EDITORIAL: Six months of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” for the October 7 Hamas attack (precipitated by decades of occupation) has achieved nothing but a humanitarian catastrophe.
The two declared aims of the war on Gaza, defeating Hamas and bringing home Israeli hostages, remain unaccomplished. Employing US- and Germany-supplied weapons, Israeli has killed over 33,000 Palestinians most of them women and children, and wounded nearly 76,000 others.
At least 100, children are reported to have lost one or both of their legs. The use of food as a weapon of war has brought the rest of the besieged enclave’s 2.4 million people to the brink of a famine.
The grim toll the US-backed war wreaked on Gaza has prompted some protesters to call their president Joe Biden ‘Genocide Joe’. Voicing a general sentiment everywhere, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have termed the six-month anniversary “an awful milestone”, adding that “humanity has been all but abandoned.”
The free hand America and its allies gave Netanyahu to kill and destroy brought them a moment of truth on April 1, when Israeli drones deliberately targeted, car by car, a convoy of World Central Kitchen, killing seven aid workers, six of them citizens of Western countries friendly to Israel.
This was not the first incident of its kind, though, about 200 Palestinian aid workers, hospital staff and journalists have been killed during the last six months because of utter disregard with which Israel was allowed to violate all rules of international humanitarian law. But the loss of Western lives made a difference. Their governments reacted with angry statements.
President Joe Biden, who had lent a helping hand for the killing of thousands of Palestinian claimed to be “outraged and heartbroken”. Later in a telephonic conversation with Netanyahu, he asked for implementation of “a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.” Yet the day the aid foreign aid workers were killed his administration had approved the transfer of thousands of more bombs to Israel.
Those familiar with such transactions say the US government has the authority to suspend any arms package anytime before delivery, but in this case it is unlikely to occur. This means the supply of lethal weaponry to Israel is to continue despite public protests at home against his all-out support to Israel. There is growing unease also within his party’s ranks over the situation and retaliatory action it could draw from non-state actors sympathetic to Hamas’s cause. Said Sen.
Chris Murphy (D-Conn) in a TV talk show, “every moment this nightmarish humanitarian condition continues inside Gaza, is a day that the United States is less safe, because we bear global responsibility side by side with Israel.” That should worry the president, especially in an election year.
Meanwhile, the war is spreading in the wider Middle East region. A low intensity confrontation has been going on with Hezbollah and some members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ since the start of the war on Gaza. Thus far, Iran had observed restraint. But the recent Israeli attack on its consulate in the Syrian capital that left 12 people dead could lead to an escalation of the conflict with grave consequences for all.
What might still save the situation are the ongoing indirect talks in Cairo between Israeli and Hamas delegations for a truce and prisoners exchange, mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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