Smoke billowing above buildings in the Gaza Strip on October 19, 2023. Photo Credit WHO
Tel Aviv/Manama/Ramallah: Even as it acknowledges the devastation in Gaza, the United States today dismissed the charges of genocide against Israel as a distraction. Israel faces a trial in the International Court of Justice on a petition moved by South Africa at a time when the gap between Arab leaders and Israel on specific security, reconstruction, and governance arrangements for Gaza has increased. On Thursday, January 11, 2024, a proceeding will start in the International Court of Justice in The Hague whereby South Africa has sued Israel for genocide.
“We believe the submission against Israel to the International Court of Justice distracts the world from all of these important efforts [to forge a path toward lasting peace and security in the region]. And moreover, the charge of genocide is meritless. It’s particularly galling, given that those who are attacking Israel – Hamas, Hizballah, the Houthis, as well as their supporter, Iran – continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews,” US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said today.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said his country would present its case of using self-defence, “under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law, where we are doing our utmost in under extremely complicated circumstances on the ground, to make sure that there will be no unintended consequences and no civilian casualties. We are alerting, we are calling, we are showing, we are sending leaflets – we are using all the means that international law enables us in order to move out people so that we can unravel this huge city of terror underneath in people’s homes, living rooms, and bedrooms, mosques, and shops, and schools”.
Regarding the gap between the Arab World and Israel following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the creation of a separate Palestinian state, Blinken said although he would not speak for the prime minister or anyone in the Israeli Government about their views, it was essential to the countries in the region “that there also be a clear pathway to the realization of Palestinian political rights and a Palestinian state”.
The leaders of Türkiye, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have all shared their concerns about the spread of the conflict. The situation is getting tense and giving a new twist to the prevailing tension, the Israeli Government has refused to transfer the Palestinian Authority’s money, and Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Yoel Smotrich said yesterday he won’t give money to the ‘2 million Nazis’ in Gaza, just like the U.S. won’t give money to al-Qaida.
Blinken acknowledged that the money belonged to the Palestinian Authority and they should have it in order to be able to make sure that they can pay their people who are providing essential services, including doing essential work in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority security forces who are playing a very important role in trying to keep peace, security, and stability in the West Bank – “something that’s profoundly in Israel’s interest. So we believe that those revenues should be released to them”.
Blinken today also met President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and discussed the importance of reforming the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian governance so that it can effectively take responsibility for Gaza – so that Gaza and the West Bank can be reunited under a Palestinian leadership. “It’s very clear to me from President Abbas that he’s prepared to move forward and engage in all of these efforts,” Blinken claimed. After meeting Blinken, Abbas also had meetings with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt, as well as King Abdullah of Jordan, to discuss these issues.
“And I can say that after this week in the region, it’s clear that countries around the region are seized with the need, first of all, to prevent the conflict from spreading, but also to design a better path forward for the region as a whole and particularly for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Blinken said. Blinken stressed in Bahrain’s capital Manama: “There’s a real sense of urgency.”
The Hizbollah has escalated launching its missiles from Lebanon into northern Israel which has responded with air strikes on Hizbollah bases in southern Lebanon. While the US sees the border between Israel and Lebanon as one of the areas of “real concern”, it now recognises that the Israel-Hamas conflict can easily metastasize, “causing even more insecurity and even more suffering”. Earlier on January 7, 2024, Blinken shared the concern with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that this is not just a regional issue but a matter of global concern. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani too stressed that it was needed to contain this crisis to help de-escalate the other regions such as Syria and Iraq and the Red Sea.
“We share a commitment to ensure that the conflict does not expand, and I think we also share a commitment to use the influence, the relationships, the ties that we have with different parties in the region to try to avoid escalation and to deter new fronts from opening. This is not just a regional issue; it’s a matter of global concern,” Blinken stated. He added: “And that’s certainly the case when it comes to the Houthi attacks on freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest trade corridors: the Red Sea”.
The attacks by the Yemen-based Houthi rebels have directly affected the commercial interests of more than 40 countries. They’ve disrupted or diverted nearly 20 per cent of global shipping and more than a dozen shipping companies have had to reroute thousands of vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
While the United States has launched ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ together with more than 20 countries to defend the safety and security of commercial shipping across the Red Sea, today it warned the Houthi that if their attacks continued, “there will be consequences”. On January 9, 2024, US and British jets and warships shot down 21 drones and missiles launched by the Houthi targeting a US ship providing support to Israel.
The US has also blamed Iran behind the Houthi attacks, and Blinken today said “We’ve made clear and many other countries made clear, there’ll be consequences for the Houthis’ actions. We’ve also repeatedly tried to make clear to Iran, as other countries have as well, that the support that they’re providing to the Houthis, including for these actions, needs to stop. It’s not in their interest to see the conflict escalated, and we’re not the only ones who sent that message to Iran”.
But it’s not just the Houthis’ attacks and the Hizbollah attacks, but also threats by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to kill Hamas leaders anywhere in the world.
In Beirut the deputy leader of Hamas’ political bureau Saleh al-Aruri was killed along with his six other colleagues in a strike, and the United Nations Human Rights noted that Israel has neither provided any legal justification for the strike nor reported it to the Security Council, as required by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
That apart, the Iraqi government accused the United States-led international coalition forces of carrying out a drone strike targeting an Iran-aligned paramilitary group in Baghdad, that killed a senior leader in the pro-government Hashd al-Shaabi military group. The Iraqi government has now turned to surveys to ask citizens about their views on the continued deployment of the US-led coalition against the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group in the country. In Iran, some officials were quick to suspect Israeli hand in the January 3 blast that killed at least 84 people near the grave of General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman, till ISIS took responsibility, stating Soleimani had been “involved in the killing of thousands of Muslims [ISIS fighters] in Iraq and Syria.”.
In the meantime, besides more than 23, 000 deaths and over 10,000 injured in the three-month-old conflict, 90 per cent of Gaza’s population continues to face acute food insecurity, according to the United Nations. For children, the effects of long periods without sufficient food can have lifelong consequences. UNICEF has warned that intensifying conflict, malnutrition and disease in the Gaza Strip threaten over 1.1 million children
The US believes that Israel would now move to a lower-intensity phase of its military operation in the north of the Gaza Strip.
– global bihari bureau
