Why The UN Resolution For Trump’s Colonial Takeover of Gaza Is Wrong, and Will Fail
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Over two days last week, the United Nations, formed in 1945, with its primary motive being “to maintain international peace and security”, sadly demonstrated all of the weaknesses that have prevented it from fulfilling that core aim of its Charter over the last 80 years.
On November 18, the UN General Assembly, which represents all 193 member states of the UN, overwhelmingly passed a worthy resolution affirming “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, including “the right to their independent State of Palestine.”
The resolution was introduced by Armenia, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, the Russian Federation and Viet Nam, with Egypt’s contribution undertaken on behalf of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
164 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with just 7 votes against (including the US and Israel), and nine abstentions.
International Court of Justice Condemns Israel’s Persistent Restrictions on Humanitarian Aid for Gaza
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On the same day that the Israeli Knesset gave “preliminary approval to a bill to impose Israeli sovereignty on the occupied West Bank”, as Al Jazeera described it, accurately calling it “a move tantamount to annexation of the Palestinian territory, which would be a blatant violation of international law”, over 3,300 km away, in the Hague, the International Court of Justice delivered a blistering condemnation of Israel’s existing failures to “fulfil its obligations under international humanitarian law” as the occupying Power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; namely, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, first occupied in 1967.
In an advisory opinion relating to the “Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, the Court’s eleven judges unanimously ruled that the State of Israel was required “to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services” — from all of which, despite persistent and risible protestations to the contrary by senior Israeli officials, the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip have been horrendously deprived, though various “sieges” on all essential supplies, for most of the last two years.
The Court also ruled, by ten votes to one, that Israel was required “to agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip, including relief provided by the United Nations and its entities, in particular the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [UNRWA], other international organizations and third States, and not to impede such relief.”
It’s Official: UN Declares Catastrophic Famine Conditions in Gaza; Israel Still Denies It
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Today, in an extraordinary declaration, delivered from Geneva with articulate, controlled fury and indignation, Tom Fletcher, a British diplomat, and, since October last year, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, confirmed to the world what has been increasingly apparent over the last six months: that the most severe famine conditions are occurring in the Gaza Strip, that this is an “entirely man-made” disaster, deliberately engineered by the State of Israel, and that it can and must be “halted and reversed”, via an immediate ceasefire “to allow humanitarian aid to reach everyone in the Gaza Strip.”
According to the devastating new report by the IPC (the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification), which Fletcher was presenting to the world, 514,000 people, roughly a quarter of Gaza’s surviving population, are experiencing famine, with the number rising to 641,000 by the end of September unless immediate action is taken.
The IPC sets stringent conditions on the evidence required for a famine to be declared. Famine (Phase 5) requires an area to have 20% of households facing an extreme food shortage, 30% of children to be acutely malnourished, and two adult non-trauma deaths or four child non-trauma deaths for every 10,000 people to be taking place every day “due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.”
Who's still at Guantánamo?
