Israel alone? Allies’ fears grow over conduct –
and legality – of war in Gaza
When the US allowed a ceasefire resolution to pass at
the UN, the warning was clear – and concern is rising elsewhere
Julian
Borger in Washington, Toby Helm, Lorenzo Tondo and Quique Kierszenbaum in
Jerusalem
Sun 31 Mar
2024 06.00 BST
When Gilad
Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the security council to rail
against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure
than ever in the cavernous chamber. The US, Israel’s constant shield at the UN
until this point, had declined to use its veto, allowing the council’s demand
for an immediate truce – even though it contained, as Erdan furiously pointed
out, no condemnation of the Hamas massacre of Israelis that had begun the war.
That had
been a red line for the US until Monday, as had making a ceasefire conditional
on a release of hostages. But after nearly six months of constant bombing, with
more than 32,000 dead in Gaza and a famine imminent, those red lines were
allowed to fade, and the American ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, kept her
hand still when the chair called for votes against the resolution.
The message
was clear: time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration
was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed
away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its
appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial
food deliveries.
“This must
be a turning point,” the Palestinian envoy, Riyad Mansour, told the security
council, mourning those who had died in the time it had taken its members to
overcome their differences.
For the
next few days, there were other signs that the west was changing its position,
at least in terms of its rhetoric. On Tuesday, Germany’s foreign minister,
Annalena Baerbock, announced that Berlin would be dispatching a delegation to
remind Israel pointedly of its obligations under Geneva conventions, and warned
the country not to proceed with a planned offensive on the city of Rafah, in
the very south of Gaza. It was a notable change in tone from a country that has
been Israel’s second biggest supporter and arms supplier.
Meanwhile,
in the UK, foreign secretary David Cameron has been ratcheting up his criticism
of Israel – particularly over its blocking of aid into Gaza – while at the same
time being ultra-careful to deflect questions as to whether the Foreign Office
now believes Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been breaching international
humanitarian law. Trying to strike that balance has created real and
increasingly obvious strains within the British government, and the Tory party.
This
definite shifting of international positions has, however, changed nothing as
yet for the 2.3 million people trapped in Gaza. The bombing and sniping have
not stopped. The politicians may be recalibrating, but not fast enough for
those in the line of fire.
In the 48
hours after the security council applauded itself for passing the ceasefire
resolution, 157 people in Gaza were killed. Eighteen of them, including at
least nine children and five women, died when a house full of displaced people
was bombed in northern Rafah. Twelve people drowned trying to reach airdropped
food parcels that had fallen into the sea.
The number
of trucks crossing into Gaza rose slightly to about 190 a day – less than half
the peacetime daily total. Israeli inspectors were still turning back 20 to 25
each day, NBC News reported, on grounds as arbitrary as the wooden pallets
bearing the food not being exactly the right dimensions. Israel has banned
Unrwa, the main UN relief agency in the region, from using the crossing. A US
state department official told Reuters on Friday that famine had already taken
hold in some parts of Gaza, echoing a similar finding last week by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Four days
on from the passing of the security council resolution, more US arms deliveries
were being reported by the Washington Post, including 1,800 MK84 2,000lb bombs
– massive munitions that are implicated in numerous mass casualty events over
the course of the Gaza war.
Furthermore,
despite the UN vote just days before, the Biden administration has made it
clear to its allies that threatening to stop weapons supplies to Israel as
leverage is off the table, at least for now. The president told a fundraising
event on Thursday: “You can’t forget that Israel is in a position where its
very existence is at stake.”
In the UK,
however, there is a growing sense that the legal issues, and related questions
about arms sales, cannot be avoided, or fudged, for much longer.
As the
Observer reports this weekend, the Tory chair of the foreign affairs select
committee, Alicia Kearns – a former employee of the Foreign Office and Ministry
of Defence – told a Tory fundraising event in north London on 13 March that
Cameron’s department has been given legal advice that Israel has broken
international humanitarian law, but has chosen not to make it public.
That claim
will send shudders through London and Washington, as it strikes at the heart of
one of the most sensitive issues in international diplomacy.
In January,
appearing before Kearns’s committee, Cameron dodged questions on the issue of
whether he had seen such legal advice, saying “I cannot recall every single
piece of paper that has been put in front of me … I don’t want to answer that
question.”
Even then,
in that same hearing – and before he became as vocal as he is now – he did
concede that he was “worried” that Israel might have been in breach.
It is not
difficult to understand why the Foreign Office and Cameron may be being opaque.
The existence of such advice, and any open acknowledgment of it, would trigger
a series of requirements on ministers, not the least of which would be the duty
to halt all British arms sales to Israel.
Indeed,
even if the legal advice suggested there was a “risk” of Israel having been in
breach, it would have to stop exports. Some say the UK would even have to cease
sharing intelligence with the US because the US might hand it on to Israel.
In a recent
letter to Cameron, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, homed in on this
same point about arms exports, referring to criterion 2c of the UK’s Strategic
Export Licensing Criteria, which requires the government to “not grant a
licence if it determines there is a clear risk that the items might be used to
commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
Criterion
2c adds that “the government will also take account of the risk that the items
might be used to commit or facilitate gender-based violence or serious acts of
violence against women or children”. Lammy said that this was “particularly
relevant, given that women and children constitute a majority of the victims of
the war in Gaza”.
Many Tory
MPs are worried that Cameron might be about to announce an embargo on the sale
of arms to Israel. At a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Conservative
backbenchers on Monday, the foreign secretary denied he was thinking anything
of the sort, although Foreign Office officials say it cannot be out of the
question if Israel carries out its threat to attack Rafah.
Just as in
the US, the UK’s tone may be shifting to one that is more critical of Israel.
But creating the political space to match this with openness about the legal
advice being given, and then taking consequent action, will prove far more
difficult.
For its
part, Israel has been roundly criticised, but it is still far from a pariah.
Netanyahu and his war cabinet continue to insist that Israel will press ahead
with an offensive on Rafah, where more than a million displaced civilians have
taken shelter, shrugging off US warnings that it would be a “mistake” which
would backfire on Israeli security.
Many young Americans have jettisoned the pro-Israel
reflexes of their parents, and have made Gaza an issue with protest votes in
the Democratic presidential primary
Two Israeli
ministers are due in Washington to discuss the planned offensive in the coming
week, on a visit which Netanyahu had initially cancelled in protest at the
Biden administration’s abstention at the security council.
American
officials say they will use the meetings to present an alternative blueprint
for counter-insurgency against Hamas in Rafah, focusing on precision raids on
senior Hamas figures, but they admit they have no way to oblige their visitors
to take the suggestions seriously.
“They are a
sovereign state. We will not interfere with their military planning, but we
will outline in general terms what we think is another way to go to better
achieve the same aims,” a US official said.
In further
apparent defiance of Washington’s views, the Israeli military are carving out a
buffer zone around Gaza’s borders which would take up 16% of the whole coastal
strip, according to Haaretz.
Israeli
public opinion has to date shown itself largely impervious to US and other
international pressure, and support for the Gaza war currently hovers at around
80%. Even more concerning for Washington’s hopes of containing the conflict,
there is also more than 70% Israeli public support for a large-scale military
operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon – something Washington has so far
managed to forestall.
In Israel
itself, pro-war demonstrators are far more in evidence than anti-war ones.
Israeli settlers and rightwing activists have focused their protests on Unrwa
over the past week, blocking the entrances to its Jerusalem office. The
protesters portrayed the UN ceasefire resolution as an attack against Israel.
“If you
look at the number of UN condemnations against Israel versus the number of
condemnations against North Korea or Syria, you can see how they are obsessed
with us, and this is another proof of their obsession,” said Roei Ben Dor, a
21-year-old from the central Israeli town of Gedera. “We should be in Gaza, not
just because of Hamas but because Gaza is ours. We have every right to take
Gaza, to take Rafah. This is our land.”
Aynat
Libman, a 52-year-old Israeli settler from Efrat, argued the resolution simply
proved the UN’s inherent antisemitism.
“How could
the UN possibly say we should stop the war before we are done protecting
ourselves?” Libman said. “We can do this on our own. But, of course, it would
be nice if we had the support.’’
The absence
of bite in the international community’s reprimands has emboldened the current
Israeli coalition’s sense of immunity from global public opinion, but the onset
of full-scale famine, or an offensive on Rafah, could bring a much sharper
response from Israel’s friends and adversaries. And there are signs that the
real damage done to Israel’s global standing could worsen over time, with
possibly far-reaching consequences.
Israeli
families call for the immediate return of hostages taken by Hamas. Photograph:
Hannah McKay/Reuters
As in the
UK, tension in the US is building around the question of international law.
Last week, a state department human rights official resigned, saying that the
government was flouting domestic legislation prohibiting military assistance to
any foreign army units implicated in atrocities, or to any country which
impedes “the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.
The
official, Annelle Sheline, said the state department had evidence of
violations, but it was being suppressed. “I think some of these internal
processes are not going to become public until the White House is willing for
them to come out,” Sheline said.
The state
department has said in the past week that its review process had so far
provided no reason to doubt that formal Israeli assurances that it is complying
with international humanitarian law, as required under US statute, are
“credible and reliable”. But a full report on those assurances is not due until
8 May, which could become a point of leverage on Israel if there is no
breakthrough in the provision of food relief to Gaza.
“That is
what you have to look for,” said Aaron David Miller, a former state department
negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But Miller
added: “I would be stunned if the administration made a judgment that the
Israelis are out of compliance.”
But the
other potential shift with long-term ramifications for Israel’s future is the
changing attitudes of young Americans, many of whom have jettisoned the
pro-Israel reflexes of their parents, and have made Gaza an issue with protest
votes in the Democratic presidential primary. A recent Gallup poll found 63% of
Americans aged 18-34 disapproved of Israeli military action, as did 55% overall
of those questioned.
“We are
witnessing an unprecedented moment of collective awareness about the ongoing
occupation and apartheid conditions in Israel-Palestine,” said Rae Abileah, a
progressive US Jewish activist. “I have never seen this level of people
consistently taking to the streets. For years, you could say: ‘You can be
progressive except on Palestine.’ We can’t say that any more.”
She added:
“The writing is more on the wall than it’s ever been.”
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