As we go to press, the UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for increased aid to Gaza. However, fearing the threat of yet another US veto, the resolution fell short of demanding a ceasefire or even a pause. Instead, it asked for “urgent steps” to establish “conditions for a sustainable ceasefire.”
However, 24 hours after the UN demand for constructive steps, Israel killed 201 Palestinians and wounded a further 368, making a mockery of the toothless resolution.
The US, which has repeatedly spoken of and funded Israel’s right to self-defence, does not extend that right to the military-less, occupied, and persecuted Palestinians, which is why it has blocked every resolution that would have prevented the deaths of thousands of civilians, including women, children, babies, medics, and journalists
The UK’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary has been praised by the media and politicians for promoting a “sustainable ceasefire,” despite not offering any detail of how that is to be accomplished.
Lord Cameron’s recommendation that Israel pursue Hamas in a “much more surgical, clinical, and targeted approach” did not include a ceasefire while such an approach is developed. Instead, the former Prime Minister repeated the hollow Western calls that Israel “obey international humanitarian law.”
The inconsequential demand beggars’ belief, given it places faith that Israel, a rogue state that has defied such laws since its inception 75 years ago, will now willingly adhere to them.
With no threats of referral to the International Criminal Court or political or financial sanctions, Cameron and the West are essentially green-lighting Israel to continue its indiscriminate bombing while allowing a small amount of aid to reach starving Palestinians to appease global demand for a ceasefire.
“Can the prime minister please share his Christmas message for children being bombed in Gaza this winter?” asked the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn at the last PMQs. Flynn added that if the Israeli attacks continue, then it is estimated that almost 1,400 more children will be killed by Christmas Day.
He then said the UK “shamefully” abstained from a UN General Assembly motion last week demanding a ceasefire and added, “How can the prime minister possibly explain why 153 nations are wrong, yet Westminster is right?”
Rishi Sunak again refused to call for a ceasefire and replied, “Nobody wants to see this conflict go on for a moment longer than necessary. We have been consistent in saying that we support a sustainable ceasefire, which means Hamas must stop launching rockets into Israel and release all the hostages.”
Conspicuously absent from Sunak’s solution to a “sustainable ceasefire” are any demands on Israel. No demand Israel ends it hostilities or comply with the myriad international rules it frequently violates, including the annexation of Palestinian territories and the construction of illegal settlements.
Across the channel, French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the very few western leaders to call for a ceasefire, albeit after thousands of Palestinians were killed. “We cannot allow to settle the idea that fighting efficiently against terrorism should be razing Gaza to the ground or attacking civilian populations without distinction and causing civilian casualties,” he told France 5.
Back in the UK, multifaith harmony has been derailed by the Jewish leadership’s unabashed indifference to the harrowing Palestinian death rate, with Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis calling the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s calls for a ceasefire “irresponsible.”
The schism among this country’s religious leadership was exacerbated earlier this week when Israel killed two unarmed Christian Palestinians sheltering in a Catholic church in Gaza, then inexplicably denied the incident occurred at all.
The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, rubbished Israel’s denial of what he denounced as a “coldblooded killing,” insisting “the people in Gaza and the cardinal Archbishop of Jerusalem are not given to telling lies.”
Pope Francis gave the toughest denunciation of Israel in the Western world, calling Israeli troops’ latest killing of Christian Palestinians “terrorism.” “Unarmed civilians are the objects of bombings and shootings.
And this happened even inside the Holy Family parish complex, where there are no terrorists but families, children, people who are sick or disabled, and nuns,” the Pope remarked in an address to mark his 87th birthday. “Some are saying, ‘This is terrorism and war,’” the Pope said. “Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”
The Western farce that Israel’s purpose in Gaza is self-defence rather than occupation is all the more absurd in light of the rhetoric filling airtime and column inches in Israel, with one political and military leader after another calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Daniela Weiss, the former mayor of the Kedumim illegal settlement in the West Bank, called for Israel’s destruction of northern Gaza to be replicated in the south.
“Jewish settlers want to see the sea, and to achieve that, Gaza must be completely erased, and all its homes must be destroyed,” said the settlement movement activist.
Speaking on Israeli TV last month, Israel’s former Interior Minister Shaked said, “After we turn Khan Younis into a soccer field, we need to take advantage of the destruction to tell the countries that each of them should take a quota; it can be 20K or 50K. We need all 2 million to leave.
That’s the solution for Gaza.” Retired Gen. Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth daily that Israel has no choice but to make Gaza temporarily or permanently uninhabitable and said, “Israel is not only fighting against terrorism but also against all of Gaza.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “I welcome the initiative of the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region after 75 years of refugees, poverty, and danger.”
The intensity of the bombing residential areas in the Gaza Strip is the most devastating ever in any war. A visual investigation by The New York Times shows that during the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel used “one of its biggest and most destructive bombs” in areas in the south of the Strip that the military had indicated were safe for civilians.
“The findings reveal that 2,000-pound bombs pose a pervasive threat to civilians seeking safety across south Gaza,” reads the report. It added that bombs of that size are “almost never dropped by US forces in densely populated areas anymore,” according to ammunition experts.
Asked about the bombs’ use in southern Gaza, the Israeli army told The Times that Israel’s priority was to destroy Hamas and that “questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”
In the first month of its blitz on Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of colossal bombs, capable of killing and maiming more than 1,000 feet away from its target, analysis by CNN and artificial intelligence company Synthetaic suggests.
Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 metres (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs, four times heavier than the largest bombs the US dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq.
Weapons and warfare experts blame the soaring death toll on Israel’s extensive use of heavy munitions in one of the most densely populated territories in the world.
“The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,” said John Chappell, an advocacy and legal fellow at CIVIC, a DC-based group focused on minimising civilian harm in conflict.
Israel’s use of such weapons undermines Lord Cameron’s calls for a “surgical, clinical, and targeted approach.” To date, 20,057 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks, including 8,663 children and 6327 women; 53,320 have been injured.
Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have displaced more than 90% of the territory’s population, the UN Palestinian refugee agency said. “Over 60% of the infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement.
Despite UNRWA voicing concern over the “unprecedented level of destruction and forced displacement” caused by Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the UK Government and Labour Opposition, the US, and most of Europe still oppose a ceasefire. It is exceedingly difficult to understand why they are turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Palestinian people. It appears that Western leaders’ values are at odds with their people and the world.
The traumatising atrocities committed against Palestinians in Gaza will never be forgotten, nor will the West’s collusion. The radicalising levels of war crime complicity showcased by the West in the last three months have demonstrated that absolutely nothing was learned during its 21-year so-called War on Terror.
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