Since my column last Thursday, Israeli bombings in Gaza have intensified. The Palestinian death toll has passed the 10,000 mark, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, under Hamas control, and includes more than 4,000 children. But that’s not all.
The Israeli army admits to having bombed a convoy of ambulances on Friday near Al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical establishment in Gaza, which serves as a refuge for around 20,000 displaced people, according to local authorities. Several schools affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East have also been bombed by Israeli forces since last week, resulting in dozens of deaths. Since October 8, 88 UN employees have been killed in Gaza. But that’s not all.
On Sunday, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested in a radio interview that an atomic bomb could be dropped on Gaza to put an end to Hamas. He has since been suspended from his post — just suspended — by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But that’s not all.
Since Friday, Israel has been forcing the return of thousands of Palestinian workers to Gaza. The day after the Hamas attack on October 7, the Israeli government canceled the work permits of 18,500 Gazans present on its territory. Since then, they have been arrested by the thousands and locked up in detention centers, where many have decried the violence of the guards. After more than three weeks of incarceration, these men were directed by Israeli forces towards the crossing located in the north of the Gaza Strip, where the bombings have caused the most damage during the last month. Many of them no longer have a home to return to. But that’s not all.
Israeli forces have also arrested and detained hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. On Monday, 22-year-old activist Ahed Tamimi, who over the years had become a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the West Bank, joined the group of those incarcerated. But that’s not all.
Pressure to stop the bombing is mounting within Israel itself. Indeed, several families of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas criticize Netanyahu for not making the return of their loved ones a priority. Nor would the Prime Minister do enough to communicate with the families of the hostages or attend the funerals of the October 7 victims. Polls have shown that a growing part of Israeli public opinion would be in favor of a pause in hostilities of at least a few days, which would allow negotiation and the exchange of certain hostages.
Hamas also claims that several dozen Israeli hostages have already been killed in bombings by their own army. Let us agree: we must take Hamas communications with a very, very large grain of salt. But questions as painful as they are urgent remain: if the Israeli army does not hesitate to bomb populations when it is suspected that Hamas is among them, and that the Israeli hostages are with Hamas, how can Netanyahu guarantee that he is not decimating the people in whose name his military operation was launched?
If there is no more water and food for Gazans, how could there be any left for Israeli hostages taken in Gaza? Even for people who have little regard for Palestinian lives, the current military strategy is becoming unsustainable. But that’s not all.
Joe Biden is also putting pressure on Netanyahu to decree “humanitarian pauses”, which would allow the delivery of food and the return of certain hostages. But on Friday, the content of an exchange between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli leaders was made public by US media Axios. According to a US source and two Israeli sources, Blinken told the Israelis that humanitarian pauses would “buy time” for the ground offensive in Gaza. Overall, it is believed that the pause order would increase support for Israel among the American public.
Translation: we want less to put an end to the bombings than for them to take place without generating as much international indignation. We also seem to be counting on the possible fatigue of the public. After a month of violence, the strategy has its merit. It would also explain part of the linguistic creativity demonstrated by speaking of “pauses” or “humanitarian truces” while avoiding saying “ceasefire”. But that’s not all.
UN experts, academics and citizens alike who raise warnings about the possibility of genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians are increasingly under attack from all sides. We forget that, since 2005, all States have adopted the principle of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) of populations against these types of horrors at the United Nations. The idea implies in particular that the international community must act when a population is at risk and the State in charge is not concerned about it. For R2P to have meaning, it must generate denunciations before an at-fault state has reached the end of its violence – and not only after the fact, before an international tribunal.
For these reasons, it is impossible to look away from Gaza right now. Let’s call it a “duty” of conscience.
In closing, let us highlight Justin Trudeau’s outing against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, which are skyrocketing in Canada. Too many of our citizens live in fear. We must join him in denouncing the attacks against the Jewish and Muslim communities and, at the same time, urging him to take his responsibilities internationally to reduce tensions here.
Anthropologist, Emilie Nicolas is a columnist at Duty and to Release. She hosts the podcast Detours for Canadaland.