Genocide in Gaza as an Opportunity

Palestinian citizens of Israel – 1.5 million people, or 20% of Israel’s population –
are considered a national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority
under international human rights law.

If what is currently happening in the occupied Palestinian West Bank took place before October 7, our attention would have been completely fixated on that region in Palestine.

writes Ramzy Baroud. and continues:

The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, has devalued the important, if not earth-shattering events underway in the West Bank, which is now a stage for the most violent Israeli military campaign since the Second Palestinian Uprising (2000-05).

Eva Bartlett, a Canadian independent journalist who has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years) complains that

When it comes to Palestinian prisoners and their reports of being tortured, starved, and denied urgently-needed medical care while in Israeli detention or prisons, such level of effort and media coverage is nowhere to be seen – likely because of the political inconvenience this would cause to Washington and its allies.

However, several images from Israeli prisons have been smuggled out and shown in Western countries in recent years. We cannot ignore what is happening there.

Since last October 7, 16 West Bank Palestinian captives have died in Israeli prison due to

”systematic measures of torture, medical crimes, the policy of starvation and many other violations and assaults conducted against male and female detainees, minors and elderly detainees,”

according to a report by NGO the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports 27 Palestinians from Gaza have died since October 7:

“The detainees died at the Sde Teiman and Anatot facilities or during questioning in Israeli territory.”

The same article refers to a UNRWA report published by The New York Times recently, which states that detainees released to Gaza testified that they were beaten, robbed, stripped and sexually assaulted, and had access to doctors and lawyers denied

That UNRWA uncovers certain things that the Israeli does not like makes them a favourite target to blackmail them or to want to eliminate them. However, it is incomprehensible that a supposedly civilised country allows so many young children to be crammed into prison while their human rights are completely ignored.

Today we can see how all over Gaza people are sent out of their homes, expelled from their land, city after city, zone after zone, Israelis claiming they are every time warned before they were going to shoot at those places. But how could those people read the warnings when the internet was cut off and no electricity was available to charge phones, which could not even have a telephone connection in many cases.

When we see the scale of destruction inflicted in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army, one wonders whether they had a well thought-out strategy to eliminate Hamas members, or was it just a snoop to cleanse the whole area of Palestinians.

Eva Bartlett saw in January 2009 in Gaza, detention camps, large areas bulldozed flat, without tents or shelter. Former inmates described them as “open-air cages,” where prisoners were “handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day.”

On 19 February 2024, Adalah, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel jointly submitted a plea to the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur (SR) on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This submission, supported by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), urges the SR to take immediate action to halt the systematic abuse, torture, and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.

Several cases of abuse are known. There is an alarming trend. Israel’s violations against Palestinians detained in Israeli facilities include severe physical assaults causing significant injuries, sexual harassment and intimidation directed at both male and female detainees, as well as other humiliating acts and threats. These actions also constitute collective punishment and blatant violations of both domestic and international law.

As of April 2024, Israel holds a record number of over 9.300 Palestinians classified by the Israel Prison Service (IPS) as “security prisoners”, an increase of over 4.000 individuals since the beginning of the war, including 3.661 administrative detainees, held without charge or the possibility of trial.

Palestinian prisoners from Gaza held in an Israeli prison facility in southern Israel, 14 February 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, Israeli authorities have significantly ramped up the torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees and prisoners.

Already on February 29, 2024, a day after the “Flour Massacre”, wherein Israeli forces massacred over 100 people in the south of Gaza City waiting for food aid, Peter Mertens, the General Secretary of the PvdA, the Workers’ Party of Belgium gave a speech in parliament calling for greater action to stop Israel’s genocide. He remarked:

There is only one question for this parliament: how long will we continue to stand by? What does Israel have to do to be sanctioned?
Do they also have to bomb Rafah?
When will our country impose sanctions on Israel?
That’s the question.

Afterwards, several more situations occurred where questions could be asked and where, under pressure, the foreign minister could do no more than call the Israeli ambassador to the carpet so as not to lose face.

Yet we should note that Belgium, like the Netherlands and France, do not exert enough pressure on their Israeli “allies” and continue to turn a blind eye, while so many thousands suffer immensely.

Peter Mertens asked:

Imagine being Palestinian. Then your history is stolen.

Museums, cultural centers, libraries, mosques, and churches are bombed until there is nothing left of history. Israel wants to erase Palestine’s past, to say that Palestine never existed.

Imagine being Palestinian. Then your future is stolen as well.

600,000 students can no longer go to school, 90,000 university students no longer have a university, because all educational institutions are systematically destroyed.

For this parliament, there is only one question: what are we going to do? Are we going to stand by or are we finally going to impose sanctions?

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