Atrocities of Hamas do not absolve Israel from its intl humanitarian obligations

The 7 October attacks by armed group Hamas against Israel, does not give Israel a blanket unilateral right to target civilians in Gaza for a collective punishment.

Neither does it absolve Israel from moving away from its humanitarian obligations under international laws. Israel though, is well within its right to retaliate and attack Hamas, toeing with its policy of zero-tolerance to terrorist activities and protection of its national and security interests.

Speakers told the United Nations Security Council much the same, as calls for a ceasefire gained greater urgency amid the intensification of Israel’s lethal military offensive into Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), called Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip “shocking”, with the level of destruction unprecedented, and “the human tragedy unfolding unbearable”.

One million people were pushed from the north to the south over three weeks, with the south also being bombarded.

Civilians remaining in the north are now receiving evacuation notices from the Israeli forces, urging them south, although many, including pregnant women and people with disabilities, are unable to move in forced displacement.

Nearly 70 per cent of those reported killed are children and women, with nearly 3,500 children being killed in Gaza in just three weeks. Killing innocent children including new borns cannot be ‘collateral damage’.

After two weeks of full siege, basic services were crumbling; medicine, food, water and fuel are running out, with last weekend’s communications blackout accelerating the breakdown of civil order, he said, adding: “The current siege imposed on Gaza is collective punishment.”

All Palestinians cannot be assumed to be members of Hamas, or supporting their activities. Catherine Russell, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said she believed that “the true cost of this latest escalation will be measured in children’s lives lost to the violence and those forever changed by it”, as rampant grave violations are being committed against them.

More than 420 children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day. Children are indiscriminately being punished for crimes they have not committed.

To make matters more inhuman, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported 34 attacks against healthcare facilities, including 21 hospitals. The Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine underscored that Gaza is now hell on earth, with the 2.3 million there enduring suffering that no human being should endure.

“They are besieged and bombed, with nowhere safe to go,” he said, adding that as many as 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past three weeks, including 3,000 in the south of the enclave, where they were forcibly transferred by Israel.

The death toll includes 3,500 Palestinian children, he said, adding: “Every five minutes, a Palestinian child is killed. Our children who are like yours, children of God, children of light. How many more days will you wait to say ‘enough’, to recognise this is a war against our children?” He called on the Council to heed the wisdom of the General Assembly’s call for a humanitarian truce and uphold its responsibilities to put an end to the bloodshed.

Meanwhile the UN Council is yet to take a decisive step in terms of ensuring a ceasefire and an end to the genocide unfolding.

The member from Brazil at the recent UN meeting, did not mince words in criticizing the indecisiveness and termed it a miserable failure on the part of humanity and the United Nations.