Global calls for sanctions on Israel

Imposing sanctions on the Israeli regime has been a long-held demand by many in the international community over the past decades despite persistent shielding of the regime by the United States. The issue of punitive measures is being raised once more amid the devastating and indiscriminate Israeli war on Gaza.

The international rights organization, Human Rights Watch, has joined other advocacy groups, politicians and countries in calling for “sanctions on Israel”, especially to put pressure on Tel Aviv to comply with the ICJ ruling on genocide.

A month has passed since a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found there was a plausible case to investigate the act of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza amid the Israeli war on the tiny coastal territory. 

Despite the ICJ’s demands that called on Tel Aviv to do everything within its power to prevent the act of genocide from taking place against the Palestinians in Gaza until the highest UN court concludes its investigation the regime has failed to do so, infuriating international rights groups. 

The United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said that fewer aid trucks have entered Gaza and fewer aid missions have been allowed to reach northern Gaza in the several weeks since the ruling than in the weeks preceding it. 

Rights groups have accused the Israeli regime of continuing to obstruct the delivery of basic services in the Gaza Strip and entry and distribution of lifesaving aid and fuel within the enclave. 

They also warned that the Israeli military is practicing other acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes. These include the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. 

In its latest report, Human Rights Watch has warned that “the Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s (ICJ) binding order.”

“According to data published by OCHA and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the daily average number of trucks entering Gaza with food, aid, and medicine dropped by more than a third in the weeks following the ICJ ruling.”

This is in clear violation of the ICJ ruling, triggering calls by rights groups and politicians to impose sanctions and other punitive measures against the Israeli government and military officials. 

“Israel’s ground forces are able to reach all parts of Gaza, so Israeli authorities clearly have the capacity to ensure that aid reaches all of Gaza,” Human Rights Watch highlighted. 

The Israeli regime is “starving Gaza’s 2.3 million population more harshly than before,” the group added.  

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a global human rights NGO that combines 188 organizations from 116 countries has issued a press release entitled “The European Union must sanction Israel for its crimes in Gaza”.

The FIDH called on the 27-nation bloc to prosecute Israeli officials arguing that the EU has a duty to intervene to the fullest extent against the Israeli regime. 

“The plausible risk of genocide recognized by the ICJ is a point of no return, which makes the absence of concerted sanctions and condemnations unsustainable.”

Earlier this month, Ireland and Spain jointly called for an “urgent review” of the EU’s trade agreement with Tel Aviv.

In Ireland, the upper house of the legislature unanimously passed a motion on Saturday calling on the Irish government to “impose sanctions on Israel” and to prevent “US weapons being sent to Israel passing through Irish airspace”. The motion also calls on the government to advocate for an “international arms embargo on Israel”.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) has welcomed the move, saying it will now increase “pressure on the government to act”.

IPSC added “polls show that 80% of people in Ireland understand that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide, that 70% recognize that Israel is committing the Crime of Apartheid, and that huge majorities are demanding sanctions.”

This comes as the UN Human Rights Office has called on all countries to immediately cease any arms transfers to the Israeli regime. 

Sending weapons would violate international humanitarian law, it added. 

Furthermore, UN experts have welcomed the decision of an appeals court in the Netherlands on 12 February 2024 that ordered the government to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has once again decried the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip despite the diplomatic spat between Brazil and the Israeli regime over his genocidal comments on Gaza. 

On Saturday, President Lula reiterated that what the Israeli government is doing is not war. It is genocide. Children and women are being murdered.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian leader maintained his position in a TV interview. 

Courtesy: Tehran Times

 

US cluster munitions sale to Ukraine must be stopped

The world has not really raised voice against the US proxy war going on in Ukraine since February 2022. Little effort has been made for establishing truce. On the contrary, the United States and its allies have sent the latest as well as outdated arms worth billions of dollars to Ukraine. 

The latest news is that the US is getting ready to supply banned cluster munitions to Ukraine. This shipment must be stopped to save hundreds of civilians who may dies due to its indiscriminate use.

According to Reuters, the United States announced on Friday that it would supply Ukraine with widely banned cluster munitions for its counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces.

Rights groups and the United Nations secretary-general questioned Washington's decision on the munitions, part of an US$800 million security package that brings total US military aid to more than US$40 billion since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who describes the conflict as a "special military operation" to protect Russian security, has said the US and its allies were fighting an expanding proxy war.

The cluster munitions will deliver in a time frame that is relevant for the counteroffensive, a Pentagon official told reporters.

Cluster munitions are prohibited by more than 100 countries. Russia, Ukraine and the United States have not signed on to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans production, stockpiling, use and transfer of the weapons.

They typically release large numbers of smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Those that fail to explode pose a danger for decades after a conflict ends.

Ukraine has provided written assurances that it is going to use these in a very careful way to minimize risks to civilians, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

US President Joe Biden described the decision on cluster bombs as difficult but said Ukraine needed them.

Human Rights Watch has accused Russian and Ukrainian forces of using cluster munitions, which have killed civilians.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov criticized the transfer of these weapons to Ukraine by the US.

"The cruelty and cynicism with which Washington has approached the issue of transferring lethal weapons to Kyiv is striking," TASS news agency on Friday quoted Antonov as saying.

"Now, by the fault of the US, there will be a risk for many years that innocent civilians will be blown up by submunitions that have failed."

Ukraine says it has taken back some villages in southern Ukraine since the counteroffensive began in early June, but that it lacks the firepower and air cover to make faster progress.

"It's too early to judge how the counteroffensive is going one way or the other because we're at the beginning of the middle," Colin Kahl, the US under secretary of defense for policy, told reporters.

Israel accused of war crimes in recent Gaza war

According to an AP report, Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused the Israeli military of carrying out attacks that “apparently amount to war crimes” during an 11-day war in May against the Hamas militant group. 

The international human rights organization issued its conclusions after investigating three Israeli airstrikes that it said killed 62 Palestinian civilians. It said “there were no evident military targets in the vicinity” of the attacks.

“Israeli forces carried out attacks in Gaza in May that devastated entire families without any apparent military target nearby,” said Gerry Simpson, Associate Crisis & Conflict Director at HRW.

He said Israel’s “consistent unwillingness to seriously investigate alleged war crimes,” coupled with Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilian areas, underscored the importance of an ongoing investigation into both sides by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a statement, the Israeli army said its attacks were aimed at military targets and that it took numerous precautions to avoid harming civilians. It said Hamas is responsible for civilian casualties because it launches attacks from residential areas.

“While the terror organizations in the Gaza Strip deliberately embed their military assets in densely populated civilian areas, the IDF takes every feasible measure to minimize, as much as possible, the harm to civilians and civilian property,” it said.

The war erupted on May 10 after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem in support of Palestinian protests against Israel’s heavy-handed policing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, built on a contested site sacred to Jews and Muslims, and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers in a nearby neighborhood. Israel has said it struck over 1,000 targets during the fighting.

In all, some 254 people were killed in Gaza, including at least 67 children and 39 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Hamas has acknowledged the deaths of 80 militants, while Israel has claimed the number is much higher. Twelve civilians, including two children, were killed in Israel, along with one soldier.

The HRW report looked into Israeli airstrikes. The most serious, on May 16, involved a series of strikes on Al-Wahda Street, a central thoroughfare in downtown Gaza City. The airstrikes destroyed three apartment buildings and killed a total of 44 civilians, HRW said, including 18 children and 14 women. Twenty-two of the dead were members of a single family, the al-Kawlaks.

The Israeli military said the attacks were aimed at tunnels used by Hamas militants in the area. The airstrikes unexpectedly caused nearby buildings to collapse, leading to “unintended casualties,” it said.

In its investigation, HRW concluded that Israel had used US made GBU-31 precision-guided bombs, and that it did not warn residents to evacuate the area ahead of time. It also found no evidence of military targets in the area.

“An attack that is not directed at a specific military objective is unlawful,” it wrote.

The investigation also looked at a May 10 explosion that killed eight people, including six children, near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. It said the two adults were civilians.

In its statement, the Israeli military said the casualties were caused by errant rocket fire launched by militant groups, not Israeli airstrikes. It released aerial photos of what it said was the launch site, some 7.5 kilometers (4.5 miles) away, and the landing area. It also said it did not carry out any strikes in the area at the time of the explosion.

But based on an analysis of munition remnants and witness accounts, HRW said evidence indicated the weapon had been “a type of guided missile” used by Israel.

“Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a military target at or near the site of the strike,” it said.

The New York-based group said that Israel refused to allow its investigators to enter Gaza. Instead, it said it relied on a field researcher based in Gaza, along with satellite images, expert reviews of photos of munitions fragments and interviews conducted by video and telephone.

The third attack HRW investigated occurred on May 15, in which an Israeli airstrike destroyed a three-story building in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp. The strike killed 10 people, including two women and eight children.

Israel said the target was a group of senior Hamas officials hiding in an apartment, and that the civilian deaths were unintended and “under review.”

But Human Rights Watch said it found no evidence of a military target at or near the site and called for an investigation into whether there was a legitimate military objective and “all feasible precautions” were taken to avoid civilian casualties. HRW investigators concluded the building was hit by a US made guided missile.

The May conflict was the fourth war between Israel and Hamas since the Islamic militant group, which opposes Israel’s existence, seized control of Gaza in 2007. Human Rights Watch, other rights groups and U.N. officials have accused both sides of committing war crimes in all of the conflicts.

Early this year, HRW accused Israel of being guilty of international crimes of apartheid because of discriminatory policies toward Palestinians, both inside Israel as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel rejected the accusations.

In Tuesday’s report, HRW called on the United States to condition security assistance to Israel on it taking “concrete and verifiable actions” to comply with international human rights law and to investigate past abuses.

It also called on the ICC to include the recent Gaza war in its ongoing investigation into possible war crimes by Israel and Palestinian militants. Israel does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and says it is capable of investigating any possible wrongdoing by its army and that the ICC probe is unfair and politically motivated.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim called for Israeli leaders to be brought before “international tribunals.” He also claimed that the Hamas rocket fire was a “legitimate right to resist the occupation.”