13
October 2023
As the West cheers on Israel’s starving of Gaza’s civilians to
soften them up before a ground invasion, it is important to understand how we
reached this point – and what it portends for the future
More
than a decade ago, Israel started to understand that its occupation of Gaza
through siege could be to its advantage. It began transforming the tiny coastal
enclave from an albatross around its neck into a valuable portfolio in the
trading game of international power politics.
The
first benefit for Israel, and its Western allies, is more discussed than the
second.
The
tiny strip of land hugging the eastern Mediterranean coast was turned into a
mix of testing ground and shop window.
Israel
could use Gaza to develop all sorts of new technologies and strategies
associated with the homeland security industries burgeoning across the West, as
officials there grew increasingly worried about domestic unrest, sometimes
referred to as populism.
The
siege of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, imposed by Israel in 2007 following
the election of Hamas to rule the enclave, allowed for all sorts of
experiments.
How
could the population best be contained? What restrictions could be placed on
their diet and lifestyle? How were networks of informers and collaborators to
be recruited from afar? What effect did the population’s entrapment and
repeated bombardment have on social and political relations?
And
ultimately how were Gaza’s inhabitants to be kept subjugated and an uprising
prevented?
The
answers to those questions were made available to Western allies through
Israel’s shopping portal. Items available included interception rocket systems,
electronic sensors, surveillance systems, drones, facial recognition, automated
gun towers, and much more. All tested in real-life situations in Gaza.
Israel’s
standing took a severe dent from the fact that Palestinians managed to bypass
this infrastructure of confinement last weekend – at least for a few days –
with a rusty bulldozer, some hang-gliders and a sense of nothing-to-lose.
Which
is part of the reason why Israel now needs to go back into Gaza with ground
troops to show it still has the means to keep the Palestinians crushed.
Collective
punishment
Which
brings us to the second purpose served by Gaza.
As
Western states have grown increasingly unnerved by signs of popular unrest at
home, they have started to think more carefully about how to sidestep the
restrictions placed on them by international law.
The
term refers to a body of laws that were formalised in the aftermath of the
second world war, when both sides treated civilians on the other side of the
battle lines as little more than pawns on a chessboard.
The
aim of those drafting international law was to make it unconscionable for there
to be a repeat of Nazi atrocities in Europe, as well as other crimes such as
Britain’s fire bombing of German cities like Dresden or the United States’
dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One
of the fundamentals of international law – at the heart of the Geneva
Conventions – is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating
against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts
of their leaders and armies.
Very
obviously, Gaza is about as flagrant a violation of this prohibition as can be
found. Even in “quiet” times, its inhabitants – one million of them children –
are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to
proper health care because medicines and equipment cannot be brought in; access
to drinkable water; and the use of electricity for much of the day because
Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.
Israel
has never made any bones of the fact that it is punishing the people of Gaza
for being ruled by Hamas, which rejects Israel’s right to have dispossessed the
Palestinians of their homeland in 1948 and imprisoned them in overcrowded
ghettos like Gaza.
What
Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment. It is
a war crime: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of every year, for 16
years.
And
yet no one in the so-called international community seems to have noticed.
Rules
of war rewritten
But
the trickiest legal situation – for Israel and the West – is when Israel bombs
Gaza, as it is doing now, or sends in soldiers, as it soon will do.
Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the problem when he told the
people of Gaza: “Leave now.” But, as he and Western leaders know, Gaza’s
inhabitants have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the bombs. So any Israeli
attack is, by definition, on the civilian population too. It is the modern
equivalent of the Dresden fire bombings.
Israel
has been working on strategies to overcome this difficulty since its first
major bombardment of Gaza in late 2008, after the siege was introduced.
A
unit in its attorney general’s office was charged with finding ways to rewrite
the rules of war in Israel’s favour.
At
the time, the unit was concerned that Israel would be criticised for blowing up
a police graduation ceremony in Gaza, killing many young cadets. Police are
civilians in international law, not soldiers, and therefore not a legitimate
target. Israeli lawyers were also worried that Israel had destroyed government
offices, the infrastructure of Gaza’s civilian administration.
Israel’s
concerns seem quaint now – a sign of how far it has already shifted the dial on
international law. For some time, anyone connected with Hamas, however
tangentially, is considered a legitimate target, not just by Israel but by every
Western government.
Western
officials have joined Israel in treating Hamas as simply a terrorist
organisation, ignoring that it is also a government with people doing humdrum
tasks like making sure bins are collected and schools kept open.
Or
as Orna Ben-Naftali, a law faculty dean, told the Haaretz newspaper back in
2009: “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza
and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law
has actually been stood on its head.”
Back
at that time, David Reisner, who had previously headed the unit, explained
Israel’s philosophy to Haaretz: “What we are seeing now is a revision of
international law. If you do something for long enough, the world will accept
it.
“The
whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is
forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.”
In
fact, Israel’s meddling to change international law goes back many decades.
Referring
to Israel’s attack on Iraq’s fledgling nuclear reactor in 1981, an act of war
condemned by the UN Security Council, Reisner said: “The atmosphere was that
Israel had committed a crime. Today everyone says it was preventive
self-defence. International law progresses through violations.”
He
added that his team had travelled to the US four times in 2001 to persuade US
officials of Israel’s ever-more flexible interpretation of international law
towards subjugating Palestinians.
“Had
it not been for those four planes [journeys to the US], I am not sure we would
have been able to develop the thesis of the war against terrorism on the
present scale,” he said.
Those
redefinitions of the rules of war proved invaluable when the US chose to invade
and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.
‘Human
animals’
In
recent years, Israel has continued to “evolve” international law. It has
introduced the concept of “prior warning” – sometimes giving a few minutes’
notice of a building or neighbourhood’s destruction. Vulnerable civilians still
in the area, like the elderly, children and the disabled, are then recast as
legitimate targets for failing to leave in time.
And
it is using the current assault on Gaza to change the rules still further.
The
2009 Haaretz article includes references by law officials to Yoav Gallant, who
was then the military commander in charge of Gaza. He was described as a “wild
man”, a “cowboy” with no time for legal niceties.
Gallant
is now defence minister and the man responsible for instituting this week a
“complete siege” of Gaza: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel –
everything is closed.” In language that blurred any distinction between Hamas
and Gaza’s civilians, he described Palestinians as “human animals”.
That
takes collective punishment into a whole different realm. In terms of
international law, it skirts into the territory of genocide, both rhetorically
and substantively.
But
the dial has shifted so completely that even centrist Western politicians are
cheering Israel on – often not even calling for “restraint” or
“proportionality”, the weasel terms they usually use to obscure their support
for law breaking.
Britain
has been leading the way in helping Israel to rewrite the rulebook on
international law.
Listen
to Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour opposition and the man almost certain
to be Britain’s next prime minister. This week he supported the “complete
siege” of Gaza, a crime against humanity, refashioning it as Israel’s “right to
defend itself”.
Starmer
has not failed to grasp the legal implications of Israel’s actions, even if he
seems personally immune to the moral implications. He is trained as a human
rights lawyer.
His
approach even appears to be taking aback journalists not known for being
sympathetic to the Palestinian case. When asked by Kay Burley of Sky News if he
had any sympathy for the civilians in Gaza being treated like “human animals”,
Starmer could not find a single thing to say in support.
Instead,
he deflected to an outright deception: blaming Hamas for sabotaging a “peace
process” that Israel both practically and declaratively buried years ago.
Confirming
that the Labour party now condones war crimes by Israel, his shadow attorney
general, Emily Thornberry, has been sticking to the same script. On BBC’s
Newsnight, she evaded questions about whether cutting off power and supplies to
Gaza is in line with international law.
It
is no coincidence that Starmer’s position contrasts so dramatically with that
of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. The latter was driven out of office by a
sustained campaign of antisemitism smears fomented by Israel’s most fervent
supporters in the UK.
Starmer
does not dare to be seen on the wrong side of this issue. And that is exactly
the outcome Israeli officials wanted and expected.
Israeli
flag on No 10
Starmer
is, of course, far from alone. Grant Shapps, Britain’s defence secretary, has
also expressed trenchant support for Israel’s policy of starving two million
Palestinians in Gaza.
Rishi
Sunak, the UK prime minister, has emblazoned the Israeli flag on the front of
his official residence, 10 Downing Street, apparently unconcerned at how he is
giving visual form to what would normally be considered an antisemitic trope:
that Israel controls the UK’s foreign policy.
Starmer,
not wishing to be outdone, has called for Wembley stadium’s arch to be adorned
with the colours of the Israeli flag.
However
much this schoolboy cheerleading of Israel is sold as an act of solidarity
following Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians at the weekend, the subtext is
unmistakeable: Britain has Israel’s back as it starts its retributive campaign
of war crimes in Gaza.
That
is also the purpose of home secretary Suella Braverman’s advice to the police
to treat the waving of Palestinian flags and chants for Palestine’s liberation
at protests in support of Gaza as criminal acts.
The
media is playing its part, dependably as ever. A Channel 4 TV crew pursued
Corbyn through London’s streets this week, demanding he “condemn” Hamas. They
insinuated through the framing of those demands that anything less fulsome –
such as Corbyn’s additional concerns for the welfare of Gaza’s civilians – was
confirmation of the former Labour leader’s antisemitism.
The
clear implication from politicians and the establishment media is that any
support for Palestinian rights, any demurral from Israel’s “unquestionable
right” to commit war crimes, equates to antisemitism.
Europe’s
hypocrisy
This
double approach, of cheering on genocidal Israeli policies towards Gaza while
stifling any dissent, or characterising it as antisemitism, is not confined to
the UK.
Across
Europe, from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and
the Bulgarian parliament, official buildings have been lit up with the Israeli
flag.
Europe’s
top official, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission,
celebrated the Israeli flag smothering the EU parliament this week.
She
has repeatedly stated that “Europe stands with Israel”, even as Israeli war
crimes start to mount.
The
Israeli air force boasted on Thursday it had dropped some 6,000 bombs on Gaza.
At the same time, human rights groups reported Israel was firing the incendiary
chemical weapon white phosphorus into Gaza, a war crime when used in urban
areas. And Defence for Children International noted that more than 500
Palestinian children had been killed so far by Israeli bombs.
It
was left to Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied
territories, to point out that Von Der Leyen was applying the principles of
international law entirely inconsistently.
Almost
exactly a year ago, the European Commission president denounced Russia’s
strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine as war crimes. “Cutting off men,
women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming – these
are acts of pure terror,” she wrote. “And we have to call it as such.”
Albanese
noted Von der Leyen had said nothing equivalent about Israel’s even worse
attacks on Palestinian infrastructure.
Sending
in the heavies
Meanwhile,
France has already started breaking up and banning demonstrations against the
bombing of Gaza. Its justice minister has echoed Braverman in suggesting
solidarity with Palestinians risks offending Jewish communities and should be
treated as “hate speech”.
Naturally,
Washington is unwavering in its support for whatever Israel decides to do to
Gaza, as secretary of state Anthony Blinken made clear during his visit this
week.
President
Joe Biden has promised weapons and funding, and sent in the military equivalent
of “the heavies” to make sure no one disturbs Israel as it carries out those
war crimes. An aircraft carrier has been dispatched to the region to ensure
quiet from Israel’s neighbours as the ground invasion is launched.
Even
those officials whose chief role is to promote international law, such as
Antonio Gutteres, secretary general of the UN, have started to move with the
shifting ground.
Like
most Western officials, he has emphasised Gaza’s “humanitarian needs” above the
rules of war Israel is obliged to honour.
This
is Israel’s success. The language of international law that should apply to
Gaza – of rules and norms Israel must obey – has given way to, at best, the
principles of humanitarianism: acts of international charity to patch up the
suffering of those whose rights are being systematically trampled on, and those
whose lives are being obliterated.
Western
officials are more than happy with the direction of travel. Not just for
Israel’s sake but for their own too. Because one day in the future, their own
populations may be as much trouble to them as Palestinians in Gaza are to
Israel right now.
Supporting
Israel’s right to defend itself is their downpayment.
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