Genocide is the result of the international community’s waiting game

What we are witnessing today in Gaza is the result of the UN normalising the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and the establishment of Israel on Palestinian territory in 1948. To exacerbate the consequences of colonisation, the UN determined that settlements established after 1967 are illegal under international law, which means that the earlier colonial settlements were exempted from scrutiny and colonisation became merely a series of international law violations separate from the process of achieving the Zionist concept of ‘Greater Israel’.

Even the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was incapable of calling for a ceasefire, which is a practical preliminary step towards halting Israel’s genocide. In a matter of hours following the ICJ ruling, Israel launched an attack on UNRWA which led to several Western countries, many of whom are major donors, to cut funding to the agency, leading to one of the most visible acts of complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians so far.

Not only that. A conference organised by the far right-wing settlement movement Nahala themed “Settlement Brings Victory and Security” was attended by Israeli Knesset members, 12 of which were Likud members. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for settlement expansion in Gaza, while former Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin called for Gaza to “be flourished with Jewish villages and Jewish cities.” The conference reinforced the so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians which several Israeli officials and diplomats have publicly endorsed and called for.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Middle East Monitor (@middleeastmonitor)

Meanwhile, today, Israeli forces entered Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin disguised as civilians and medical staff, killing three Palestinian men inside the hospital who, according to Israel’s never-ending security narrative, were part of a “Hamas terrorist cell”. This is just the latest in months of Israel attacking hospitals and other places which should be safe for Palestinians, carrying out extrajudicial killings on the pretext of a Hamas presence and indicating its larger-scale elimination of Palestinians, including in the occupied West Bank.

Following such large scale destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, its population almost entirely forcibly displaced – not to mention that Gaza is already a population of refugees – and Israel’s attempts to invade Rafah, which is the crossing point into Egypt and to where many Palestinians have fled, the international community’s silence is so macabre it beggars belief. The next, and honest step, for such a conglomeration of murderous hypocrites, is for the international community to stop its false assertions of supporting Palestinian rights. There is no way any government should be taken seriously after such overt support for Israel’s colonisation plans.

Israel is making Gaza barren, reflecting the Zionist myth of the barren land, which was false. Forcing Palestinians out of Gaza would empty the land of Palestinians, and the international community has no qualms about forced transfer, let alone genocide. Past any forms of dehumanisation, the entire world has revealed its true face when it comes to the Palestinian people and their land – that Palestinians only ever existed in diplomatic language as an appendage to Israel’s needs at each particular moment.

It needs to be said loud and clear – the international community was never for Palestinian rights, or even a fragment of a hypothetical state. It merely bided its time until Israel revealed its ultimate plans.

Each and every Palestinian murdered by Israel bears the added weight of governments and international institutions telling the colonised population to wait, to let other people decide for them. Genocide is the result of such waiting.

Genocide is the result of the international community’s waiting game