Palestine, international responsibility

October 21 2023 (14:35 WEST)

Repeated tragedy. It is not the first and, for sure, it will not be, unfortunately, the last. Palestine has been suffering for more than 70 years the consequences of the action of a State, Israel, which has been occupying most of its territory, widely crossing the borders defined in 1947. Dozens of United Nations resolutions point to that circumstance of occupying power. At the same time, Israel has developed a scorched earth policy against the Palestinian civilian population. “This is a struggle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, between humanity and animality,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a few days ago in a tweet that he later deleted.

A tremendously unequal fight with numerous and terrible antecedents. In 2014, Operation Protective Edge caused more than 2,000 deaths on the Palestinian side, the vast majority civilians, including several hundred boys and girls, and around 10,000 injured of varying severity; with 73 deaths in Israel, 67 of them soldiers. There was also the intentional destruction of a good part of Gaza's infrastructure: water, electricity, telecommunications, hospitals or schools, in order to cause greater suffering to its population. Justified by a minister of the Israeli government, who stated that the objective of the operation was to “return Gaza to the Middle Ages.” 

Amnesty International

Previously, in 2009, the so-called Operation Cast Lead had already caused similar personal and material damage. According to data offered by Amnesty International, 1,400 Palestinians died then, including 300 boys and girls, assuring that “Israeli forces repeatedly attacked ambulances and medical teams, killing several health workers when they tried to help injured people or collect corpses.” For their part, Palestinian rocket attacks killed three civilians in southern Srakle. And they caused serious injuries to four more. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, accused Israeli leaders of committing “a crime against humanity in Gaza.” 

To these violent actions of one of the most powerful armies in the world are added the effects of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, preventing access to medicines and food, suffocating this small strip that has one of the highest population densities in the world, more than 6,000 inhabitants per km2 in an area of 365 km2, less than a quarter of Gran Canaria. “Responsibility for these terrible human rights crimes lies in Jerusalem, Cairo, Washington and the entire international community. These violations must end; these crimes must be investigated, the walls must be demolished, and they must have access to the fundamental right of freedom,” said former US President Jimmy Carter in 2008 regarding the blockade. But the international community has looked the other way in the face of such violations of the most basic human rights. 

Death of thousands of innocents

As it largely does now. I believe that international organizations cannot remain passive in the face of the death of thousands of innocent people, both those caused by the terrorist actions of Hamas in Israel - which caused some 1,300 deaths - and those of Israeli state terrorism, with the brutal intervention of its army against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, which have already caused nearly four thousand deaths, including more than a thousand boys and girls.

International organizations should immediately propose a ceasefire and facilitate the arrival of humanitarian aid to the Strip; and insist on the creation of two states, with the establishment of an independent Palestine.

In the face of barbarities, there are no distinctions between the dead. Some do. They denounce, rightly, the crimes committed by Hamas, completely execrable. But they are silent when the victims are Palestinian. Others, it is true, do it the other way around. From the point of view of human rights, democratic values, ethics and the legitimate aspiration to a world in peace and justice, it is inadmissible to lament some deaths and silence others, to applaud some crimes and condemn others.

In Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista we are very clear about this. We strongly reject the terrorist actions of Hamas, with the murder and kidnapping of civilians in its surprise incursion into Israel. And, likewise, we consider that Israel's response is not only completely disproportionate, but does not correspond to the modes of action of a democratic state or with the minimum respect for human rights, by destroying Gaza and massacring its civilian population, in addition to subjecting it to a critical situation by preventing them from having basic elements for life, such as water, electricity or food.

In the immediate future, we consider it essential to stop the destruction that Israel is carrying out in the Gaza Strip, facilitate that international non-governmental organizations can introduce humanitarian aid and prevent the conflict from spreading throughout the region, which would mean increasing instability and further fueling pain, hatred and violence, as well as the loss of human lives.

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