April
13, 2024
Extremist
settler groups descended on Palestinian villages near the cities of Ramallah
and Nablus in the occupied West Bank on 13 April to terrorize Palestinian
residents for a second day in a row.
According
to local reports, the settler mobs are present in the villages of Silwad and
Turmusayya near Ramallah and in Duma near Nablus. The Israeli pogrom started on
Friday when hundreds of settlers set fire to homes and vehicles in the village
of Al-Mughayyir.
At
least one Palestinian, identified as 26-year-old Jehad Abu Alia, was killed and
more than 30 others injured after being shot at and physically assaulted by the
settlers. Israeli police, who regularly protect the rampaging mobs, arrested
several injured Palestinians.
“My
son went with others to defend our land and honor, and this is what happened,”
Abu Alia told reporters from a hospital in Ramallah, where his son’s body had
been transported.
Locals
say the settlers stole approximately 70 sheep from the Palestinian village.
According
to an Israeli rights group, the violent mobs are searching for a 14-year-old
who went missing on Friday.
Earlier
on Friday, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops during a raid in the
occupied West Bank city of Tubas. One of those killed was Muhammad Omar
Daraghmeh, the son of Hamas leader and Palestinian detainee Omar Daraghmeh, who
was killed inside Israel’s Megiddo prison in October last year.
Israeli
violence in the occupied West Bank has surged dramatically since the start of
the war on Gaza. Army raids into West Bank cities and camps have become a
near-daily occurrence.
Palestinian
health officials say over 460 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops
and extremist settler groups in the occupied West Bank since October, as the
country's national security ministry has issued thousands of gun permits and
directly armed the settlers.
Resistance
to army raids and settler pogroms has also intensified, as reports say
Palestinian factions have been bolstered by smuggled Iranian weapons.
Nicaragua Takes
Germany to the World Court for Facilitating Israel’s Genocide
Germany is second only to the US as
the largest supplier of weapons to Israel.
As Israel’s genocidal campaign
against the Palestinians in Gaza — which has killed more than 33,000 Gazans —
enters its seventh month, Nicaragua sued Germany in the International Court of
Justice (ICJ, or World Court) for facilitating genocide.
Ambassador
Carlos José Argüello Gómez of Nicaragua provides a response following
the second day of hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
in the case brought by Nicaragua against Germany regarding financial and
military assistance to Israel, as well as the cessation of subsidies to
the aid organization UNRWA. Mouneb Taim / Anadolu via Getty Images
Nicaragua charged that, “Germany has
provided political, financial and military support to Israel fully aware at the
time of authorization that the military equipment would be used in the
commission of great breaches of international law,” adding, “The military
equipment provided by Germany enabling Israel to perpetrate genocidal acts and
other atrocities, included supplies to the front line and warehouses, and
assurances of future supplies such as ammunition, technology and diverse
components necessary for the Israeli military.” Nicaragua also cited Germany’s
defunding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
in the Near East (UNRWA), which “provides essential support to the civilian
population.”
Germany is the second-largest arms
supplier to Israel, accounting for 30 percent of imports between 2019 and 2023.
The United States, Israel’s chief enabler, provided it with 69 percent of its
arms imports during the same period.
On October 12, German Chancellor
Olaf Scholz stated,
At this moment, there is only one place for Germany: the place at the side
of Israel. This is what we mean when we say that Israel’s security is a German
raison d’État. Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust,
makes it our perpetual duty to stand up for the existence and security of the
State of Israel. This responsibility guides us.
In a historic hearing on April 8 and
9, Nicaragua presented its case to the ICJ and Germany denied the charges.
Nicaragua asked the World Court to order five provisional measures “as a matter
of extreme urgency” for Germany’s alleged “participation in the ongoing
plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law and
other peremptory norms of general international law occurring in the Gaza
Strip.”
Daniel Müller, a lawyer on
Nicaragua’s legal team, reminded the ICJ that 10 days prior, when the court
ordered additional provisional measures against Israel in South Africa’s case,
it called the living conditions in Gaza “catastrophic” and the recent developments
“exceptionally grave.” The court found “an imminent risk of irreparable harm to
‘the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide’.”
“Nicaragua is acting not only on its
own behalf on the basis of the rights and obligations conferred by the
peremptory norms invoked, but also on behalf of the Palestinian people that is
being subjected to one of the most destructive military actions in modern
history,” Carlos José Argüello Gómez, Nicaragua’s ambassador to the
Netherlands, told the court.
Gómez said that although Nicaragua
hasn’t been subjected to as much inhuman treatment and destruction as the
Palestinians have suffered for more than 75 years, “it has also been subject to
intervention and military attacks for most of its existence and feels empathy
for the Palestinian people.”
In the 1984 case of Military and
Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), the ICJ
ruled against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, which included the mining of
ports, the destruction of oil installations, and the training, arming and
equipping of the Contras (who were trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan
government).
Gómez stated the Israeli government
“should not be confused and equated with the Jewish people,” noting that Jewish
victims of the Holocaust “would feel sympathy and empathize with the more than
30,000 civilians, including 25,000 mothers and children massacred so far in
Palestine, and the 20,000 children orphaned and the two mothers being killed
every hour.”
Germany Increased Military Aid to
Israel and Cut Funding to UNRWA as Genocide Unfolded
The Genocide Convention imposes on
third parties the obligation to prevent genocide from the time they become
aware that genocide might be committed. Gómez told the court “there can be no
question” that Germany “was well aware and is well aware of at least the
serious risk of genocide being committed, most certainly after your Order of 26
January [for provisional measures].”
Gómez argued that Germany was on
notice of Israel’s international lawbreaking, citing 32 statements made from
October 9, 2023 to April 5, 2024, by hundreds of highly respected experts,
authorities, organizations, legal scholars and practitioners accusing Israel of
breaching or plausibly breaching the Genocide Convention.
“With all this undeniable knowledge
of the situation,” Gómez declared, “Germany’s reaction was to increase its
military assistance to Israel.” He also cited Germany’s announcement that it
would intervene in favor of Israel in the case of South Africa v. Israel, which
is pending in the ICJ. And, Gómez said, in spite of the ICJ’s January 26
finding that Israel was plausibly committing genocide, “Germany continued, and
still continues to this day, to supply weapons and military assistance in
general to Israel.”
For the year 2023, the German
government authorized 326 million euros for exports of military equipment and
weapons of war to Israel, Nicaragua’s attorney Müller told the court. Export
licenses for war weapons worth 20 million euros included “3,000 anti-tank
weapons — which according to one manufacturer in Germany are ‘a complete
toolbox of shoulder-launched infantry weapon[s]’ used against tanks, but also
vehicles, structures and buildings, and persons — 500,000 rounds of machine gun
ammunition, 44 propellant charges — a key component in artillery ammunition —
and 239 ignition charges.”
Müller said these weapons are “built
to and aimed at destroying and killing, or to quote from Germany’s own
definition, ‘objects [and] substances . . . capable . . . of causing
destruction or damage to persons or property and of serving as a means of using
force in armed conflicts between States.’”
In spite of the Security Council
resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Germany continues to provide
military assistance to Israel. Germany is facilitating or improving the
provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza. But, Müller argued, “It is indeed a pathetic
excuse to the Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza to provide
humanitarian aid, including through air drops, on the one hand, and to furnish
the weapons and military equipment that are used to kill and annihilate them —
and to kill also humanitarian aid workers as most recently evidenced by the
missile attack against vehicles and workers of World Central Kitchen, on the
other hand.”
Gómez noted the involvement of
German companies in the military industry which “are directly profiting from
the situation as they have seen their share prices rise since October and they
have substantially increased the joint development contracts for weapons with
their Israeli counterparts.”
Nicaragua also cited Germany’s
suspension of funding for UNRWA in Gaza the day after the ICJ’s January 26
order, “based on the sole say-so of the Israeli government,” as evidence of
Germany’s facilitation of genocide. “UNRWA is the most important partner for
providing assistance to the people in the Gaza Strip,” Germany’s federal
minister admitted on November 7, 2023. The suspension of funding deprived UNRWA
of $450 million.
Nicaragua Debunked Germany’s
Argument That Israel Is Acting in Lawful Self-Defense
Nicaragua argued that Israel was
confusing the right to protect its people with the right of self-defense under
Article 51 of the UN Charter, citing the 2004 ICJ’s advisory opinion in Legal
Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory. In that case, the court held that Israel, as an occupying power,
cannot claim self-defense in the territory it occupies. “Surprisingly,” Gómez
stated, “Germany seems not to be able to differentiate between self-defense and
genocide.”
Moreover, Nicaragua asserted that
“the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination” which includes
“the right to take up arms against alien occupation and against racist régimes
in the exercise of their right of self-determination as enshrined in the [UN]
Charter” and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning
Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States.
Gómez noted that the events of
October 7 “did not occur in a void, on the spur of the moment, without any
provocation.” He quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who said on
October 24, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not
happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of
suffocating occupation.”
“If the actions of Israel continue
unrestrained as they have since its birth as a State, and they continue to
receive the indiscriminate support of States like Germany, then a new
generation of Palestinians will rise up again in the near future,” Gómez predicted.
Nicaragua Is Seeking 5 Provisional
Measures
Nicaragua asked the ICJ to order
that Germany not make the situation in Gaza worse, by “providing or allowing
the provision of munitions of war and other direct support for Israel at this
juncture and by depriving UNRWA . . . of funding and of the ability to continue
working in accordance with its mandate.”
These are the provisional measures
that Nicaragua is requesting:
(1) Germany shall immediately suspend its aid to Israel, in particular its
military assistance including military equipment, in so far as this aid may be
used in the violation of the Genocide Convention, international humanitarian
law or other peremptory norms of general international law such as the
Palestinian People’s right to self-determination and to not be subject to a
regime of apartheid;
(2) Germany must immediately make every effort to ensure that weapons
already delivered to Israel are not used to commit genocide, contribute to acts
of genocide or are used in such a way as to violate international humanitarian
law;
(3) Germany must immediately do everything possible to comply with its
obligations under humanitarian law;
(4) Germany must reverse its decision to suspend the funding of UNRWA as
part of the compliance of its obligations to prevent genocide and acts of
genocide and the violation of the humanitarian rights of the Palestinian People
which also includes the obligation to do everything possible to ensure that
humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian people, more particularly in Gaza;
(5) Germany must cooperate to bring to an end the serious breaches of
peremptory norms of international law by ceasing its support, including its
supply of military equipment to Israel that may be used to commit serious
crimes of international law and that it continue the support of the UNRWA on
which this Organization has counted and based its activities.
Germany Claims It Can’t Be Held
Responsible Because Israel Isn’t a Party to the Case
Germany’s legal team raised two main
defenses. First, the ICJ has no jurisdiction in the case because Germany’s
responsibility is dependent on a finding that Israel is committing genocide and
Israel is not a party to this case. Second, Germany has a “robust legal
framework” to assess on a case-by-case basis whether export licenses comport
with its domestic and international obligations and most of its exports since
October 2023 have not been “war weapons.”
Agent Tania von Uslar-Gleichen
argued on behalf of Germany that Nicaragua’s accusations “have no basis in fact
or law. They are dependent on an assessment of conduct of Israel, not a party
to these proceedings.” She said the case was brought to the court “on the basis
of the flimsiest of evidence.”
Samuel Wordsworth, also representing
Germany, told the ICJ it had no jurisdiction to hear this case. He explained
that Israel was not before the court and determinations about its conduct were
a prerequisite to finding responsibility on the part of Germany. In South
Africa v. Israel, the ICJ held it was “plausible” that Israel was committing
genocide. A final determination on the merits will take a number of years.
Before determining whether Germany is breaching its international obligations,
“the Court must first determine that Israel has committed genocide,” Wordsworth
maintained. “The responsibility of Germany is alleged, but in complete reliance
on asserted wrongful acts of Israel.” Thus, he said, Israel is “an
indispensable third party.”
But Anne Peters, another member of
Germany’s legal team, admitted that if the court found it “plausible” that
Israel is violating international law, it can then determine whether “plausible
facts” establish “plausible violations” by Germany.
Germany Claims That Most of Its
Exports to Israel Aren’t “War Weapons”
Peters said that Nicaragua hasn’t
presented any evidence that “military equipment from Germany could have made a
significant contribution to an alleged genocide or to breaches of international
humanitarian law” in light of “Germany’s stringent licensing standards.”
Von Uslar-Gleichen told the court
that since October 7, 2023, 98 percent of the licenses granted in Germany for
exports to Israel were not for “war weapons,” but rather for “other military
equipment.” Eighty percent of the volume approved for export was authorized in
October 2023, she said.
Since October 2023, “we see no
artillery shells, no munitions. Nearly all exports involve what is known as
‘other military equipment,’ typically of a subordinate or defensive nature,”
she stated. This generally includes “defense equipment against chemical
hazards, protective gear such as helmets or body protection plates,
communication equipment, camouflage paint and components, parts and other
equipment of a subordinate character.”
Von Uslar-Gleichen admitted,
however, that Germany did license the export of war weapons to Israel four
times in the past six months. Two licenses for “training” (not combat)
ammunition, including 500,000 pieces of ammunition, were approved in November, and
an additional 1,000 pieces were approved in early 2024. A third license was
approved for propellant charge in connection with a joint project between
German and Israeli industry but they were for test purposes. The fourth license
was for the export of 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons “in the immediate
context of Hamas massacres,” she said.
In 2023, Israel asked Germany for
tank ammunition, but no license has yet been granted. One license has been
granted for a submarine, but since it is a “war weapon” it requires two
licenses for export so it has not yet been approved, Von Uslar-Gleichen told
the ICJ. Nicaragua’s references to artillery shells and munitions to be used in
Gaza “simply bear no relation to reality. Germany rejects them,” she stated.
Gómez argued on behalf of Nicaragua
that “it does not matter if an artillery shell is delivered straight from
Germany to an Israeli tank shelling a hospital” or replenishes Israel’s
stockpiles. “The fact is that the assurance of supplies and replacement of
armaments is crucial to Israel’s pursuit of the attacks in Gaza,” he told the
ICJ, adding that Germany is aware of “the serious risk of genocide being
committed.”
The ICJ Case Is a Diplomatic and
Organizing Tool
Although the United States is by far
the largest provider of weapons to Israel, it hasn’t been sued in the ICJ
because it won’t accept the court’s jurisdiction except in cases where the U.S.
government explicitly consents. Germany has consented to full jurisdiction of
the ICJ so it is an easier target than the U.S. for Nicaragua’s lawsuit.
“The ICJ is not going to end the war
in Gaza, but it is a diplomatic tool that foreign policy uses to apply
additional pressure on Israel,” Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the
International Crisis Group, told The New York Times. “In the Nicaragua case, it
further applies pressure on Germany.”
Civil society also stepped up the
pressure to coincide with the ICJ hearing on Nicaragua’s case against Germany.
CODEPINK delegations picketed, rallied and delivered petitions to German
missions throughout the U.S. These actions were part of an international
campaign of solidarity with Palestinian Germans who risk beatings and arrest
when they demonstrate against Germany’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
The ICJ will issue a ruling on
Nicaragua’s request for provisional measures in Nicaragua v. Germany in the
next few weeks.
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