Gaza Needs Water, Food, Electricity – and Justice, Daily Brief, 30 October, 2023
Daily Brief, 30 October, 2023
Daily Brief, 30 October, 2023
Israel began major ground operations in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, with grave concerns of yet more atrocities looming.
The ground offensive follows weeks of Israeli bombardment that have reduced large parts of Gaza to rubble. Reliable sources report thousands of civilians already killed, including thousands of children.
As Israeli ground troops invade the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian armed groups are continuing to indiscriminately launch rockets at Israeli communities.
The scale of the current violence is unprecedented, and looking back at previous flare-ups in fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza would inspire little confidence that we are about to see the restraint needed to prevent further mass atrocity crimes.
During the last major Israeli ground operation into Gaza in July and August 2014, for example, Israeli forces committed numerous war crimes, including fatally firing on civilians.
Palestinian armed groups also deliberately launched numerous rocket attacks towards Israeli communities in 2014, which are war crimes. They also deployed and kept munitions in areas that unnecessarily put civilians at risk.
There’s a whiff of history repeating itself today. There are unverified reports of Hamas using hospitals for military purposes. Those reports are alarming, as are signs Israel may attack them.
International humanitarian law is clear here. Fighters mustn’t exploit hospitals. And even if they do, hospitals enjoy a higher threshold of protection from attack: they shouldn’t be targeted unless used to “commit acts harmful to the enemy,” and after due warning.
Warnings should be clear and cannot be issued for the purpose of disrupting the functioning of the hospital or forcing an evacuation. Ordering patients, medical staff, and others to evacuate should only be used as a last resort.
Those unable to leave retain protections under the laws of war against indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Doctors, nurses, and ambulances have to be permitted to do their work and be protected in all circumstances.
In my Daily Briefs about Gaza over the past few weeks, I keep coming back again and again to international humanitarian law, and how all sides are bound by “the laws of war.”
As my expert colleague Clive Baldwin explains clearly in a new article, these laws have existed in some form for thousands of years, but the modern version is set out in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, alongside other treaties and customary international law. The fundamental rule is this: all parties must distinguish, at all times, between combatants and civilians.
Deliberately attacking civilians, taking civilian hostages, and collective punishment – like deliberately impeding the supply of vital aid and services to civilians – are all war crimes.
That’s well and good, you may say, but no one ever gets prosecuted in Israel and Palestine for these things. Too true. Those 2014 events I mention above are a sad example: the perpetrators of war crimes simply got away with them.
Will this time be any different? Will the unprecedented scale of the killings today finally move governments to back justice efforts?
There’s not a lot of hope for this part of the world right now generally but let me try to offer one small sliver of it.
The Prosecutor of International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, was at the Egypt-Gaza border this weekend saying, among other things:
“There shouldn’t be any impediment to humanitarian relief supplies going to children, women, and men – civilians. They are innocent. They have rights under international humanitarian law… [which] give rise to criminal responsibility when those rights are curtailed…”
In the immediate context of Gaza’s desperate humanitarian situation, it was a much-needed statement. All parties to the conflict have an obligation to facilitate aid and the safe movement of civilians at all times. Civilians should not have to wait for a ceasefire to be negotiated. They have international legal protections with or without one.
In 2021, the ICC prosecutor opened a formal investigation into serious crimes committed by all sides in Palestine, which is a member of the ICC. Karim Khan’s presence at the Rafa crossing into Gaza should make clear the urgency of this investigation.
Governments around the world should commit to ensuring the court has what it needs to do its job.
Water, food, fuel, electricity, security – these are the most immediate needs for the civilians of Gaza, nearly half of whom are children. They also deserve something more, as well: justice.
Daily Brief, October 26, 2023.
The water from the truck “was yellow and looked rusty,” a resident of the Syrian city of al-Hasakeh explained.
But what other choice did they have? For drinking, cooking, hygiene, and sanitation – people need water.
The water station that used to supply the area fell under Turkish control following Turkey’s 2019 military incursion into northeast Syria. Since then, the people in the Kurdish-held areas have experienced lengthy interruptions in water supply.
People in al-Hasakeh and other cities and towns are forced to rely on water from unregulated, privately owned trucks, which is not only expensive but also often poor quality and untested. As standards of sanitation have slipped, there have been outbreaks of water-borne illnesses and disease, including cholera last year.
The conflict has been at the heart of the water problem. Turkey, which controls the water station, has been failing to operate it at full capacity, and the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria has been withholding electricity needed to power the station.
The situation has deteriorated dramatically this month after drone strikes by Turkish Armed Forces on Kurdish-held areas further damaged critical infrastructure and resulted in more water and electricity disruptions for millions of people.
The strikes hit more than 150 locations in north and east Syria in the governorates of al-Hasakeh, Raqqa, and Aleppo. They killed dozens of people, including civilians, and reportedly damaged civilian structures.
The Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration confirmed the attacks on water and electrical power stations resulted in the “complete cutoff of electricity and water supply” from al-Hasakeh governorate. Critical oil installations and the only operational gas plant for domestic use in northeast Syria were also damaged by Turkey’s attacks.
All this only deepens the water crisis for people in al-Hasakeh.
This month’s drone strikes are not the first time Turkey appears to have intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure and deepened the region’s humanitarian crisis.
And time and again, it’s the people in places like al-Hasakeh, buying rusty yellow water from an unregulated truck, who bear the brunt of Turkey’s bombardment and destruction.
Daily Brief, 25 October, 2023
If there’s one thing everyone should take away from the conflict in Israel and Palestine over the past couple weeks – and in fact, from conflicts everywhere over the past forever – it’s this: atrocities do not justify atrocities.
If you read a million sentences about these events, at least remember these five words.
It’s not difficult to get the basic idea here. The “laws of war” apply to all sides in a conflict, and when one side violates those laws, it does not give license to the other side to ignore them. In fact, nothing one side does can excuse war crimes by the other side.
For example, the fact that Palestinian fighters committed horrific crimes against Israeli civilians does not justify Israeli authorities committing war crimes against Palestinian civilians. Deliberately impeding relief supplies to civilians is a war crime, as is collectively punishing civilians.
Similarly, the Israeli authorities’ systematic repression of Palestinians for decades, which amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, and holding Gaza’s 2.2 million people in what is effectively an open-air prison for more than 16 years – none of that justifies Hamas’s war crimes.
There are no excuses for war crimes. Rules are rules. Atrocities do not justify atrocities.
Of course, it is important to understand the context of any armed conflict. There’s a history, both recent and longer-term, and events are turned into drivers of war. No context excuses horrific acts. Understanding the context, though, can help us understand what’s going on right now.
It seems a pretty basic concept, right? But it’s amazing how easily (or maybe deliberately) it’s misunderstood.
In calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza yesterday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned Hamas’s “appalling” October 7 attacks and noted those attacks “did not happen in a vacuum.”
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres said. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”
Israel’s government was outraged. The foreign minister cancelled a meeting with Guterres, and Israel’s ambassador to the UN called on Guterres to resign immediately, saying the Secretary-General’s comments, “constitute a justification for terrorism and murder.”
But is naming the context of the conflict – those roots that are multiple and run deep – necessarily justifying the crimes committed within the conflict?
It really doesn’t seem so.
Guterres was very clear in his speech yesterday: “I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.” He wasn’t justifying any crimes whatsoever.
He also rightly pointed out that the blockade of Gaza amounted to the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people” and violated international law. He was seeking a humanitarian ceasefire to end “epic suffering” in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of civilians have been killed in airstrikes, and hospitals are unable to function. Israel has cut off water and electricity and blocked fuel shipments.
Guterres continued: “We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law; take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians…”
“Even war has rules,” he said.
And whatever the context and whatever the history, those rules apply to all sides.
Atrocities do not justify atrocities.
It’s a tragic, decades-long conflict. There have been multiple mass atrocities against civilians, and the perpetrators are never brought to justice. There was a blockade that left people without enough food, medicine, and fuel for months. Then, an entire population, some 120,000 people, fled for their lives over a few days.
That this horrific mass exodus – which happened to ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just weeks ago – has received so little international media and diplomatic attention says everything you need to know about the state of the world right now. It’s not that the world doesn’t care; it’s that there’s too much to care about in too many places at once.
Urgent, conflict-related crises usually get top billing, like Israel/Palestine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, even major conflicts and humanitarian crises often don’t make the cut. Think about atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, for example, or in Myanmar, or in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. It’s not just Nagorno-Karabakh in danger of getting overlooked in the global multi-crisis.
Still, the individual stories of human suffering are no less important from one crisis to the next. My colleague Tanya Lokshina has written a compelling feature article about one.
Agnessa Avanesyan is a 22-year-old who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in fear with her family at the end of September, when Azerbaijan re-took control of the region. They’re now staying in southern Armenia with relatives, all crammed into a small rural house for now – homeless, destitute, and still disoriented after an arduous three-day journey.
Agnessa describes how she and her younger sister Amanda, who both lived in Stepanakert (Khankendi in Azeri), Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city, were frightened when Azerbaijani forces attacked, and the city lost electricity and phones stopped working. They spent the night in the basement shelter of a hospital, shuddering at the sounds of explosions, hungry and cold.
Early the next day, they set out for their family’s village some 24 kilometers away – by foot and hitching part of the way.
“We didn’t think we’d make it,” Agnessa says. “The shelling was so close…”
After Azerbaijani forces opened the “Lachin corridor” – the road linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia – the villagers started leaving. The head of the local de-facto administration warned that Azerbaijani soldiers would come at any moment, and no one wanted to risk staying.
Agnessa’s family did not have a car, so they split up, squishing into three different vehicles driven by neighbors. There was no room for the sisters’ own belongings.
The car was low on gas. Given Azerbaijan’s blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, petrol was rare. They found some at a gas tank on the highway, but the scene was a free-for-all: people were storming the tank. An hour after Agnessa was there, the whole thing blew up, reportedly killing 220 people. Agnessa’s uncle was nearby and seriously injured.
The roads were clogged with people fleeing. One section that under normal circumstances takes less than 90 minutes to drive, took 42 hours.
“We were shivering all night from the cold because the car was moving half a meter per hour. An old man died in a truck close to us. He was too sick, too frail… Many cars broke down on the road…”
She had no idea where the cars with the rest of her family were.
“But the fear was the worst,” Agnessa said. “Seeing all those Azerbaijani soldiers on the road… All we were thinking of was to get away.”
How bad are things in the world right now? So bad, that there can be tens of thousands of Agnessas, and almost no one in the world has heard anything about their suffering. That 120,000 people can flee for their lives, and it’s not even among the “top stories” globally.
Unlike just about everyone else on social media over the past week or so, I don’t pretend to be an expert on Israel and Palestine.
I’ve worked on this conflict and the abuses that stem from it for a couple of decades, but I’ve not been deep in the thick of it, day after day like a true expert. As with so many other ongoing conflicts around the world, I tend to come in to support my expert colleagues only when things heat up.
Part of this involves me spending a lot of time on social media, where disinformation is rife around conflicts, particularly in such difficult moments. As if atrocities in response to atrocities is not bad enough, some partisans feel the need to invent atrocities for propaganda, too.
For me, however, perhaps the worst part of being on social media at these times – and this past week has been no exception – is how some people react to a new horror.
When, for example, I post something about children having been killed, I see some readers first wanting to know which children, before moving into outrage mode or justification mode. That mentality, that conditional humanity, is a significant part of the problem in many conflicts, I think.
I expect people to be concerned first and foremost that kids have been killed. I expect them to demand the killers be brought to justice. The victims were children, and these men with guns or bombs have killed them. Who gives a damn about anything else?
And I’m always surprised (I refuse to live otherwise) that some people’s empathy ends once they learn the child victims do not fit their preferred narrative.
As if to say: Oh, children of those people, that religion, that skin color – well, I’m sure the men with the guns or the bombs knew what they were doing. And it’s not their fault in any case. They had their reasons. What else can you expect them to do in this situation? Don’t forget what our side has suffered!
On social media, it’s most common with the international cheerleaders of conflicts, I think – those fans for their teams who sit on the sidelines and never have to worry about spending a minute in the field. It’s hard to tell sometimes, though, because so many of the loudest loudmouths online are anonymous.
People on the ground, people living in harm’s way, people who have experienced horrific loss or are desperately waiting for loved ones to return, will have strong emotions, naturally. Maybe some would wish for others to feel the same pain.
But many (I’d say most) people I’ve met who have been through something horrific, with time, come to the conclusion they’d never want another person to go through that experience. Some of the strongest activists for peace and justice I’ve met in various parts of the world have been through exactly this process.
The online proliferation of partisans on the sidelines of every conflict is maybe not new exactly, but it seriously doesn’t help. It can give the sense that the global public is more bloodthirsty than it really is, that the world will accept what decision-makers say “needs to be done.”
And chief among their appalling arguments is that not all children are equal, and atrocities against them can be justified when “our side” commits them. Humanity becomes conditional, depending on who’s doing the killing and which side’s innocents are dying.
And so, more children get killed.
It’s not just children, of course. We see all sorts of vulnerable and blameless people paying the price for the actions of armies and warlords everywhere: older people, for example, and other civilians.
Children have merely been top of mind lately, because children make up about half of Gaza’s population.
The Israeli government has laid siege to Gaza with disastrous humanitarian consequences. They’ve told people (half of them children) in northern Gaza to flee when they have nowhere to go. They are using white phosphorus in their military operations, putting civilians (half of them children) at further risk of serious and long-term injuries.
We’re now looking at the possibility of a full-scale invasion of Gaza with horrific consequences. The incendiary language of Israeli officials is chilling, given the Israeli’s military’s past record of indiscriminate attacks that have already killed thousands of civilians in Gaza.
None of these horrors are justified by the abominable Hamas-led attack on October 7 (whose victims include scores, if not hundreds, of children), nor by the appalling holding of hostages (which might include children), who of course should be released immediately and unconditionally.But no one gets a license to commit atrocities because the enemy has.
The “laws of war” – also known as international humanitarian law – enshrine basic principles of humanity that apply to all sides in a conflict. Unlike the loudmouths and propagandists on social media, they do not preference some children over others.
I’m not an expert on Israel-Palestine. You probably aren’t either. But we both know it’s wrong to kill kids, regardless of what “side” they’re from. And we both know most people agree with us. And international law agrees with us.
Humanity is not conditional.