The war in the Gaza Strip continues to be waged with relentless cruelty. Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour to the United Nations, urged the Security Council on Tuesday to impose sanctions on the Zionist state of Israel amid its ongoing deadly attacks on civilians across Gaza.
“Israel continues taking human lives and every action possible to spread wildfires across the Middle East as we sit here on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions,” Mansour said during an urgent Security Council session requested by Algeria after Israel carried out a deadly airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. “Let me state the obvious. Israel does not care about your condemnations…It dismisses your resolutions. It does not even listen to your debates,” Mansour said, referring to Israeli envoy to the UN Gilad Erdan. As Erdan was checking his phone when Mansour addressed the Council, the Palestinian envoy said: “Their representative will be playing with his iPhone while you are talking.” Saying that there is nothing that can justify Israeli actions against Palestinians, Mansour emphasized that what is happening in Gaza is not “about the hostages. It became apparent long ago that this Israeli government could care less about them.”
Mansour is right in his arguments that the Israeli government has no serious interest in the retrieval of the hostages. Any negotiations for their return have gone out the window since the killing of the leader of Hamas’ political bureau Ismail Haniyeh. The one-time Palestinian prime minister was the chief negotiator on the Hamas side for the end of the war and the hostages’ release. Meanwhile the genocide continues in Gaza. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has been relentless in its attacks. The deadly strike on civilians sheltering in a school is the tip of the ice berg. The Geneva Conventions are taking the furthest backseat in this car known as the Gaza war while gross human rights abuses and the IDF are in the driver’s seat. Will the Security Council at the UN listen to the arguments and pleas by Palestinian representative Mansour? The massacre by the Israelis shows no signs of abating. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has shown no intention of ceasing the massacre.
The Israeli army uses Palestinian men as human shields to search tunnels in the besieged Gaza Strip for Hamas resistance fighters and booby traps, according to a report. “It is better that they (Palestinians) explode and not the (Israeli) soldiers,” Israeli army officials said in a Haaretz newspaper report published on Tuesday. Multiple Israeli troops said they abducted Palestinian civilians to use them as human shields with the full knowledge of top army officials, including Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, according to the report. The newspaper reported that the Palestinians, including old men and teenagers, are forced to wear Israeli army uniforms along with their tennis shoes or sandals, while their “hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces show fear.” “They said that our lives are more important than their lives,” Israeli soldiers said adding that in the end, “it is better that our soldiers are alive and that they explode from an explosive device.”
The Palestinians are undergoing the worse forms of abuse at the hands of the IDF, while the Israeli government in Tel Aviv folds its hands in stubborn silence. It should be up to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate these atrocities and bring the perpetrators to the book. Neither US President Joe Bident, nor the political elite of Washington DC, nor their foreign allies have lifted a finger against the conduct of Netanyahu and his ilk. The abuses perpetrated against the Palestinians in Gaza is an ongoing saga of brutality that has to be halted. The use of old men and teenage boys for cannon fodder cannot be acceptable in the rules of war. A cease fire imposed through sanctions on the Israeli regime must be put in place. All weapons sales and financial aid to Tel Aviv needs to be brought to an end. However, all this can only be made possible through the establishment of grass roots movement that promotes boycotting Israel.
Numerous Israeli soldiers said they were sent to find and abduct Palestinian men who are “suitable” for this. Two months ago Al-Jazeera published a video in which Israeli soldiers were seen dressing Palestinian detainees in uniforms and vests, cuffing their hands behind their backs, attaching cameras to them, and sending them into destroyed homes and tunnel openings. “When I saw the Al-Jazeera report, I said: ‘Oh, yes, it’s true,'” said an Israeli soldier who took part in using Gazans as human shields.
The use of Palestinian adult men and young boys as “human shields” is akin to the Srebenica massacre of the early 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The treatment of the Palestinians under the Israeli occupation forces is deplorable. It should be clear from the above extract that the Israelis have no interest in withdrawing from the territory (again) should they find the hostages. The result will be an even more brutal occupation worse than the West Bank. Palestinian Special Envoy Mansour is right to argue Israel has no interest in adhering to the Geneva Conventions.
So, the war and occupation will continue in Gaza and the West Bank.
Article written by:
Yacoob Cassim
Journalist at Radio Al Ansaar
