In the eight weeks since Israel began its latest bombardment of Gaza, it has massacred over 17,000 Palestinians in the besieged strip, with thousands of people still missing and trapped under the rubble. Over 1.8 million people, or almost 80% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced and Israel has destroyed at least 60% of all housing units.
According to the Financial Times, the level of catastrophic damages wrecked upon northern Gaza has “approached that caused by the years-long carpet-bombing of German cities during the second world war.”
In October, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, the founder of the Zehut Party had called for the “complete” destruction of Gaza before it was invaded— “I mean destruction like what happened in Dresden and Hiroshima, without nuclear weapons.” It seems Feiglin’s call was answered by the IOF.
Israel has dropped bombs individually weighing up to 2,000 lbs on a population held captive in the world’s largest open-air prison, as Israel maintains an air, land, and sea blockade of Gaza. The destruction of Gaza’s critical civilian infrastructure including water and sanitation systems and medical facilities is so severe that the WHO has warned that “we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment.”
A genocide, in Israel’s own words
Since the very beginning, these airstrikes have been accompanied by openly genocidal rhetoric, with Israeli lawmakers calling for a repeat of the Nakba (the genocidal expulsion of Palestinians that first accompanied the formation of the state of Israel in 1948), “erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth”, to “flatten Gaza”, to “burn Gaza now”, to turn it into a “place where no human being can exist.”
“You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared on October 30, the biblical analogy condemned as an “explicit call to genocide.” There were also multiple claims, including by Israeli president Isaac Herzog, that there were simply no civilians in Gaza.
On December 7, amid horrific reports of Israeli forces stripping, blindfolding and detaining Palestinian men from UN-designated shelters in Gaza, Arieh King, the deputy mayor of the occupation government in Jerusalem, called for the “ants” to be buried in the dirt: “They are not human beings, and not animals, they are subhuman.”
Israel continues to illegitimately claim a “right to self-defense” – a right to which it is not entitled as a belligerent occupying power – to ceaselessly bomb Gaza. However, the colonial underpinnings of its actions were apparent even back in September, as Netanyahu stood before the UN General Assembly holding up a map which showed the Occupied West Bank, Gaza, and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel.
Israel is now circulating plans to carve out a “buffer zone” in Gaza, with Netanyahu instructing his top advisor to come up with a plan to “thin” Gaza’s population to a “minimum”, and one which “enables a mass escape [of Palestinians] to European and African countries.”
The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence had previously also recommended the “forcible and permanent transfer” of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula. Israel has reportedly also submitted a proposal to the US Congress making US aid to Arab countries conditional on whether or not they would be willing to accept expelled Palestinians.
While Washington has bent over backwards to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza, speaking of an “intent to protect civilians,” the fact is that Israel has never tried to hide its objectives. The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy, IOF spokesperson Daniel Hagari had said mere days into Israel’s operation in Gaza.
“Nothing happens by accident,” an Israeli intelligence source said in an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed…Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Israel’s use of a largely artificial-intelligence based system called Habsora to “generate” targets has facilitated what a former intelligence officer called a “mass assassination factory.”
Warnings ignored
On October 9, the Occupation’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant had proclaimed that Israel was fighting “human animals”, as he announced a “complete siege” on Gaza: “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Palestinian organizations had warned the international community at the time that Israel was “taking steps” to act on its genocidal intentions: “deliberately inflicting on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” — recognized as genocide under both the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute.
Former ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had similarly said that “Just the blockade of Gaza [which has been in place for over 16 years]— just that— could be genocide under Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention.”
According to the latest food security assessment published by the World Food Program, 48% of households in northern Gaza and 38% in southern Gaza are suffering from “severe levels of hunger” with the figure reaching 46% among internally displaced people (IDPs). Nearly 90% of people in the northern governorates and 54% in the south are spending “at least one full day and night without eating.”
The prices of what little is available have skyrocketed, with wheat flour prices rising by 50% and fuel by 500%.
People in Gaza are starving and have nothing to eat, and when they do find some, prices have skyrocketed. The price of a bag of flour costs around 500 shekels ($150).
People have testified going up to 3 days without food. This footage shows hundreds in line for food in the… pic.twitter.com/8ZzcEytvj0
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) December 7, 2023
Following the bombing of the Al-Ahli hospital on October 17, a group of UN experts warned of crimes against humanity in Gaza, adding that “considering statements made by Israeli political leaders and their allies, accompanied by military action in Gaza and escalation of arrests and killing in the West Bank, there is also a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people”
There have been several such warnings since, of a “serious risk of genocide”, a “genocide in the making”, or a “textbook case of genocide” in Gaza. In November, South Africa was among countries who submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the commission of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide” by Israel.
Earlier that month, Palestinian human rights organizations had filed a lawsuit with the Court, calling its attention to ongoing Israeli crimes including airstrikes on civilian areas, the siege of Gaza and the denial of necessities such as food, fuel and water, forced displacement, and the use of toxic gas.
These submissions to the Court have been made in the midst of an ongoing investigation that was launched by the ICC in March 2021 regarding the “Situation in Palestine” covering crimes committed since June 13, 2014. This was following a preliminary examination under then chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda concluded there was “a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
Palestinian organizations have now called upon the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to include crimes against humanity, notably apartheid, and the crime of genocide, in the Court’s ongoing investigation. They have also urged the court to issue arrest warrants for those suspected of these crimes within the Israeli political, military and administrative establishment, particularly Netanyahu, Herzog, and Gallant.
Though Israel is not a State Party to the Rome Statute which established the ICC, Palestine was accepted as a State Party in 2015. In February 2021, a pre-trial chamber of the ICC ruled that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction extended to “territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
Israel had declared from the very beginning that it would not cooperate with the investigation. Despite this, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s visit to Israel last week was closely coordinated by the Occupation. Yet, repeated calls by Palestinian and other civil society and human rights organizations for Khan to intervene were left unheard.
Delays and double standards
“Since the start of the ICC’s preliminary examination on the Palestine situation, Al-Haq and partner organizations have submitted 8 major communications which provided solid evidence on crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory,” Tahseen Elayyan, a legal researcher at Al Haq, told Peoples Dispatch.
“We have also been calling on the current prosecutor to issue a preventive statement to deter the commission of further crimes in Palestine but unfortunately he has refused under the reasoning that this is prosecutorial policy.”
“The Prosecutor has not put in place any effective investigation, and allocated very minimal and largely insufficient funding to the investigation since it opened,” said Triestino Mariniello, a legal representative of Palestinian victims at the ICC.
Khan has still neither visited Gaza, nor sites in the West Bank since Israel’s ongoing attacks since October 7. Instead, he traveled only to Ramallah to meet with officials from the Palestine Authority government of President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been widely-opposed by Palestinians.
This is despite the fact that Israel has been conducting violent raids in the West Bank, killing at least 266 Palestinians since October 7 alone. During the same period, Israeli occupation forces and Israeli settlers have demolished over 70 houses leading to the forced displacement of 300 Palestinians, Elayyan said.
As of December 7, 3,670 people had been arrested in the occupied territory in the past eight weeks, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.
Arrests have taken place on charges related to something as simple as a Facebook post, Elayyan said. While Israel continues its violent rampage in the West Bank, heavy restrictions have been placed on movement, making it difficult for field researchers to document these abuses, he added. The appropriation of land has also continued.
Meanwhile, glaring imbalances have been highlighted in the statement Khan issued at the end of his visit. He called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages taken by Hamas and other terror organizations — this classification in itself being a serious matter of concern, as Ahmed Abofoul, a lawyer and researcher at Al Haq has pointed out, when “the context is that of a struggle for self-determination against settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid.”
Importantly, Khan raised no call for Israel to release the thousands of Palestinians that it continues to hold captive and subject to severe abuse in its prisons.
While the October 7 offensive by Palestinian resistance groups represented, for Khan, “some of the most serious international crimes…crimes which the ICC was established to address,” when referring to Israel’s actions, Khan simply mentioned “credible allegations of crimes” which “should be the subject of timely, independent examination and investigation.”
“In my meeting with the families of the victims of these attacks, my message was clear: we stand ready to work in partnership with them as part of our ongoing work to hold those responsible to account,” Khan said.
When it came to Palestinian survivors, all he said was “I was grateful to hear such personal accounts of their experiences in Gaza and the West Bank. We must never become numb to such suffering.”
“The language used by the Prosecutor made us even more convinced that political considerations are given more weight than justice and international law. When it comes to the events of 7 October he uses affirmative language such as “crimes have been committed” and “ crimes that shock the conscience of humanity.” But when he speaks about crimes that have been committed in Gaza he uses terms such as ‘alleged crimes,’” Elayyan said.
He added that various attempts by Palestinians to hold Israel accountable for its crimes through different accountability mechanisms had been unsuccessful, with this failure ascribed to “a lack of political will on the part of Third States and the politicization of justice… a policy of double standards has been the norm.”
While emphasizing that “civilians must have access to basic food, water…and medical supplies,” Khan made no mention of the brutal siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza, which makes this very humanitarian access effectively impossible. Instead, his statement added that aid must not be “diverted or misused by Hamas.”
While Khan made a reference to “incidents of attacks by Israeli settlers” in the West Bank, legal experts have warned against attempts to isolate settler attacks from Israel’s construction and expansion of settlements as a matter of state policy, foundational to its settler-colonial project.
“Israeli settlements, which imply the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, are built by official decisions, taken at the highest level, funded from the Israeli budget…Settlers’ violence is only one manifestation of this overall criminal enterprises,” said Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour in his address to the Assembly of State Parties of the ICC on December 6.
This is especially important as countries including Germany and the US are making a big show of sanctioning “violent Israeli settlers” —as if the expulsion of Palestinians and the colonization of their land to build settlements is not wholly violent in itself— while still continuing to arm Israel and refusing calls for a ceasefire.
Shockingly, the ICC’s official X account also posted a photo of Khan where he is standing both in and overlooking Occupied East Jerusalem with a caption that states he is visiting Israel.
Since Khan took office in June, 2021 serious concerns have been raised about his conduct, and his “unprecedented politicization” of the ICC. In his first briefing delivered to the UN Security Council, Khan stated repeatedly that he would “prioritize” cases referred to the Court by the UNSC. It bears repeating that the US is among countries that holds a veto in the UN body, a power it has consistently deployed to protect Israel.
By September, Khan announced his decision to “deprioritize” the investigation into war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. The US had previously threatened to prosecute ICC officials over its investigation into the matter, and also imposed sanctions on senior officials including Bensouda. In fact, the US also has in place what is known as the “Hague Invasion Act”, authorizing the use of force to prevent any prosecution of the US’ armed forces or its allies.
Analysts have also contrasted Khan’s conduct regarding the genocide in Gaza with the swiftness with which he issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin just days into the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Much of this might seem unsurprising given reports of the US and Israel’s concerted efforts to make sure Khan was appointed prosecutor of the ICC, despite the fact that neither country is a party to the entity.
“We joined the ICC 9 years ago, at a time where crimes had been committed for decades. And the crimes continued being committed for 9 years. And not a single arrest warrant has been issued yet. This is a failure…to deliver justice to victims and…to deter the perpetrators,” Mansour had said.
“Gaza makes any further delay unacceptable, unjustifiable, unforgivable.”
