Basic morality and simple logic dictate that the right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their oppressor. And international law agrees.  

By Craig Mokhiber, Mondoweiss, September 10, 2024

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Members of the Palestinian resistance hold their weapons during a memorial service for Mohammed al-Azizi and Abdul Rahman Sobh, who were killed by Israeli forces in July 2022, in the West Bank city of Nablus. (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/ APA Images)

One of the many disturbing revelations that have emerged since the current phase of genocide in Palestine began almost a year ago, is the degree to which U.S. and other Western politicians are prepared to dutifully stick to a script provided by Israel and its Western lobbies, whether the script is true or not. A case in point is the oft-repeated “self-defense” canard. 

After every successive war crime and crime against humanity perpetrated by Israel in its current genocidal rampage, the single most common refrain of Western government officials (and of Western corporate media) is that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

No, it does not.

In fact, as a matter of international law, this is a double lie. 

First, Israel has no such right in Gaza (or the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

And, secondly, the acts that the “self-defense” claims seek to justify would be unlawful even where self-defense applies. 

The UN Charter, a treaty binding on all member states, codifies key rights and responsibilities of states. Among these are the duty to respect the self-determination of peoples (including the Palestinians), the duty to respect human rights, and the duty to refrain from the use of force against other states (where not authorized by the Security Council). Israel, for the 76 years of its existence, has been repeatedly in breach of these principles. 

A temporary exception to the prohibition on the use of force is codified in Article 51 of the UN Charter for self-defense from external attacks. But importantly, no such right exists where the threat emanates from inside the territory controlled by the state. This principle was affirmed by the World Court in its 2004 opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall. And the Court found then, and again in its 2024 opinion on the occupation, that Israel is the occupying power across the occupied Palestinian territory. Thus, Israel, as the occupying power, cannot claim self-defense as a justification for launching military attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights. 

Of course, Israel, from within its own territory, can lawfully repel any attacks to protect its civilians, but it cannot claim self-defense to wage war against the territories it occupies. In fact, its principal obligation is to protect the occupied population. In doing so, an occupying power can undertake essential law enforcement functions (as distinct from military operations). But, given that the World Court has subsequently found that Israel’s occupation of the territories is itself entirely unlawful, even those functions would likely be illegitimate, except as strictly necessary to protect the occupied population and within a short timeline of withdrawal. 

In its most recent opinion, the Court has declared that Israel’s presence in the territories violates the principle of self-determination, the rule of non-acquisition of territory by force, and the human rights of the Palestinian people and that it must quickly end its presence and compensate the Palestinian people for losses suffered. As a matter of law, every Israeli boot on the ground, every Israeli missile, jet, or drone in Palestinian air space, and even a single unauthorized Israeli bicycle on a Palestinian road, is a breach of international law. 

In sum, Israel’s lawful remedy for threats that it alleges emanate from the occupied territories is to end its unlawful occupation, dismantle the settlements, leave the territories, remove the siege, and fully relinquish control to the occupied Palestinian people. 

Here, international law is a simple reflection of common sense and universal morality. A criminal cannot take over someone’s home, move in, loot its contents, imprison and brutalize the inhabitants, and then claim self-defense to murder the homeowners when they fight back. 

And, beyond occupied Palestine, while Israel has a right to self-defense from attacks by other states, it cannot claim that right if the attack is a response to Israeli aggression. Israel cannot attack a neighboring state (e.g., Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen) and then claim self-defense if that state strikes back. To accept such an assertion would be to turn international law on its head. 

Thus, most assertions by Western politicians and media that “Israel has a right to self-defense” are demonstrably false, as a matter of international law. 

The second lie contained in these repeated assertions is the suggestion that a claim of self-defense justifies Israel’s myriad crimes. International law does not allow a claim of self-defense to justify crimes against humanity and genocide. Nor does it magically overcome the international humanitarian law imperatives of precaution, distinction, and proportionality, or the protected status of hospitals and other vital civilian installations. 

In addition, the presence of people associated with armed resistance groups (even if proven) does not automatically transform a civilian location or protected structure into a legitimate military target. If it did, the common presence of Israeli soldiers in Israeli hospitals would equally render those hospitals legitimate targets. Attacking hospitals is not an act of self-defense. It is an act of murder and, in systematic and large-scale cases, of the crime of extermination. 

A claim of self-defense does not justify collective punishment, the siege of civilian populations, extrajudicial executions, torture, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the targeting of children, the murder of aid workers, medical personnel, journalists, and UN officials- all crimes perpetrated by Israel during the current phase of its genocide in Palestine. And all shamelessly followed by claims of self-defense by Israel’s defenders in the West. 

Thus, every response of a politician or complicit corporate media voice to an Israeli crime that begins with “Israel has a right to defend itself” is at once a justification of the unjustifiable and a bald-faced lie- and it should be called out as such.

Further, what you will never hear these voices utter is that Palestine has a right to defend itself, even though, under international law, it absolutely does. Rooted in the UN Charter, and in international humanitarian and human rights law, and affirmed by a series of UN resolutions, Palestinian resistance groups have a legal right to armed resistance to free the Palestinian people from foreign occupation, colonial domination, and apartheid.

And the world agrees. The UN General Assembly has declared: 

“the inalienable right of …the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign occupation and colonial domination to self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without foreign interference” and has reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” 

Of course, all resistance must respect the rules of humanitarian law, including the principle of distinction to spare civilians. But Palestine’s right under international law to armed resistance against Israel is by now axiomatic. 

Simply put, the Palestinian people have a recognized legal right to resist Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide, including through armed struggle. And, since the underlying resistance is lawful, alliances, aid, and support to the Palestinians for this purpose are also lawful. 

Conversely, as Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide are unlawful, support to Israel in those endeavors by Western states is unlawful. Indeed, the World Court has found that all states are obliged to end any such support to Israel and to work to end Israel’s occupation. 

And one more point on the notion of self-defense. History did not begin on October 7, 2023. In the 1930s and 40s, Zionist colonists traveled from Europe to attack Palestinians in their homes in Palestine. No Palestinian militia traveled to Europe to attack the colonists in their homes in England, France, and Russia. (Of course, Jews fleeing European persecution had every right to seek asylum in Palestine and elsewhere. But Zionists had no right to colonize the land and to dispossess the indigenous people). 

For more than 76 years since, Israel has attacked, brutalized, displaced, dispossessed, and murdered the indigenous Palestinian people, and sought to erase them. It has ethnically cleansed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, stolen Palestinian homes, businesses, farms, and orchards, and destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure. Every Palestinian community has experienced daily assaults on dignity, arrests, beatings, torture, pillage, and murder at the hands of Israel. Survivors have been forced to live under a regime of apartheid and racial segregation and with the systematic denial of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights in their own land. 

Every peaceful Palestinian effort to end the oppression and to regain the Palestinian right to self-determination, through diplomatic initiatives, judicial action, peaceful protest, or organized boycotts and divestment, has been met with repression or rejection, not only by Israel but by its Western sponsors. 

In this context, basic morality and simple logic dictate that the right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their oppressor. And international law agrees.  

An injured Palestinian child is brought to al-Awde Hospital for treatment following the Israeli attack on a building belonging to Muharib family in Nuseirat Refugee Camp of Gaza City, Gaza on September 16, 2024.

(Photo by Moez Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The United States has the power to end this carnage, not by pretending to plead with the Israelis to be more “careful” about civilian casualties, but by ending its own instrumental role in the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children.

Medea BenjaminNicolas J.S. Davies, Common Dreams, Sep 16, 2024

On September 18th, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to debate and vote on a resolution calling on Israel to end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within six months. Given that the General Assembly, unlike the exclusive 15-member UN Security Council, allows all UN members to vote and there is no veto in the General Assembly, this is an opportunity for the world community to clearly express its opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

If Israel predictably fails to heed a General Assembly resolution calling on it to withdraw its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the United States then vetoes or threatens to veto a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling, then the General Assembly could go a step further.

It could convene an Emergency Session to take up what is called a Uniting For Peace resolution, which could call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other UN sanctions against Israel – or even call for actions against the United States. Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950.

It would certainly be unprecedented for the world to unite, in opposition to Israel and the United States, to save Palestine and enforce the ICJ ruling that Israel must withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

The September 18 resolution comes in response to an historic ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19, which found that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”

The court ruled that Israel’s obligations under international law include “the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements” and the payment of restitution to all who have been harmed by its illegal occupation. The passage of the General Assembly resolution by a large majority of members would demonstrate that countries all over the world support the ICJ ruling, and would be a small but important first step toward ensuring that Israel must live up to those obligations.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu cavalierly dismissed the court ruling with a claim that, “The Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.” This is exactly the position that the court had rejected, ruling that Israel’s 1967 military invasion and occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories did not give it the right to settle its own people there, annex those territories, or make them part of Israel.

While Israel used its hotly disputed account of the October 7th events as a pretext to declare open season for the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem used it as a pretext to distribute assault rifles and other military-grade weapons to illegal Israeli settlers and unleash a new wave of violence there, too.

Armed settlers immediately started seizing more Palestinian land and shooting Palestinians. Israeli occupation forces either stood by and watched or joined in the violence, but did not intervene to defend Palestinians or hold their Israeli attackers accountable.

Since last October, occupation forces and armed settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have now killed at least 700 people, including 159 children.

The escalation of violence and land seizures has been so flagrant that even the U.S. and European governments have felt obligated to impose sanctions on a small number of violent settlers and their organizations.

In Gaza, the Israeli military has been murdering Palestinians day after day for the past 11 months. The Palestinian Health Ministry has counted over 41,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, but with the destruction of the hospitals that it relies on to identify and count the dead, this is now only a partial death toll. Medical researchers estimate that the total number of deaths in Gaza from the direct and indirect results of Israeli actions will be in the hundreds of thousands, even if the massacre were to end soon.

Israel and the United States are undoubtedly more and more isolated as a result of their roles in this genocide. Whether the United States can still coerce or browbeat a few of its traditional allies into rejecting or abstaining from the General Assembly resolution on September 18 will be a test of its residual “soft power.”

President Biden can claim to be exercising a certain kind of international leadership, but it is not the kind of leadership that any American can be proud of. The United States has muscled its way into a pivotal role in the ceasefire negotiations begun by Qatar and Egypt, and it has used that position to skillfully and repeatedly undermine any chance of a ceasefire, the release of hostages or an end to the genocide.

By failing to use any of its substantial leverage to pressure Israel, and disingenuously blaming Hamas for every failure in the negotiations, U.S. officials are ensuring that the genocide will continue for as long as they and and their Israeli allies want, while many Americans remain confused about their own government’s responsibility for the continuing bloodshed.

This is a continuation of the strategy by which the United States has stymied and prevented peace since 1967, falsely posing as an honest broker, while in fact remaining Israel’s staunchest ally and the critical diplomatic obstacle to a free Palestine.

In addition to cynically undermining any chance of a ceasefire, the United States has injected itself into debates over the future of Gaza, promoting the idea that a post-war government could be led by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which many Palestinians view as hopelessly corrupt and compromised by subservience to Israel and the United States.

By failing to use any of its substantial leverage to pressure Israel, and disingenuously blaming Hamas for every failure in the negotiations, U.S. officials are ensuring that the genocide will continue for as long as they and and their Israeli allies want

China has taken a more constructive approach to resolving differences between Palestinian political groupings. It invited Hamas, Fatah and 12 other Palestinian groups to a three-day meeting in Beijing in July, where they all agreed to a “national unity” plan to form a post-war “interim national reconciliation government,” which would oversee relief and rebuilding in Gaza and organize a national Palestinian election to seat a new elected government.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the political movement called the Palestinian National Initiative, hailed the Beijing Declaration as going “much further” than previous reconciliation efforts, and said that the plan for a unity government “blocks Israeli efforts to create some kind of collaborative structure against Palestinian interests.” China has also called for an international peace conference to try to end the war.

As the world comes together in the General Assembly on September 18, it faces both a serious challenge and an unprecedented opportunity. Each time the General Assembly has met in recent years, a succession of leaders from the Global South has risen to lament the breakdown of the peaceful and just international order that the UN is supposed to represent, from the failure to end the war in Ukraine to inaction against the climate crisis to the persistence of neocolonialism in Africa.

Perhaps no crisis more clearly embodies the failure of the UN and the international system than the 57-year-old Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories it invaded in 1967. At the same time that the United States has armed Israel to the teeth, it has vetoed 46 UN Security Council resolutions that either required Israel to comply with international law, called for an end to the occupation or for Palestinian statehood, or held Israel accountable for war crimes or illegal settlement building.

The ability of one Permanent Member of the Security Council to use its veto to block the rule of international law and the will of the rest of the world has always been widely recognized as the fatal flaw in the existing structure of the UN system.

When this structure was first announced in 1945, French writer Albert Camus wrote in Combat, the French Resistance newspaper he edited, that the veto would “effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”

The General Assembly and the Security Council have debated a series of resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and each debate has pitted the United States, Israel, and occasionally the United Kingdom or another U.S. ally, against the voices of the rest of the world calling in unison for peace in Gaza.

Of the UN’s 193 nations, 145 have now recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation comprising Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and even more countries have voted for resolutions to end the occupation, prohibit Israeli settlements and support Palestinian self-determination and human rights.

For many decades, the United States’ unique position of unconditional support for Israel has been a critical factor in enabling Israeli war crimes and prolonging the intolerable plight of the Palestinian people.

In the crisis in Gaza, the U.S. military alliance with Israel involves the U.S. directly in the crime of genocide, as the United States provides the warplanes and bombs that are killing the largest numbers of Palestinians and literally destroying Gaza. The United States also deploys military liaison officers to assist Israel in planning its operations, special operations forces to provide intelligence and satellite communications, and trainers and technicians to teach Israeli forces to use and maintain new American weapons, such as F-35 warplanes.

The supply chain for the U.S. arsenal of genocide criss-crosses America, from weapons factories to military bases to procurement offices at the Pentagon and Central Command in Tampa. It feeds plane loads of weapons flying to military bases in Israel, from where these endless tons of steel and high explosives rain down on Gaza to shatter buildings, flesh and bones.

The U.S. role is greater than complicity – it is essential, active participation, without which the Israelis could not conduct this genocide in its present form, any more than the Germans could have run Auschwitz without gas chambers and poison gas.

And it is precisely because of the essential U.S. role in this genocide that the United States has the power to end it, not by pretending to plead with the Israelis to be more “careful” about civilian casualties, but by ending its own instrumental role in the genocide.

Every American of conscience should keep applying all kinds of pressure on our own government, but as long as it keeps ignoring the will of its own people, sending more weapons, vetoing Security Council resolutions and undermining peace negotiations, it is by default up to our neighbors around the world to muster the unity and political will to end the genocide.

It would certainly be unprecedented for the world to unite, in opposition to Israel and the United States, to save Palestine and enforce the ICJ ruling that Israel must withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The world has rarely come together so unanimously since the founding of the United Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War in 1945. Even the catastrophic U.S.-British invasion and destruction of Iraq failed to provoke such united action.

But the lesson of that crisis, indeed the lesson of our time, is that this kind of unity is essential if we are ever to bring sanity, humanity and peace to our world. That can start with a decisive vote in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.

The former right-wing premier under Jacques Chirac vilifies the French political and media response to Israel’s onslaught

Dominique de Villepin, renowned for his 2003 address before the UN Security Council opposing the invasion of Iraq, is a vocal critic of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians (AFP)

By Elodie Farge, MEE,13 September 2024

Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin condemned the ongoing “silence” surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza and criticised the French government’s “stepping aside” on the conflict during a radio interview with France Inter on Thursday.

When asked to comment on the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister and the political and economic challenges facing France, de Villepin concluded the interview by expressing his anger over the French political and media response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

When the journalist brought up the conflict and cited the death toll as provided by “Hamas’ health ministry”, de Villepin quickly interrupted her.

“I hear that all the time… It is not only the Ministry of Health of Hamas that says that there are 40,000 dead; there are probably many more. Let’s not give the impression that this is a truncated figure,” he said.

Visibly angered, he continued: “No, it is, unfortunately, an everyday reality. In Gaza, bodies are in pieces; hearts are in pieces; souls are in pieces; heads are in pieces.”

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On Thursday, Palestinian authorities announced a new toll of 41,118 dead in Gaza and an additional 95,125 wounded since the war began nearly a year ago.

De Villepin said it seems there is “no prospect” of reconstruction on the horizon. “Israel is creating the conditions for a reoccupation [of Gaza],” he said.

‘In Gaza, bodies are in pieces; hearts are in pieces; souls are in pieces; heads are in pieces’

– Dominique de Villepin, former French PM

“Whether it is in the southern line or in the line that cuts [the enclave] in the middle, the creation of a perimeter around, Israel has taken back possession of Gaza. Gaza is completely besieged.”

De Villepin warned that “at a time when the West Bank itself is breaking down, as we can see in the north and in the south, we are in front of a real pressure cooker”.

The former centre-right prime minister, who served under Jacques Chirac from 2005 to 2007, went on to describe Gaza as “undoubtedly the greatest historic scandal, which no one talks about in this country anymore”.

“It is silence, a lead weight; the media doesn’t discuss it… I have to turn to Google to find news that gives me the number of deaths in Gaza. It is a real scandal in terms of democracy,” he said.

“And all this in the name of what? War. It is war; that’s how it is. However, it is not quite a war like the others. These are civilian populations who are dying. We are in Absurdia and France is stepping aside.” 

When asked what France, the European Union or the United States should do, de Villepin pointed out that the West has “levers in terms of armaments, in the economic field”. He said: “We continue to accept trading with territories where Israeli colonisation is active… but we refuse to [use these levers] under absolutely unheard-of arguments.”

“Israel must be allowed to wage its war to the end?” he questioned. “But to what end? Yoav Gallant, Israel’s minister of defence, says that Hamas has been eradicated in Gaza, so what is the end?”

‘Not surprised by this hatred’

De Villepin, renowned for his February 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council as foreign minister, where he voiced France’s opposition to an allied military intervention in Iraq, has long been a vocal critic of Israel’s policy in the Palestinian territories.

Following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October, which killed around 1,200 people and saw about 250 others taken captive, de Villepin said he was “not surprised by this hatred”.

‘Israel cannot be safe until there is recognition of a Palestinian state alongside it that shares responsibility for security in this region’

– Dominique de Villepin

“I am surprised by the scale, the horror, by the barbarity that was expressed on 7 October, which calls on all of us to act with humanity and solidarity towards Israel and the Israeli people,” he said at the time.

“But I have to say it and I say it with infinite sorrow: I am not surprised by this hatred that has been expressed. When we remember Gaza – since 2006, the wars of 2008, 2012, 2014 and in 2021 – when we remember this open-air prison, this pressure cooker, [it is no surprise] that such a situation could invite hell on Earth.”

In the tradition of former President Charles de Gaulle, who predicted in November 1967 following Israel’s capture of Palestinian territories that it was setting up “an occupation that will inevitably involve oppression, repression and expulsions and a resistance to this occupation [that] Israel in turn [would] class as terrorism”, de Villepin stressed that “Israel cannot be safe until there is recognition of a Palestinian state alongside it that shares responsibility for security in this region.”

While current French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and condemned attacks against civilians, the declarations have seemingly fallen short of translating into effective action and using the means at France’s disposal to pressure Israel.

In June, when asked about the possibility of France recognising the state of Palestine, following the lead of several European countries such as Spain, Norway and Ireland, Macron responded that it was not “the right solution”.

France’s ‘apology for terrorism’ law used to ‘criminalise’ Palestine solidarity

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“It is not reasonable to do it now. I denounce the atrocities that we see with the same indignation as the French people. But we do not recognise a state based on indignation,” he added.

Rights groups and investigative media have also criticised the lack of transparency surrounding French arms sales to Israel.

Last week, an article by French media outlet Mediapart examined “the millions of euros of French weapons delivered to Israel”.

According to a defence ministry report to parliament obtained by Mediapart, France delivered €30m ($33m) worth of military equipment to Israel in 2023.

However, since the report does not specify the months, the outlet noted that it is impossible to determine whether these deliveries continued after Israel’s offensive on Gaza began on 7 October, adding that the Ministry of the Armed Forces was unable to clarify the issue.

Meanwhile, activists in the country have condemned the increased repression of pro-Palestine voices since 7 October, with hundreds of investigations being launched into remarks about the Israel-Palestine conflict under the so-called “apology for terrorism” offence.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the opening of the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on February 26, 2024.

(Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

However, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres added, “I know the American political life sufficiently to know that it will not happen.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Sep 13, 2024

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres this week urged the United States to pressure Israel into stopping its assault on Gaza, which over the course of 343 days has left more than 146,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, even as he acknowledged the low likelihood of the Biden administration heeding his call.

In a yet-to-be-published interview with Al Jazeera, Guterres said that “we have urged Washington to take a stronger stance against Israel to end the war,” and that “the U.S. needs to apply pressure to force Israel to stop.”

“I have no power to stop the war,” the U.N. chief admitted, according to a partial interview transcript. “We have a voice, and that voice has been loud and clear to say from the beginning this war must stop. The suffering of the Palestinian people must stop and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people must be recognized.”

Noting that the U.N. Security Council has “systematically failed”—mainly due to U.S. vetoes of cease-fire resolutions—to end the war on Gaza, Guterres lamented “a situation in which any country or any movement anywhere in the world feels that they can do whatever they want because there will be no punishment.”

The U.N. chief turned his attention to the recent advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—a U.N. organ where Israel is on trial for genocide—that the 57-year Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.

“We must absolutely reject any prospective annexation of West Bank or the land grabbing or the illegal settlements that move on,” he said. “The West Bank together with Gaza and East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, must be the state of Palestine in the future.”

The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with plans to steal more West Bank land from Palestinians and build or expand Jewish-only settler colonies there. This, as pogroms and other deadly attacks by Israeli extremists and soldiers—who often stand by or even join rampaging settlers—have claimed more than 600 lives in the West Bank, including more than 140 children, since October.

Guterres stressed the importance of achieving a cease-fire agreement and an independent Palestinian state—a policy supported by the vast majority of the world’s nations—even as he expressed skepticism about the prospects for peace.

“I know the American political life sufficiently to know that it will not happen,” he said of the chances that the U.S. will pressure Israel into a cease-fire.

Guterres’ remarks came as U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the world body has “no evidence” that Hamas militants were operating at a U.N.-run school-turned shelter that was bombed earlier this week by Israeli forces. The twin airstrikes killed at least 18 people including women, children, and half a dozen staffers with the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency.

The agency says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on its facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.

British sources indicated to The Guardian that the US and the UK have already decided to lift restrictions but won’t announce it yet

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 11, 2024

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly hinted that the US was preparing to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US and NATO missiles to support long-range strikes inside Russian territory, which would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war.

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv alongside UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Blinken said he discussed the issue of “long-range fires” with Ukrainian President Volodomy Zelensky and said he would bring the discussion back to Washington. He said President Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will discuss the issue when they meet this Friday.

Signaling the US is ready to support long-range strikes in Ukraine, Blinken said, “Speaking for the United States, from day one, as you’ve heard me say, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we’ll continue to do that.”

(Left-right) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Foreign Secretary David Lammy attend a trilateral meeting during a visit to Kyiv in Ukraine on Wednesday, September 11, 2024 (PA Images via Reuters Connect)

The Guardian reported that British government sources indicated there’s already been a decision made in private to allow Ukraine to use British-provided missiles inside Ukraine, which have a range of about 155 miles. The sources said Biden and Starmer are not expected to announce the decision on Friday, and it’s unclear when it might be made public.

Later on Wednesday, POLITICO reported that the White House is finalizing plans to expand the area where Ukraine can hit inside Russia using US and British-provided missiles.

Ahead of Blinken’s visit, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the hawkish chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that he believed the Biden administration was ready to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US missiles to allow Army Tactical Missiles Systems (ATACMS) to be used in strikes inside Russia. ATACMS have a range of about 190 miles.

Blinken’s visit to Ukraine comes Russian forces are beginning to push back Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Fighting has been raging in the Russian region since August 6, when Ukrainian forces invaded using US armored vehicles and British tanks. The offensive has failed to distract Moscow from eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, where Russian forces have continued to make gains.

Military situation in Kursk on September 11, 2024 (SouthFront.press)

The Ukrainian invasion of Kursk came a few months after President Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to use US weapons in attacks on Russian border regions. Russia has strongly warned the US against allowing US weapons to be used in strikes deep inside Russian territory, but the Biden administration doesn’t appear to be concerned about the risk of escalation.

Palestinians attend the funeral of the four Palestinians killed during an Israeli army raid at a refugee camp in Tubas, West Bank on August 29, 2024.

(Photo: Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“We can either continue on our current path… and sleepwalk into a dystopian future, or we can wake up and turn things around for the better,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk.

Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams, Sep 09, 2024

Other countries must hold Israel accountable for violating international law in its war on Gaza and escalating violence in the illegally occupied West Bank, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Monday.

Türk’s remarks came as he opened the 57th session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva with a wide-ranging warning about the rise of international violence and human rights violations worldwide.

Ending Israel’s war on Gaza and “averting a full-blown regional conflict is an absolute and urgent priority,” Türk said.

“States must not—cannot—accept blatant disregard for international law, including binding decisions of the (U.N.) Security Council and orders of the International Court of Justice, neither in this nor any other situation.

In particular, Türk referenced the International Court of Justice’s advisory ruling in July that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem is illegal. The ICJ also called on Israel to evacuate its settlers from the West Bank and on other nations not to recognize Israel’s occupation as legal or to render any aid to Israel that maintained the status quo.

Türk on Monday called for the situation to be “comprehensively addressed.”

He added that Israel’s war on Gaza had forced 1.9 million people to flee their homes since October 7, 2023, many more than once, as Hurriyet Daily Newsreported. The war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to official figures, though experts say the true death toll is likely much higher.

“I urge voters to ask themselves which of the political platforms or candidates will work for the human rights of everyone.”

Türk added that “deadly and destructive” operations in the West Bank, such as 10-day period of raids that concluded Friday, are at a scale “not witnessed in the last two decades” and are “worsening a calamitous situation.”

He also spoke out for the rights of the likely more than 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and the 101 hostages still held in Gaza.

Beyond Israel and Palestine, Türk also highlighted ongoing conflicts in Sudan and between Russia and Ukraine, noting that the international community seemed to accept the “crossing of innumerable red lines, or readiness to toe right up to them.”

“We are at a fork in the road,” the human rights chief advised. “We can either continue on our current path—a treacherous ‘new normal’—and sleepwalk into a dystopian future, or we can wake up and turn things around for the better, for humanity, and the planet.”

In a record election year, Türk argued that committing to the protection of human rights was especially important.

“I urge voters to ask themselves which of the political platforms or candidates will work for the human rights of everyone,” he said.

In particular, he encouraged voters to “be wary of the shrill voices, the ‘strongman’ types that throw glitter in our eyes, offering illusory solutions that deny reality.”

“Know that when one group is singled out as a scapegoat for society’s ills, one day your own might be next,” he said.

Juan Cole, Informed Comment, 09/07/2024

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Basil Maghrebi at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Friday, Israeli troops killed an American observer in the West Bank with a gunshot to her head, as she participated in a procession at Beita south of Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank. Aysenur Eygi, 26, a US citizen, was a recent graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle and was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Beita residents are constantly harassed by illegal Israeli squatters who have stolen Palestinian land at nearby Eviatar for their squatter-settlement.

The occupation army said in a statement, “During activity of the security forces near the village of Beita today, the force responded with fire toward a principal instigator who was throwing stones toward the forces and constituted a danger to them. We are undertaking an investigation of reports of the death of a foreign national in the area, and the circumstances and details of her injury.”

(Cole: I call bullshit on this “statement.” It is illegal to fire live ammunition at unarmed protesters. Protesters do not pose a danger to heavily armed Israeli security forces. Eyewitnesses say that the real reason the Israeli troops opened fire was an attempt to stop the protest march, which of course is a war crime every which way from Sunday, or from Friday as the case may be.

Fellow protester Jonathan Pollack said, “It was quiet. There was nothing to justify the shot. The shot was taken to kill.”)

Moreover, The US State Department, which would have gone ballistic if Hamas or Putin had killed an American, issued mealy-mouthed pablum. They are going to “gather information.” But they didn’t act that way in other instances where a foreign military shot down an American in cold blood.

The Turkish foreign ministry said, “We condemn the crime of murder committed by the Netanyahu government.”

Maghrebi writes that medical sources revealed that Eygi was struck by Israeli live fire in the head, suffering a grave wound, during the occupation army’s attempt to suppress a weekly march at Beita protesting the Israeli colonization of the West Bank. Strenuous efforts were made to save her life, but she succumbed to her wounds.

The director of the hospital, the Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus, Fuad Nafiah, announced the death of the American solidarity protester, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. As she reached the hospital, there was brain tissue outside her cranium. The medical team provided her with cardiopulmonary resuscitation for a few minutes, but she died of her injuries.

Local sources said that the occupation troops tried to stop the protest march at Beita, which lead to confrontations, in which Israeli troops let loose a volley of live fire and threw flash bombs and fired tear gas canisters (which can be fatal if they hit you) toward the protesters.

“Hope,” Digital, Dream / Impressionism v3, Clip2Comic, 2024

Eygi was participating in a program seeking to protect Palestinian farmers from harassment by Israeli squatters and by the Israeli military.

In 2003, an Israeli driving an earth mover bore down on Rachel Corrie, who had also gone to the West Bank as part of the International Solidarity Movement, killing her.

The Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hussein Sheikh, said that the Israeli occupation army’s killing of Eygi was “another crime added to the series of crimes being committed daily by the Israeli forces, which cry out for international courts to hold their perpetrators accountable.”

On Friday, as well, Israeli squatters also attacked the the village of Qaryout in Nablus, in the north of the Palestinian West Bank, beating a 30-year-old young man so badly they sent him to the hospital.

The Middle East Monitor has written,

Earlier this year, the current fascist government in Israel legalized Eviatar in Israeli law, though it remains a gross violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and of the judgment of the International Court of Justice that the Israeli occupation is illegal.

Filed Under: Featured, Israel/ Palestine, US Foreign Policy

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Roger McKenzie
Morning Star, Thursday, September 5, 2024

A man walks on a damaged road following an Israeli army raid in Jenin, West Bank, September 4, 2024

ISRAEL must be investigated for war crimes of “wanton destruction,” says Amnesty International UK in a damning report published today.

The human rights group said Israel’s campaign to expand a “buffer zone” along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip should be the subject of a war crimes probe.

This came as the Israelis continued deadly raids across the occupied West Bank.

Amnesty said that its researchers had interviewed residents and farmers, studied satellite imagery and tracked statements by the Israeli authorities, Hamas and other armed groups to determine whether the destruction was lawful or justifiable in military terms.

The report said that in four areas, “the destruction was carried out after the Israeli military had operational control over the areas, meaning that it was not caused by direct combat between the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups.”

In those areas of Gaza, “structures were deliberately and systematically demolished,” the authors added.

Amnesty said the “punitive demolition of civilian property solely because it has been used by armed groups is prohibited as a form of collective punishment.”

Research, advocacy, policy and campaigns director Erika Guevara Rosas said: “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction.

“Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes and rendered their land uninhabitable.

“Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area.”

She added: “These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.”

In the West Bank, Israeli forces were inflicting widespread destruction in the city and refugee camp of Tulkarem as a large-scale military operation in the area entered a third day, the Wafa news agency reported.

Citing correspondents on the ground, the agency said Israeli forces had dropped bombs on the refugee camp, starting fires in al-Shamaliya neighbourhood.

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that Israeli forces are using “lethal war-like tactics,” including air strikes, in the occupied Palestinian territory, with people being killed, injured, displaced or deprived of access to basic services.

The Israeli military’s latest assault across the West Bank is now in its eighth day. At least 33 Palestinians have been killed and 130 wounded since last Wednesday, the vast majority in Jenin.

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Consortium News, September 4, 2024

As the Israeli military’s largest assault on the West Bank in decades continued into its second week, U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said the “writing is on the wall.”

Israeli military photo of its forces in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank on Monday. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

An independent U.N. expert warns that “Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole” as Western governments, corporations, and other institutions maintain support for Israel’s military, which stands accused of grave war crimes.

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement that “there is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”

“The writing is on the wall, and we cannot continue to ignore it,” said Albanese, who released a detailed report in May concluding that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza.

Albanese’s statement came as the Israeli military’s largest assault on the West Bank in decades continued into its second week on Monday. At least 29 Palestinians have been killed during the series of military raids, according to Al Jazeera, including at least five children.

“Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement, and territorial expansion,” Albanese said Tuesday. “The longstanding impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinization of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”

“The international community, made of both states and non-state actors, including companies and financial institutions, must do everything it can to immediately end the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people under Israel’s occupation, ensure accountability, and ultimately end Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory,” Albanese added.

Defense for Children International–Palestine noted Monday that “dozens of Israeli military vehicles” have “stormed” the West Bank city of Jenin over the past week as “Israeli forces deployed across the targeted refugee camps, seizing Palestinian homes to use as military bases and stationing snipers on the roofs of buildings, subjecting their residents to field investigations.”

“The military bulldozers began destroying the civil infrastructure in Jenin city and camp, which led to the destruction of the main water networks and power outage in several neighborhoods in Jenin and surrounding villages,” the group said. “Israeli forces besieged several hospitals in Jenin and impeded the movement of ambulances and paramedics.”

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 620 people in the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7, on top of the roughly 40,800 killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Unlawful Israeli land seizures have also surged in the West Bank as settlers and soldiers wipe out entire Palestinian communities. The BBC reported Monday that, according to its own analysis, there are “currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year — more than in any previous year.”

Israel’s multi-day attack on the West Bank that began last week has intensified fears that unless there’s a permanent cease-fire, the assault on Gaza could expand to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and throughout the Middle East.

David Hearst, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, wrote Monday that “even with the obvious reluctance of Hezbollah and Iran to get involved, all the ingredients are there for a much larger conflagration.”

“An Israel in the grip of an ultra-nationalist, religious, settler insurgency; a U.S. president who allows his signature policy to be flouted by his chief ally, even at the risk of losing a crucial election; resistance that will not surrender; Palestinians in Gaza who will not flee; Palestinians in the West Bank who are now stepping up to the front line; Jordan, the second country to recognize Israel, feeling under existential threat,” Hearst wrote.

For U.S. President Joe Biden or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he added, “the message is so clear, it is flashing in neon lights: The regional costs of not standing up to Netanyahu could rapidly outweigh the domestic benefits of being dragged along by him.” 

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, similarly argued Tuesday that “the U.S. must reverse course — and do so dramatically.”

“A long-overdue cut-off of U.S. arms to Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination would provide exactly the shock to the system that is needed,” Zogby wrote. “It would force an internal debate in Israel, empowering those who want peace. It might also serve to send a message to the Palestinian people that their plight and rights are understood.”

These actions, especially if followed up with determination and concrete steps, won’t end the conflict tomorrow,” Zogby continued, “but they would surely put the region on a more productive path towards peace than the one it is on now.”

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

This article is from Common Dreams.

by Elizabeth Short, Morning Star, Friday, August 30, 2024

PALESTINE ACTION activists who occupied a weapons factory to disrupt weapon productions for Israel in Shipley are set to go on trial on Monday.

The four activists were charged with criminal damage after they were seen scaling and taking a sledgehammer to the roof of the US-owned Teledyne Defence and Space factory on April 2.

The factory manufactures components for missiles, electronics, gunsights and munitions for the Israeli military.

Operations were ground to a halt as a result of the action.

Two out of four activists were remanded to prison afterwards.

One was held for approximately one month, while the other was held for three months.

Teledyne’s Shipley factory manufactures key components for missile systems, namely missile filters.

Palestine Action says the firm “boasts of its involvement with missile products procured by Israel, including the AGM-Harpoon, AIM-120 AMRAAM and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles deployed by Israel against Gaza — the latter reportedly being used to strike al-Shifa hospital.”

It also produces parts, including filters and multifunction assemblies for drones and aircraft, along with radar systems such as the type fitted in F-35 Fighter jets used by Israel.

Since 2018, its parent company Teledyne Technologies has applied for 134 export licences to Israel.

A Palestine Action spokesperson said: “Under Section 1 of the Genocide Convention, Britain is obliged to prevent and punish the commission of genocide.

“When our government fails to do so, it’s the legal and moral obligation of ordinary people to take direct action.

“The weapons manufacturers arming genocide are the guilty ones, not Palestine Action.”

It comes after it was announced on Thursday that co-founder of Palestine Action Richard Barnard faces three charges over giving two speeches.

Mr Barnard is accused of supporting a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act and two counts of encouraging criminal damage against arms manufacturers.

Government ministers continue to reject calls to suspend arms exports while the death toll in Gaza tops 40,000.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has pushed back against publishing legal advice on whether the exports are being used to facilitate international war crimes, despite calling on the previous Tory government to do so while in opposition.

Complicity requires all licences to be suspended, according to government rules.

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https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/palestine-action-activists-go-trial-after-dismantling-teledyne-weapons-factory