significantly reduced, since that organization is already mortally wounded, The attacks on the civilian population continue, as well as the pressure to uproot almost all of the inhabitants. from the Strip of their homes.
Almost two of the 2.3 million Gazans have been driven from their homes since this war began on October 7, 2023 with the Hamas attack on Israel. If that raid caused 1,200 deaths and 251 kidnapped on the Israeli side, The revenge of the Jewish army already leaves 43,800 Palestinians dead (70% women and children), 103,500 injured and 10,000 missing in the ruins of Gaza.
The UN points out Israel for committing genocidal practices in Gaza
In this situation, which worsens day by day due to the lack of food, minimal sanitary conditions and overcrowding in refugee camps that have also become targets of Israeli bombs, the UN Special Committee that investigates the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza indicated this Thursday that this offensive “is consistent with the characteristics of a genocide“.
The report indicates that, in the first months of the war alone, Israel unleashed destruction on Gaza similar to that of two atomic bombs. The equivalent is currently impossible to calculate, with four-fifths of homes devastated by bombs.
The Committee also denounces that Israel “uses famine as a method of war and inflicts collective punishment on the Palestinian population”. He also points out that in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel is applying an “apartheid system.”
As the UN Human Rights Office noted last week, Israel is carrying out a “systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
These complaints and convictions support the investigations of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) into the complaint filed by South Africa against Israel for genocide.
Murder with bombs and also with hunger
The UN Special Committee will present this report to the organization’s General Assembly on November 18. The document covers the period between October 2023 and July 2024.
The report states that “Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of basic life-sustaining needs“food, water and fuel.” According to the document, the arrival of humanitarian aid to Gaza is prevented “for political and military purposes,” and hunger “is used as a method of war.”
The report adds that with the obstruction of humanitarian aid, attacks on the population and humanitarian workers, and disregard for binding ICJ orders and Security Council resolutions, “Israel is intentionally causing death, hunger and serious injury”.
Doctors Without Borders has accused Israel of preventing the evacuation of injured children with serious amputations. According to the WHO, there are at least 14,000 Palestinians in need of medical evacuation.
Ethnic cleansing in Gaza
The condemnation of the UN has been joined by complaints from Human Rights Watch (HRW). In its report published this week, this human rights NGO accuses Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” with this “widespread, systematic and intentional” forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Such action is equivalent to an “ethnic cleansing”, said Nadia Hardman, HRW researcher on refugee and migrant rights.
HRW has called on the United States, Germany and other countries, especially European ones, to stop supplying and selling weapons to Israel and to end their military cooperation with the Jewish state. According to HRW, such countries are “complicit” in the atrocities committed by Israel.
Disengagement from the EU
But neither the calls for sanity made by the UN or HRW, nor the voices raised in the European Union or the US against Israeli brutality seem to bear any fruit.
The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrellproposed to the members of the Union the suspension of political dialogue with Israel for these human rights violations in Gaza.
This proposal, the last that Borrell presented to the Foreign Affairs Council of the Union before ceding his position to the Estonian Kaja Kallas at the head of European diplomacy, was, however, met with the misgivings or more open rejection of a good part of the EU partners, led by Germany.
The EU does not want to bother Israel too much or contrast its foreign policy with that of the United States. The moderate Zionism of the current president, Joe Biden, could be replaced by a radical Zionism when Trump assumes power, hence Minister Smotrich’s joy.
While, Brussels persists in its double standards regarding Israel and Palestine. It demands respect for international law and calls for a ceasefire to free the Israeli hostages still in the hands of Hamas, but refuses to defend the Palestinian right to its own state. He also does not approve of the suspension of arms exports to Israel and does not want to impose sanctions on this country.
In February of this year, Spain and Ireland asked to review the framework agreement on relations between the EU and Israelwhich has been in force since June 2000. But the rejection was unanimous, led by Germany, the second country that supplies the most weapons to Israel and on which the Nazi past and the Jewish genocide in World War II weigh so heavily as to block any condemnation of ongoing Israeli war crimes.
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