Gaza: Western countries are “becoming actively complicit in this carnage”, accuses Rony Brauman, former president of MSF

Guest on franceinfo on Thursday, the former president of Doctors Without Borders is concerned about the intervention of Western countries in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Western countries are “becoming actively complicit in this carnage and butchery”, accused, Thursday February 8, on franceinfo Rony Brauman, doctor, former president of Médecins sans srontières (MSF). Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a truce hoped for for several days in the Gaza Strip and announces an offensive on Rafah in the South.

“This offensive adds disaster to disaster”, explains the former humanitarian. While the United States worked with the Europeans for this long-lasting truce, Rony Brauman judges “contradictory to call on one side for a truce and on the other to continue to supply the most powerful side with arms and ammunition”in this case Israel.

Franceinfo: What would a battle for Rafah look like when more than a million Palestinians are stuck in southern Gaza?

Rony Brauman: Whatever direction these displaced people take, it is a descent of several degrees, right into despair, into fear, into unhappiness, into promiscuity, into the spread of epidemic diseases and probably into the preparation new generations inhabited by hatred, by the desire for revenge, in short by the preparation for a future of violence. So both from the point of view of what is happening now and what we can imagine in the future, this offensive adds disaster to disaster.

Rafah was the last place where aid workers could work. What’s going to happen ?

The few places where we could work are always extremely precarious places, where we could possibly work today, but get shot the next day. You can have travel authorization, and then sniper fire attacks you like animals, it’s absolutely atrocious. These atrocities are committed with the complicity of countries which claim to follow international law, humanitarian law, international legality, that is to say Western countries, first and foremost the United States. But with the active assistance of European countries including Germany, Great Britain and France. We are becoming actively complicit in this carnage and butchery.

Yet the United States is pressuring Israel for a truce. Benjamin Netanyahu wants to see his war through to the end?

The United States and Europe are working toward a longer-term truce. This is entirely desirable, but in the meantime, deliveries of weapons and ammunition continue at a tight pace. Every day, there is a sort of airlift between the United States in particular, but also Europe towards Israel, which allows thousands, thousands and thousands of missiles and various munitions to be fired. There is something a little contradictory in calling for a truce on the one hand and on the other continuing to supply arms and ammunition to the most powerful party, the one which holds all the levers for the next day’s decision. .

Do you think the impotence of the United Nations is worrying?

The appeals of the United Nations not only serve no purpose, but are received, as it were, with an arm of honor or a middle finger by Benyamin Netanyahu. I wonder if the United Nations will overcome this ordeal. It goes back a bit to what happened in 1935 after the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini’s fascist Italy which marked the end of the League of Nations. Will the United Nations survive this ordeal, knowing that a United Nations body speaks of a plausible genocide currently being perpetrated in the Gaza Strip and that members of the group of permanent members of the Security Council continue to refuel the party who is exclusively guilty of genocide.