(The Conversation) – What legal obligations do states have to fight climate change? Should high-emitting countries be held responsible for the harm they’ve caused? And should states safeguard the climate for future generations?

The international court of justice (ICJ) is considering similar questions to these in hearings ahead of issuing an advisory opinion on the obligations of states concerning climate change. Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries.

The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and is concerned with states. It is not to be confused with the international criminal court (ICC), which prosecutes individuals. Both courts are based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Unlike court judgements, advisory opinions are not binding under international law. Yet, they can be instruments of preventive diplomacy and peace.

Often, people associate courts with a solely reactive approach to disputes and reparation of harms. For the ICJ this has meant, for instance, a 2018 order for Nicaragua to compensate Costa Rica after it damaged rainforests and wetlands in an unlawful incursion.

But courts can also play a critical role in preventing mass violations of human rights and injustices in the first place. For the ICJ, this might involve ruling that states have obligations to carry out due diligence before the approval of a new mine or dam. To fully realise our human rights, the ICJ must take this sort of preventive approach to climate change.

The ICJ faces a pivotal choice. It can either address climate change narrowly and reactively, or it could examine state obligations from a broader perspective.

That broader perspective might find that states are obliged to take full stewardship of the environment for both present and future generations. This would go beyond global climate change agreements.

The problem currently is that certain state actions (and inactions) may be considered sufficient under the UN’s Paris agreement, but that does not mean those states are complying with their duties to tackle climate change under international human rights law. Climate change and ecosystem degradation can, of course, violate a wide range of human rights. If the ICJ were to legally clarify that states do have climate obligations that go beyond the Paris agreement, that would represent a significant step forward in international law.

There are some precedents. For instance, the international tribunal for law of the sea (Itlos), through a recent advisory opinion of its own, has already recognised that greenhouse gas emissions are a form of marine pollution. States, it says, have specific legal obligations to address such pollution under the UN convention on the law of the sea.

The ICJ would also be building on the pioneering ideas of one of its former judges, Christopher Weeramantry of Sri Lanka. He argued that humanity is not in a position of dominance but is a trustee of the environment and that this carries weight as international customary norm.

Listen to scientists and traditional knowledge holders

Although some courts worldwide have used findings from the IPCC (a global scientific advisory body) in their climate-related rulings, these findings are yet to play a major role in the ICJ. However, the IPCC was explicitly mentioned in the UN general assembly resolution requesting the advisory opinion, and the court now has the opportunity to elevate these critical insights.

It should also factor in the IPCC’s less well-known sister organisation, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ipbes)). Unlike the climate panel, the biodiversity platform weaves together science, practical and traditional knowledge-backed insights.

Peace with nature

Another way the ICJ can foster prevention is to focus not only on the symptoms of climate change and ecosystem degradation – the hurricanes, the enforced migrations and so on – but on their root causes.

This includes issues like inequality. After all, small island states such as the Seychelles face disproportionate impacts from climate change, despite doing very little to cause it. At the UN general assembly, the representative of Seychelles argued that the ICJ’s advisory opinion can help put a spotlight on the obligation of states to ensure that people in all countries have a right to a healthy environment.

“Climate Change,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024

This preventive approach can help foster peace with nature – the theme of the 2024 UN biodiversity conference – and thereby peace among people. This would set a powerful example for other courts, like the human rights courts of Europe, Africa and the Americas. It could inspire them to specify international and regional obligations in a way that promotes environmental justice and peace.

Collective action for future generations

The court should also take seriously the concerns of future generations. There is a vibrant social movement aiming to advance ambitious, rights-based societal action to address the root causes of planetary challenges. Spearheaded by the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, this campaign has united youth and children civil society organisations, nature conservation and human rights groups, and other groups forming the Alliance for a Climate Justice Advisory Opinion. The Vanuatu government added its support to this call through its leadership and collaboration within the wider UN membership.

The passing of the UN general assembly resolution requesting the ICJ’s advisory opinion is in itself an achievement showing that the ICJ is not solely the domain of senior international lawyers. Instead, it can become an intergenerational space where vibrant social movements can also contribute to transformative international law.

If the ICJ does take a preventive and systemic approach, it would be a turning point for global intergenerational and interspecies justice and peace. The world now waits to see whether the court will seize this critical opportunity.

Claudia Ituarte-Lima, Leader of the Human Rights and Environment Thematic Area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Court of Appeal in The Hague in February ordered the government to stop exporting components due to concerns that they would be used to violate international law in the Gaza war, prompting the government to say that it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

“According to the advocate general (of the Supreme Court), the Court of Appeal was justified in finding that there is a clear risk that Israel’s F-35 fighter jets are being used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip,” the court’s advisor explained.

The Netherlands houses one of several regional warehouses of US-owned F-35 components, which are distributed to countries that request them, including Israel, which has requested at least one shipment since 7 October, 2023.

The Supreme Court said it would rule on the appeal as soon as possible, without giving a specific date.

br> Image by Military_Material from Pixabay

Human rights groups that brought the case against the state, including Oxfam Netherlands, welcomed the court’s recommendation.

“The government should wait no longer and change course. The complicity in the atrocious violence in Gaza needs to stop as quickly as possible,” the group urged in a statement.

Gaza officials confirmed the Israeli war has killed nearly 44,200 people and caused nearly all of Gaza’s population to be displaced at least once, while vast areas of the territory have been destroyed.

by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

But a term that many seem to agree on is that the warrants represent an earthquake, though many are doubtful that Netanyahu will actually see his day in court.

The pro-Palestine camp, which as of late represents the majority of humankind, is torn between disbelief, skepticism and optimism. It turned out that the international system has a pulse, after all, though faint, but is enough to rekindle hope that legal and moral accountability are still possible.

This mixture of feelings and strong language is a reflection of several important and interconnected experiences: one, the unprecedented extermination of a whole population which is currently being carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza; two, the utter failure of the international community to stop the grisly genocide in the Strip; and, finally, the fact that the international legal system has historically failed to hold Israel, or any of the West’s allies anywhere, accountable to international law.

The real earthquake is the fact that this is the first time in the history of the ICC that a pro-western leader is held accountable for war crimes. Indeed, historically, the vast majority of arrest warrants, and actual detention of accused war criminals seemed to target the Global South, Africa in particular.

Israel, however, is not an ordinary “western” state. Zionism was a western-colonial invention, and the creation of Israel was only possible because of unhindered, die-hard western support.

Since its inception on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, Israel has served the role of the western-colonial citadel in the Middle East. The entire Israeli political discourse has been tailored and situated within western priorities and supposed values: civilisation, democracy, enlightenment, human rights and the like.

With time, Israel became largely an American project, embraced by American liberals and religious conservatives alike.

America’s religious crowds were motivated by the biblical notion that “whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, And whoever curses Israel will be cursed.” The liberals, too, held Israel within a spiritual discourse, although disproportionately favoured the classification of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East”, constantly emphasising the “special relationship”, the “unbreakable bond” and the rest.

Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, as a representative of the political establishment in Israel, and Gallant, as the leader of the military class, is also an indictment of the United States.

It is often reported that Israel would not have been able to carry on with its war – genocide – on Gaza without American military and political support. According to the investigative news website ProPublica, in the first year of the war, the US shipped over 50,000 tonnes of weaponry to Israel.

Mainstream American media and journalists are also culpable in that genocide. They elevated the now war criminals Netanyahu and Gallant, along with other Israeli political and military leaders, as if they were the defenders of a “civilised world” against the “barbarians”. Those in the conservative media circles portrayed them as if they were prophets doing God’s work against the supposed heathens of the South.

“ICC Warrant,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

They, too, have been indicted by the ICC, the kind of moral indictment, and “hard stigma”, that can never be eradicated.

When Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, originally filed for arrest warrants in May, many were in doubt, and justifiably so. The Israelis felt that their country commanded the needed support to disallow such warrants in the first place. They cited previous attempts, including a Belgian court case where victims of Israeli brutality in Lebanon attempted to hold former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accountable for the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Not only was the case dropped in 2003, but Belgium was pressured by the US to change its own laws so that they do not include universal jurisdiction in the case of genocide.

The Americans, too, were not too worried, as they were ready to punish ICC judges, defame Khan himself, and, according to a recent social media post by US Senator Tom Cotton, ready to “invade the Hague”.

In fact, this is not the first time that Americans, who are not signatories of the Rome Statute, thus not members of the ICC, flexed their muscles against those who merely attempted to enforce international law. In September 2020, the US government imposed sanctions on then-Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and another senior official, Phakiso Mochochoko.

Even those who wanted to see accountability for the Israeli genocide were in doubt, especially as pro-Israeli western governments, like that of Germany, stepped forward to prevent the warrants from being issued. Unreasonable delays in the proceedings contributed to the skepticism, especially as Khan himself was suddenly being paraded for supposed “sexual misconduct”.

Yet, after all of this, on 21 November the arrest warrants were issued, charging Netanyahu and Gallant with alleged “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” – the other punishable offenses within the ICC jurisdiction being genocide and aggression.

Considering that the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has already found that it is plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide and is currently investigating the case, Israel, as a state, and top Israeli leaders have suddenly, and deservingly so, become the enemies of humanity.

While it is right and legitimate to argue that what matters most is the tangible outcome of these cases – ending the genocide while holding the Israeli war criminals accountable – we must not miss the greater meaning of these earth-shattering events.

The ICJ and the ICC are essentially two western institutions created to police the world by reinforcing the double standards resulting from the post-World War II western-dominated international system.

They are the legal equivalent of the Bretton Woods agreement, which regulated the international monetary system to serve US western interests. Though, in theory, they championed universally commendable values, in practice they merely served as tools of control and dominance for the western order.

For years, the world has been in a state of obvious and irreversible change. New powers were rising and others were shrinking. Political turmoil in the US, Britain and France were only reflections of the internal struggle in the west’s ruling classes. The incredible rise of China, the war in Europe and the growing resistance in the Middle East were outcomes and accelerators of that change.

Thus the constant call for reforms in the post-WWII international system to reflect in a more equitable way the new global realities. Despite American-western resistance to change, new geopolitical formations continued to take place, regardless.

The Gaza genocide represents a watershed moment in these global dynamics. This was reflected in Karim Khan’s language when he requested the arrest warrants, stressing on the credibility of the court. “This is why we have a court,” he said in an exclusive interview with CNN on 20 May. “It’s about the equal application of the law. No people are better than another. No people anywhere are saints.”

The emphasis on credibility here is a culmination of the obvious loss of credibility on all fronts. This should hardly be a surprise as it was in the west, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, the very political entity that championed, defended and sustained the Israeli genocide.

While one would like to believe that the ICC’s arrest warrants were made exclusively for the sake of the victims of the Israeli genocide, plenty of evidence suggests that the unexpected move was a desperate western attempt at salvaging whatever little credibility it had maintained up to that moment.

The US government, an unrepentant violator of human rights, has maintained its strong position in defence of Israel, shaming the ICC for the warrants, not the Israeli war criminals for committing the genocide.

The conflict in Europe has been much more palpable, however, reflected in the position of Germany, which said it would “carefully examine” the arrest warrants but that it is “hard to imagine that we would make arrests on this basis”.

One remains hopeful that the shifts of global powers will eventually save international law from the hypocrisy and opportunism of the west. But what is clear for now is that the west’s own conflict will only gain momentum. Will those who created the Zionist Israeli menace be the very powers that demolish it? One is doubtful.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

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“France is committed to international justice and its independence,” Barrot said in an interview for France 3 TV channel.

“We have been saying from the very beginning that Israel has the right to defend itself within the framework of respect for international law.”

“Each time Israel violates international law, blocking access to aid, bombing civilians, forcibly displacing them, establishing colonies in the West Bank.”

He added they “strongly” condemn these actions.

Asked if he supported the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, Barrot said: “I cannot put myself in the position of the court in any circumstance.”

Barrot argued that the ICC’s arrest warrant amounted to “the formalization of the accusation against certain politicians.”

Regarding the question of whether Netanyahu would be arrested if he visited France, Barrot said: “France will always apply international law.”

The ICC, in a landmark move on Thursday, issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel has launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in October last year, killing more than 44,000 people, most of them women and children.

It has also engaged in cross-border warfare with Lebanon, launching an air campaign in late September against what it claims are Hezbollah targets.

Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on Gaza.

Middle East Monitor

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——

Bonus Video Added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. What’s next? | The Take”

(The Conversation) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader, Mohammed Deif. The court claims both sides have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes from the day Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 onwards.

Although a warrant was issued for Deif, Israel has said he was killed in an air strike in July. But Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied this claim. If they were ever to be judged at the ICC, a conviction is conceivable.

The charges of the court against Netanyahu are severe. The three-judge panel unanimously said that he and Gallant are “co-perpetrators for committing the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.

The judges also “found reasonable grounds to believe that they bear criminal responsibility” … “for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”. The charges are also backed by the work of the International Court of Justice, which has found that it is “plausible” that Israel has committed acts in Gaza that violate the Genocide Convention.

If arrested, Netanyahu would go through a trial, and he could then be acquitted, or convicted. In the latter case, Netanyahu would join the ranks of leaders considered perpetrators of crimes against humanity, such as Charles Taylor of Liberia, Hissène Habré of Chad, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Radovan Karadžić of Serbia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Joseph Stalin of the former Soviet Union, Mao Zedong of China, and Adolf Hitler of Germany.

“War Criminal,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Next steps

The arrest warrants rely on ICC member states carrying them out. And this is by no means a foregone conclusion. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has been wanted by the court since 2023 for his role in directing attacks at civilians in Ukraine and illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.

But Putin was not arrested on a recent visit to Mongolia, a state that is party to the ICC, after the Mongolian authorities had assured him he would be safe. That said, he was unable to travel to South Africa when leaders from the Brics economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met in Johannesburg in 2023.

This was due to the experience in South Africa of former Sudanese president, Omar Al-Bashir. Bashir, for whom the ICC granted arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010 for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage against civilians in Darfur, travelled to South Africa in 2015 to attend an African Union summit. But he had to leave abruptly for fear of arrest.

South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in 2016 that the government’s failure to arrest him was unlawful. And the ICC ruled against South Africa on its “shameful failure” to arrest Bashir the following year. He was also able to travel freely to other ICC member states, including Chad, Kenya and Jordan.

Bashir was overthrown in a military coup in 2019 and placed under arrest. He is now persona non grata in Sudan where he was convicted of corruption, sentenced to two years in prison, and is being investigated for his role in the coup that brought him to power.

Not arresting criminals inflicts damage on the ICC, which already has a weak record of prosecutions. For example, after former president of Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagb, was charged then acquitted. But it also takes away a major opportunity to achieve justice for victims of serious crimes.

Dramatic political implications

The likelihood of Netanyahu, who has become the first ever leader of a western country to be charged by the ICC, appearing at the Hague is low. But the political implications of the arrest warrants for Netanyahu are, at any rate, dramatic.

Netanyahu knew the ICC would be able to hold him to account for his political decisions, and this is exactly why he disapproved of Palestine joining the ICC in 2015.

In practice, Netanyahu might lose even more legitimacy in his own country than he has done already with some groups. Civil society groups in Israel are following the work of the ICC very closely.

B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based non-profit organisation that documents human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, has said that the ICC intervention and ICJ rulings “are a chance for us, Israelis, to realise that … upholding a regime of supremacy, violence and oppression necessarily involves crimes and severe violation of human rights”.

Netanyahu will also be limited in his travels, and viewed as a pariah in many of the 124 states that are party to the ICC. This is a view that would be shared by most leaders of European states, including Germany. In May, a spokesperson for the German government hinted that Germany would arrest Netanyahu should warrants be issued.

The EU is, for the moment, unlikely to be able to use its global human rights’ sanctions regime against Netanyahu, which allows targeted measures against foreign nationals who are deemed responsible for gross violations of human rights. This is because unanimity across the bloc is necessary, and some states such as Austria, Czechia, Hungary and Germany could be reluctant to agree to this. Even the French foreign ministry spokesperson said: “It’s a point that is legally complex.” But the EU is a strong supporter of the ICC, so there will be pressure in governments of all EU states to act against Netanyahu.

The political implications of this decision are not isolated to Netanyahu. Pro-Palestinian protest activity has taken place at over 500 US colleges since October 7. And the UK has now joined most EU states in supporting Netanyahu’s arrest.

The US is now very much isolated among western countries in its lack of support for international law. The ICC, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly visible in its quest for international justice for victims.

Catherine Gegout, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Nottingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathise with the Palestinians?” Albanese said in her statement about the need to “recognise (Israel’s war on Gaza) as a genocide”. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza demonstrate that empathy has evaporated from this room,” she added.

Was Albanese too idealistic when she chose to appeal to empathy which, in her words, represents “the glue that makes us stand united as humanity”?

The answer largely depends on how we wish to define the role being played by the UN and its various institutions; whether its global platform was established as a guarantor of peace, or as a political club for those with military might and political power to impose their agendas on the rest of the world?

Albanese is not the first person to express deep frustration with the institutional, let alone the moral collapse of the UN, or the inability of the institution to effect any kind of tangible change, especially during times of great crises.

The UN’s own Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, himself had accused the executive branch of the UN, the Security Council, of being “outdated”, “unfair” and an “ineffective system”.

“The truth is that the Security Council has systematically failed in relation to the capacity to put an end to the most dramatic conflicts that we face today,” he said, referring to “Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine”. Also, although noting that “The UN is not the Security Council”, Guterres acknowledged that all UN bodies “suffer from the fact that the people look at them and think, ‘Well, but the Security Council has failed us.’”

Some UN officials, however, are mainly concerned about how the UN’s failure is compromising the standing of the international system, thus whatever remains of their own credibility. But some, like Albanese, are indeed driven by an overriding sense of humanity.

On 28 October, 2023, mere weeks after the start of the war, the Director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights left his post because he could no longer find any room to reconcile between the failure to stop the war in Gaza and the credibility of the institution.

“This will be my last communication to you,” Craig Mokhiber wrote to the UN High Commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk. “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organisation we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber added.

The phrase “once again” may explain why the UN official made his decision to leave shortly after the start of the war. He felt that history was repeating itself, in all its gory details, while the international community remained divided between powerlessness and apathy.

The problem is multi-layered, complicated by the fact that UN officials and employees do not have the power to alter the very skewed structure of the world’s largest political institution. That power lies in the hands of those who wield political, military, financial and veto power.

“UN in Gaza,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

Within that context, countries like Israel can do whatever they want, including outlawing the very UN organisations that have been commissioned to uphold international law, as the Israeli Knesset did on 28 October when it passed a law banning UNRWA from conducting “any activity” or providing services in Israel and the Occupied Territories.

But is there a way out?

Many, especially in the Global South, believe that the UN has outlived its usefulness or needs serious reforms.

These assessments are valid, based on this simple maxim: The UN was established in 1945 with the main objectives of the “maintenance of international peace and security, the promotion of the well-being of the peoples of the world, and international cooperation to these ends.”

Very little of the above commitment has been achieved. In fact, not only has the UN failed at that primary mission, but it has become a manifestation of the unequalled distribution of power among its members.

Though the UN was formed following the atrocities of WWII, now it stands largely useless in its inability to stop similar atrocities in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the UN’s failures continue, its mandate will become even “more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world”, especially during these times of turmoil.

Albanese is right, of course, but considering the irreversible damage that has already taken place, one can hardly find a moral, let alone rational justification of why the UN, at least in its current form, should continue to exist.

Now that the Global South is finally rising with its own political, economic and legal initiatives, it is time for these new bodies to either offer a complete alternative to the UN or push for serious and irreversible reforms in the organisation.

Either that or the international system will continue to be defined by nothing but apathy and self-interest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

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According to UN spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) submitted 98 access requests for passage through a checkpoint in the Gaza Valley, but only 15 were approved.

He announced that “over the past three days, teams from OCHA, UN human rights agencies and other humanitarian groups have visited nine locations in Gaza City to assess the needs of hundreds of displaced families, many of whom are returning to northern Gaza.”

Dujarric expressed serious concerns for Palestinians still in northern Gaza due to the ongoing blockade, urging Israel to allow critical humanitarian operations.

Aid workers are deployed across #Gaza but their ability to operate is obstructed.

43% of our movements coordinated with the Israeli authorities in October were rejected and a further 16% faced impediments.#AccessDenied

The full update: https://t.co/8U9ae2Gwac pic.twitter.com/ElHtcuXy8n

— OCHA OPT (Palestine) (@ochaopt) November 12, 2024

Moreover, a new report from OCHA further reveals that humanitarian groups submitted 50 requests to enter northern Gaza in October, of which 33 were denied and eight were accepted but faced delays that disturbed their missions, according to a UN spokesperson.

The report says,

“Humanitarian access to northern Gaza, particularly north Gaza governorate, was extremely limited. OCHA registered 98 attempts for coordinated movements to northern Gaza via the checkpoint along Wadi Gaza, of which 85 per cent were denied or impeded. Only 9 were able to move through the checkpoint without issues. Since approximately 6 October, the main towns of North Gaza governorate – Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia – have been under an Israeli forces siege, with the access of humanitarian missions being blocked, with very few exceptions.”

OCHA added,

“From 6 to 31 October, no humanitarian movements were facilitated by the Israeli authorities to Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, the main towns in North Gaza. During this period, thirty-six (36) mission requests were submitted to access these areas, of which twenty-seven (27) were denied and nine (9) were impeded. Of the impeded missions, only three (3) were able to fulfill some of their objectives and three (3) were impeded so significantly it was not possible to achieve any movement objectives. In addition, 14 Erez West humanitarian cargo pick up missions intended to distribute humanitarian supplies in Jabalya were not facilitated to reach people in dire need of assistance.”

“Flying Dutchman,” Digital, Midjourney / IbisPaint, 2024.

The report comes amid an escalating humanitarian crisis, as northern Gaza faces severe famine conditions after over 50 days with no aid or supplies allowed in. UN agencies warn that the area’s hundreds of thousands of residents are enduring extreme violence, including forced displacement and life-threatening shortages of food and resources.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including dozens of patients in three hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, were “in immediate danger of starvation or long-term health consequences”, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned on Sunday.

The Monitor added that “Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is one component of its ongoing genocide in the Strip, which also includes mass killings and forced displacement”.

Israel has continued a devastating offensive on Gaza since an attack last year by Hamas, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.

More than 43,600 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 103,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Two paragraphs quoted from the OCHA report were inserted.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The recent Israeli measures against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—including two controversial bills to ban UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control—are certainly a distressing development. In the early years of Israel’s statehood, after its 1948 establishment, Israel’s UN membership was held up for two years due to unresolved questions around the status of displaced Palestinians. The United Nations was still quite young when it passed Resolution 194, which recognized the rights of Palestinian refugees to return home and receive compensation for their losses—a commitment that has influenced rounds of talks over the decades.

Since then, this resolution has been a pivotal point in discussions between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians have continued to demand that Israel acknowledge its role in this forced displacement and provide compensation, seeing it not only as a matter of historical fact but as an overdue moral obligation. Today, Israel’s treatment of UNRWA reflects the chronic tension between its own state objectives and a humanitarian question the UN has never abandoned. Israel’s recent actions raise pricking questions about its commitment to that international consensus and the lingering need for accountability in this conflict.

The United States, in order to address the dire conditions faced by Palestinian refugees along Israel’s borders, played a major role in establishing UNRWA in 1950. This agency, originally backed by substantial American funding, became a critical lifeline for Palestinian refugees across the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, continuously serving a population that is now almost six million. Since its inception, UNRWA has remained a purely humanitarian outfit in every sense, focused solely on delivering essential services such as education, food, medical care, and fuel to a community facing immense hardship.

“UN in Gaza,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

However, this lifeline faced a serious setback during the Trump administration, which squeezed U.S. contributions. Biden, due to mounting pressure from pro-Israel factions in Congress, partly upheld this a stance . The funding gap has emboldened Israel’s right-wing extremist leaders to diminish the significance of the Palestinian refugee crisis in global discourse. Obviously, without UNRWA, Palestinians risk losing their most vital support system, which provides stability in an otherwise precarious situation.

Although UNRWA operates strictly within its UN mandate, its mere presence has become a focal point in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Over the years, Israel’s supporters have worked to erode the agency’s reputation, urging major contributors to withhold funding or, in some cases, presenting dubious claims about UNRWA’s operations. The accusation that UNRWA staff were somehow complicit in Hamas’ attacks on October 7 was promptly investigated by a special UN committee. The findings were unequivocal: no evidence linked UNRWA staff to any wrongdoing. The inquiry exposed and rebutted Israel’s baseless allegations.

The UN inquiry divulged that Israel hadn’t provided names or credible information to substantiate these allegations. In fact, UNRWA had been requesting such details from Israel since 2011, with no response. This episode has exposed the continued challenges faced by UNRWA in executing its mandate amidst politicized pressure from Israel.

In a stunning turn of events on October 28, Israel’s Knesset overwhelmingly voted to ban the UNRWA from operating within Israel, with 92 out of 120 members supporting the move. In a second measure, 87 Knesset members also approved a ban on Israeli state authorities interacting with UNRWA, effectively hobbling its capacity to operate in the Occupied Territories. This week, foreign ministers from Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the UK warned of the “devastating consequences” this ban could unleash across the West Bank and Gaza.

Shortly before this, in another blatant display of brutal aggression, Israeli authorities seized the land in East Jerusalem housing UNRWA’s headquarters, reportedly to construct 1,440 new settlement units. This move contravenes international law.

The timing and audacity of these actions have left the international community grappling with a troubling reality. Israel’s plans to dismantle the very mechanisms designed to support and assist vulnerable Palestinians will not only aggravate the humanitarian crisis but also deepen the operational problems for the agency. In choosing to silence the very agency tasked with aiding displaced Palestinians, Israel is seriously damaging its own legitimacy on the global stage. In so doing, Israel is actually strengthening the case of those who question that very legitimacy. Ironically, in attempting to erase the presence of Palestinian refugees from its landscape, Israel’s actions could very well enhance the visibility of that issue.

(The Conversation) – Israel’s relationship with the United Nations has historically been strained, but over the past year, tensions have reached new levels. On October 28, the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) passed a law to prohibit operations of the UN’s relief and works agency (Unrwa) – the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees – within the territory it controls. It’s a legal and political development which many fear will have grave humanitarian consequences for Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.

The decision also prompts questions about what lies ahead for the increasingly divisive relationship between the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the UN. There is even speculation that the Unrwa ban could lead to Israel being expelled from the UN general assembly.

Israel’s relations with the UN have long been fractious. But Unrwa has come in for particular criticism from successive Israeli governments over the years.

The agency was set up in 1949 to support Palestinian refugees displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. What was originally intended to be a temporary agency has now operated for more than seven decades, thanks to the unending hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian people. In addition to humanitarian assistance, Unrwa provides education, healthcare and a range of social services to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Unrwa’s schools have been a particular bugbear for Israeli critics. It has been pointed out that textbooks provided by the Palestinian Authority and used in some Unrwa schools were “pivotal in radicalising generations of Gazans”. There have also been allegations that money intended to support Unrwa relief works has been finding its way to Hamas.

But it was the alleged involvement of Unrwa employees in the October 7 attack on Israel, spearheaded by Hamas, that brought the issue to a head earlier this year. In January, Israel presented Joe Biden’s US administration with a dossier that purported to present evidence that 12 Unrwa staff had taken an active part in the attack. The UN announced it had dismissed the surviving staff named in the dossier – but the accusations led several countries to suspend their Unrwa funding.

Unrwa’s commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, described the suspension of funding as a “collective punishment”. He said it would have grave consequences for Gaza’s civilians who were – and remain – at high risk of famine.

An independent review set up by Lazzarini reported in April and found no evidence that the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas. Instead, it stressed how Unrwa’s work was an “indispensable lifeline” for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, international funding of Unrwa was resumed by all countries but the US.

At loggerheads

Now Israel has gone a step further and banned Unrwa operations. This appears to be the latest blow in a campaign of hostility against the UN that has been years in the making.

In recent years, Netanyahu’s anti-UN rhetoric has escalated considerably. In 2022, the UN general assembly (UNGA) voted in favour of a resolution calling for the International Court of Justice to give its opinion on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory”. Netanyahu called the decision “despicable”. He refused to recognise the vote, saying:

Like hundreds of the twisted decisions against Israel taken by the UNGA over the years, today’s despicable decision will not bind the Israeli government. The Jewish nation is not an occupier in its own land and its own eternal capital, Jerusalem.

During the past year, as it has continued its assault on Gaza, Israel’s efforts to delegitimise the UN have also intensified. At the beginning of October, after Iran had launched a barrage of rockets at Israeli military installations, Israel barred the UN secretary general, António Guterres, from entering the country. Foreign minister Israel Katz commented: “Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel … does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil.”

“Death of UNRWA,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Crop2Comic, 2024.

Meanwhile, units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been involved in a number of incidents which have threatened the safety of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon (Unifil). The peacekeepers are there under a mandate to safeguard Lebanese civilians in the area, where Israel has been conducting what it calls its “military operation” since the beginning of October. Many scholars of international law believe the IDF’s actions could be interpreted as war crimes.

This in turn led to a public spat with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Calling on Israel to respect the neutrality of Unifil peacekeepers, Macron said Netanyahu should “not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN” – to which Netanyahu replied:

It was not the UN resolution that established the state of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, including from the Vichy regime in France.

The last clause was a pointed reminder that a section of the French government collaborated with the Nazi regime in the extermination of French Jews.

International condemnation

But it’s the decision to bar Unrwa from Israel that has drawn the harshest international criticism, and which threatens to further isolate the country diplomatically. The UN secretary general has been joined by the EU and US in urging Israel to reconsider.

Washington has already been highly critical of what it describes as “Israeli efforts to starve Palestinians” in parts of Gaza, and the US and UK are both reported to be considering suspending arms sales to Israel.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, said the law “amounts to the criminalisation of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis”. But Israel has signalled it intends to hold firm, while insisting it will “continue to do everything in its power” to ensure that aid continues to reach “ordinary Gazans”.

But the vast majority of Gaza’s population is now displaced. Most of the built infrastructure – including hospitals – has been destroyed. And Israel’s military operations are forcing most civilians out of the north of the Gaza Strip. So, the question now is whether the effective crippling of the largest international aid agency working in Gaza will simply make matters worse for the people living there.

Lisa Strömbom, Ph D, Associate Professor, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.