Gaza, a year later...

October 2023 plunged the territory and the world into chaos, as respect for human rights fell to a new low, and the United Nations is powerless... Now what?

Oct 04, 2024

Dear readers,

I took a break from the news, to try to recuperate, to breath and come back stronger to deal with daily news day and night… as it was getting really hard.

To be honest, the recent news from Lebanon really really put me down. As if the level of violence worldwide wasn’t high enough… More civilians suffer for the gain of some entitled self-profiting politicians, and it’s unbearable.

A few days away in Italy, and I felt a difference thanks to lots of sunlight and beautiful, inspiring art in Venice.

But it doesn’t change our reality, not at all… And the fact that I’m so immersed in the new, trying to report some of it.

Back at work, my mind is with Lebanese and Palestinians civilians.

Here are a few words from some of them, experts and leaders, and reading recommendations.

In a year of war between Israel and Hamas, the people of Gaza have lost nearly everything: over 41,000 lives, most homes, schools, as well as access to water, healthcare…

The NGO Oxfam published a report:

Gaza: One Year On - A YEAR OF AGONY

Fedaa plays with his 3-year-daughter in the middle of his tent in Rafah which he took refuge after losing his house and factory. (Photo: Alef Multimedia/Oxfam)

Israel’s war on Gaza, in response to the horrific attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups on 7 October 2023, is the latest and most brutal onslaught of violence against Palestinians in the 57-year-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

The Oxfam team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has launched a humanitarian response despite the unprecedented challenges. Along with a wide range of partner organisations, Oxfam started responding in the days after the crisis, delivering cash, food, and essential basic items, and restoring water and sanitation services.

One year into Israel’s war on Gaza, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.

Before October 2023, 80% of Gaza’s population already relied on some form of humanitarian assistance and people lived under severe restrictions.

Since the start of the war, more than 2 million Palestinians have been trapped inside Gaza, subject to terrifying bombardments, hunger, multiple forced displacements, and constant fear.

Full report:

https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/gaza-one-year-accountability-report

On social media on 25 September, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres wrote:

“Nothing can justify the terror committed by Hamas on October 7th. Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The international community must mobilise for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate & unconditional release of all hostages, and the beginning of an irreversible process towards a two-State solution.”

Sadly, as I discussed in my previous post, the UN’s Security Council has been rendered totally inefficient by one tool: the right to veto held by France, the UK, China, Russia and the United States, with the rest of the world calling for urgent reforms… In vain for now, as the US blocks all decisions that could lead to a ceasefire (we’re not event talking about peace here, just time of from fighting to think, breath and perhaps fosters diplomatic solutions…).

On this, one interesting piece:

The UNSC has failed Gaza and the Global South. It's time to reform this colonial relic

Israel's vicious assault on Gaza has exposed the UNSC as a colonial relic that neither prevents conflict nor facilitates aid delivery, writes Amitabh Behar, the interim Executive Director of Oxfam International.

24 Sep, 2024

The UNSC has failed Gaza. It's time to reform this colonial relic

The UNSC was built upon a colonial legacy that has simply outlived its time, writes Amitabh Behar, Oxfam's Executive Director [photo credit: Getty Images]

Sarah Leah Whitson, director DAWN MENA, who previously served as the executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division from 2004 to 2020, adds:

The White House's Defense of Israel Is Undermining International Law

Sarah Leah Whitson

September 19, 2024

The United States' U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield struck an aggressive blow against the rules-based international order at a Council on Foreign Relations talk last week.

In response to my question about whether the U.S. government would comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to cease assistance to Israel for its illegal occupation and expected International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—both of whom have been indicted by the ICC—the U.N. ambassador was definitive: The U.S. government would not comply with any warrant because it has a "problem with the court's ruling."

"Let me be clear," she said. "We would not arrest [Netanyahu]," she said.

Read on from here:

The White House's Defense of Israel Is Undermining International Law

Palestinian voices

As for me, I wanted to talk to Palestinians themselves.

“Families are suffering a lot of difficulties at the present time and there is a shortage of food and we are trying to provide that for them,” Mahmoud Qudaih told me over social network. “They have great difficulty getting food.”

“Everyone here in Gaza is tired and exhausted. The war has killed everything and destroyed all of Gaza. There is no place left in Gaza that has not been destroyed,” he added.

He works with one of the SOS teams, we are “do everything we can here, and try to help others”.

“The basics are non-existent,” Qudaih also shared with me. “Imagine living in the middle of destruction and bombing and not having the basics you can get. The IDFs deliberately target civilians here, knowing that there are civilians in the place they are targeting.”

The attacks have escalated to the West Bank and more recently in September 2024 to Southern Lebanon.

Tariq Hathaleen is an activist from Umm Al-Khair village, near Hebron and Masafer Yatta, in the southern part of the West Bank.

We spoke recently over WhatsApp.

He’s an activist, a community leader, and works as an English teacher in a school in the region of the South Hebron Hills.

“I have been active against policies of the occupation since 2013,” he told me, “to follow up, document and to spread awareness. In my village and in my region, we are facing state and settlers’ violence, daily harassment by the settlers and the army, the occupation army. We are facing home demolitions. The occupation authorities don't grant us building permits and they demolish our houses, claiming that we are the ones building illegally…”

They are also suffering from land theft by settlers and by the state.

“Most people here have lost their source of living, basically everything. We suffer from that very badly. But it has increased sharply after 7 October as we feel the settlers are taking revenge. It's a very hard and really bad reality for vulnerable people in these regions. We lost the small sense of security and safety we had in our villages. And it seems now the rulers all over the West Bank are the Israeli settlers... Altogether this is making our lives just suffering every day.”

Rula Daoud is a Palestinian and the national co-director of the grassroots movement Standing Together, including both Jews and Palestinians working for peace, equality, justice and for the end of this war.

“This war is the 15th war between Israel and Hamas, the 15th war,” he told colleagues of mine on our broadcast, Radio France Internationale.

“And each and every war we hear the same things: the Israeli government says that this war will be the last because they will eradicate all of Hamas. But when the war ends, what we see is Hamas becoming stronger. The only thing they are destroying right now are people, streets, babies, and the chance for both of us to live in safety and security. If the aim is to eradicate Hamas, then it's not. It cannot be with a military solution.”

He thinks Palestinians need to bring a different idea that is not Hamas, and that can be done only when you give people hope.

“As long as you are bombing people, killing people, making people starve, it won’t happen. So we need hope. We need political solutions to be able to eradicate any kind of violence. And it goes the same for Israel. Inside Israeli society, the only voices that are very loud are the ones of the right, fascist, messianic people who want to kill everybody, conquer everywhere, push all Palestinians out. And these ideas cannot be helpful because our reality in Israel-Palestine, two people, we have Jewish people and we have Palestinian people. Nobody is going anywhere. And we need to understand that the only solution is a solution of peace. Because if we don't have peace, this war will happen again and again and again.”

According to many experts of the regions, the conflicts are bound to last as the US has not “absorbed any lessons from the past year of conflict”, as Dana el Kurd, professor at the University of Richmond, wrote in Foreign Policy.

“The White House continues to tout Arab-Israeli normalisation as the pathway to peace, despite it being a glorified form of authoritarian conflict management at best. Discussions of the “day after” in Gaza remain out of touch with reality, with no Palestinian input, only advocating for reconfigurations of the current status quo—the same conditions that led us to our current predicament,” she wrote.

Gaza has been destroyed, Palestinians have been displaced en masse, and the impact on Gazan society will take years to heal.

“But Palestine is larger than Gaza. With no deviation from the current path, the tragedy will only continue,” she conclude.

Press in danger

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 127 journalists and other media workers have been killed since 7 October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel orchestrated a media blackout on a region at war.

Journalists targeted and killed, newsrooms were destroyed, internet and electricity cut off, foreign press blocked…

“Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israeli forces have methodically destroyed the Palestinian territory's media infrastructure and stifled journalism. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) stands in solidarity with Gaza’s journalists and reiterates its urgent call to the international community to protect them.”

These shocking violations of press freedom have been met with widespread impunity. Despite the four complaints RSF filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes against journalists in Gaza, and the assurances that the ICC prosecutor's office gave to RSF in January, the perpetrators have still not been brought to justice, and the crimes continue. Although the Israeli authorities have often claimed they do not target journalists, multiple testimonies, investigations, and even statements given by the Israeli army contradict this claim.

Israel is Committing Genocide Across Palestine, according to the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

Raphael Lemkin was the Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who coined the term ‘genocide’ and campaigned to establish the Genocide Convention. The Institute was founded after his work.

Active Genocide Alert Condemning Ongoing Violence in the West Bank

Released on April 8th

The Lemkin Institute is horrified by the dire situation transpiring in the West Bank. During what has already been a devastating six months of conflict in Gaza, the Israeli military and far-right settlers have used the cover of war to conduct continuous attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, often leading to death and forced displacement.

These attacks have been underreported in the mainstream Western press, which has also failed to tie Israel Defense Force (IDF) and settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to the genocide being committed in Gaza. These processes are all part of an overwhelming push on the part of Israeli authorities to oust Palestinians from their remaining ancestral lands. In other words, Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians across Palestine.

Read also my post from last year, if you’ve missed them: