Rights and Accountability 16 February 2021
A healthcare worker in Gaza handles COVID-19 test supplies in September 2020.
ActiveStillsEarlier this month, Tor Wennesland, the UN secretary-general’s new Middle East peace envoy, tweeted his appreciation to the Israeli government for facilitating “the Palestinian COVID-19 response effort, including vaccines delivery.”
Wennesland added: “The pandemic knows no borders – only collectively we can achieve results.”
His praise for Israel, however, was without merit and premature.
On Monday, the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank said that Israel was preventing the transfer of 2,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to frontline medical workers in the Gaza Strip.
Under a severely tightened Israeli blockade since 2007, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. The two million Palestinians living there have not yet received any vaccines.
An Israeli official told the AP news agency that the transfer of vaccines to Gaza, where more than 530 people have died from COVID-19, was under review.
Some Israeli lawmakers have called for the transfer of vaccines to be conditioned on concessions from Hamas authorities in Gaza.
Israeli officials have repeatedly sought to condition basic humanitarian needs in Gaza – like fuel for electricity generation – on forcing concessions from Hamas.
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a member of Israel’s parliament, grotesquely characterized conditioning the transfer of vaccines as “a new paradigm based on reciprocity.”Yet there is nothing reciprocal in a relationship between an occupier and the population it occupies. There is no reciprocity between a colonizer and the people subjected to its coercive rule.
Collective punishment
As the occupying power, Israel is responsible for “public health and hygiene in the occupied territory,” as stated in article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
That article also makes “particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”
Not only has Israel refused to abide by its obligations, but it is also now undercutting the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to get the vaccine to medical workers in Gaza.
Putting a civilian population under pressure to extract demands like some Israeli lawmakers are intent on doing – a policy that underpins the siege on Gaza as a whole – is an act of collective punishment.
Collective punishment is a violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention – a war crime.
Israel meanwhile withholds the remains of Palestinians killed during what it claims were attacks, intending to use them as bargaining chips in negotiations.That too is a violation of international law championed by top officials and approved by Israel’s highest court.
Instead of praising nonexistent collective action to stymie the spread of COVID-19, UN envoy Wennesland should be condemning Israel for harming Palestinian public health efforts.
The failure of the UN’s political wing to hold Israel to account – and it has actually undermined accountability efforts from other bodies in the global organization – only allows these abuses to proliferate.
Wennesland appears intent to carry on the work of his predecessor Nickolay Mladenov, who treated Palestinian rights as subject to negotiation while demanding nothing from Israel.
Mladenov welcomed – if not advocated for – normalization agreements between Israel and authoritarian Arab states as advancements of regional peace, though they do nothing to secure Palestinian rights.
Israel controls Gaza
The delay of the transfer of vaccines to Gaza is yet another reminder that the coastal enclave remains under occupation and complete Israeli control.
Israeli claims that the request to transfer vaccines was “still being examined” will be familiar to medical patients in Gaza whose access to lifesaving treatment is delayed – sometimes indefinitely – under the same pretext.
Palestinian human rights groups have long decried Israel’s “apartheid regime of systematic racial domination and oppression over all Palestinians.”
Over decades this regime “has led to the fragmentation and de-development of the healthcare system of the occupied Palestinian territory,” particularly in Gaza.
They warn – as have others – that Israel’s siege has “pushed Gaza’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.”
By applauding Israel in the context of Palestinian COVID-19 efforts, Wennesland seems to be in willful denial.
To be fair, willful denial may be part of his job description, which requires him to continue to advocate for a two-state solution under the Oslo negotiations framework.
That framework was designed nearly three decades ago to fail to secure Palestinian rights.
Like his predecessor, Wennesland has so far remained conspicuously silent as the International Criminal Court inches towards opening war crimes investigations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
That court’s prosecutor likely has the names of Israeli leaders who author policies of collective punishment and the high-ranking officials responsible for other war crimes.Let’s hope that the ICC – a court of last resort – won’t look the other way.
Comments
Actually, you're pulling your
Permalink is replied on
Actually, you're pulling your punches when you call this collective punishment. What we have here is the crime against humanity of extermination (Article 7§1b and footnote.)
https://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/rdo...
This is Zionist entity's pattern of intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food ["put them on a diet"] and medicine [as above,] calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population, and it's evident in all of Palestine's critical resources. Genocide is only a matter of degree from there. Since the Rome Statute simply recaps universal jurisdiction law, any jurisdiction can prosecute this, not just the ICC.
Zionist entity phrase
Permalink Stephen replied on
the occupation of territories occupied in the Middle East War of 1967 is a subject of negotiation; the existence of the State of Israel is not. Anyone who still uses the dismissive term "Zionist entity" is stuck in April, 1948. Israel is recognized by all major powers, and by over a hundred other nations. It is a member of the UN. By all means feel free to blast its governments breaches of its obligations as an occupying power under international law. But you advance neither the cause of a Palestinian state nor rights of Palestinians anywhere by this dismissive term, Zionist entity. That train long ago left the station. Historians can debate what should have or could have happened in the 1940s. That is true of many events over human history. But Israel exists. To deny that is to do the Arab populations of Palestine no favor. You either are serious about peace, human rights and co-existence, or you are not. I hope you are.
Terror
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
Speaking of deadly terror organizations, let us not forget the Irgun, Lehi and the Hagana. I'm sure the Israelis would not want to be outdone: what, Arabs doing terrorism better than us? Surely, as Judaic theocrats are the chosen people their terrorism must be supreme. Who could imagine an incompetent gang of Arab ideologues could possibly be at the same level as Israeli Statists? Let us admit the Irgun, Lehi and the Hagana were the best terrorists in the world. The Judaic theocrats can be proud of them. They murdered Bernadotte. They murdered Lord Moyne. They blew up the King David hotel, killing several Jews in the process, they blew up and sank the Patria, killing more than 200 Jews fleeing the war in Europe. This is terrorism of the first order. It is terrorism which kills the people it claims to be defending. Lehi was not just brilliant at terrorism it was marvellous at robbery. When they needed funds, they would mug anyone. They even attacked a Jewish milk truck on 26th March 1940. Can the Palestinians top that? In May 1947 the US playwright (very bad playwright) Ben Hecht took out an ad in the New York press calling for donations to fund terrorism. Now there's chutzpah for you. When did you last see an ad in the Guardian calling for funds for Palestinian catapults? No, it has to be admitted, when it comes to terrorism you can't beat the Irgun, Lehi and the Hagana, the oganisations which brought Israel into existence. Cotler-Wunsh is being far too modest. She should tell the Palestinians they haven't even begun as far as terrorism is concerned. The Zionists sent letter bombs to Churchill, Bevin, Anthony Eden. When did you hear of Palestinians sending letter bombs to Boris Johnson? No, it has to be granted there's no terrorist like a Zionist terrorist and the IDF continues the tradition.
Vaccines as bargaining chips
Permalink Hyder Hussain replied on
The Israeli authorities have become so overconfident adopting inhuman policies which go against their own religious beliefs of which they seem to be very proud of. They seem to have very short memories. Do they not remember the horrible conditions they faced when they were at the receiving end during the Holocaust. Israel is literally an apartheid state now. It now has the honor of being the first state to implement apartheid practices when distributing COVID-19 vaccines. Shame on them.