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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/30/the-suffocating-occupation-of-palestine-is-now-a-series-of-war-crimes/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Suffocating Occupation of Palestine is Now a Series of War Crimes</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vijay Prashad - October 30, 2023<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<div id="gmail-attachment_302335" class="gmail-wp-caption"><img src="cid:ii_lod5zp9s0" alt="IMG_6424-680x510.jpeg" width="413" height="310"><br><p></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-302335" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair</p></div>
<p>
On October 24, it became clear to the United Nations (UN) that the
sustained bombardment of Gaza—which had already killed 6,500 people
(including at least 35 UN employees)—had made this part of Palestine
unviable for human life. Over two million people live in this slim
section of land on the Mediterranean Sea. Since 1948, the refugees who
live here have relied on UN assistance, with the United Nations building
an entire agency (UNRWA) in 1949 for that purpose. UN Secretary General
António Guterres <a href="https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-24/secretary-generals-remarks-the-security-council-the-middle-east%C2%A0">told</a>
the UN Security Council that within days the UN would run out of fuel
for its trucks, which carry the minimal relief that crosses into Gaza
from Egypt and supports the 660,000 Palestinians who have fled their
homes to come to UN compounds across Gaza. The trucks carry “a drop of
aid in an ocean of need,” Guterres said. “The people of Gaza need
continuous aid delivery at a level that corresponds to the enormous
needs. That aid must be delivered without restrictions.”</p>
<p>Guterres’s statement, delivered in a calm voice, did however depart
from the sentiment of disregard that defines the statements of European
and North American leaders—many of whom have rushed to Tel Aviv to stand
beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledge their
full-throated support for Israel. History matters. Guterres said that
the problems now befalling the Palestinians of Gaza did not begin on
October 7, when Hamas and other Palestinian factions broke through the
apartheid security barrier and attacked the settlements that border
Gaza. His statement on the situation over the past decades is factual,
based as it was on thousands of pages of UN reports and resolutions: “It
is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a
vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of
suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by
settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people
displaced, and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political
solution to their plight have been vanishing.” The image of the
“suffocating occupation” is utterly accurate.</p>
<p>After Guterres made these remarks, Israeli authorities—as if on cue—<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67215620">demanded</a>
the resignation of the UN Secretary-General. Israel’s permanent
representative to the UN Gilad Erdan accused Guterres—absurdly—of
“justifying terrorism.” Saying that Guterres “once again distorts and
twists reality,” Erdan noted that his government would <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/25/israel-to-refuse-visas-to-un-officials-after-guterres-speech-on-gaza-war">not</a>
permit the UN Humanitarian Aid chief Martin Griffiths from crossing the
Rafah border into Gaza to oversee the distribution of relief. “In what
world do you live?” asked Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen of
Guterres. At the UN Security Council, meanwhile, the United States
vetoed resolutions for a ceasefire, while China and Russia vetoed a U.S.
resolution that said Israel had a right to defend itself and Iran must
stop its export of arms. The United States has deeply politicized the
atmosphere in the UN, using its own resolutions to rally
support—unsuccessfully—for Israel, while attacking the Palestinians (and
bizarrely Iran) in the process.</p>
<p><strong>Nothing Neutral About the United States</strong></p>
<p>The United States has never been an unbiased arbiter over the region,
given its close linkage to Israel from at least the 1960s. Billions of
dollars of weapons sold to Israel, billions of dollars of aid to Israel,
and punctual statements in favor of Israel have defined the
relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv. During all the
negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, the United States
has played a game of duplicity: pretending to be neutral, but in fact,
using its immense power to neuter Palestinians and to strengthen Israel.
The Oslo Accords, which led to the creation of a powerless Bantustan
run by the Palestinian Authority, was negotiated with the United States
with its hands on the pen. Oslo led to the creation of a process that
has resulted in the attrition of Palestinian control over East Jerusalem
and the West Bank as well as the garrotting of the Palestinians in
Gaza—all of this combined being the “suffocating occupation” that
Guterres talked about.</p>
<p>Since 2007, when Israeli troops left Gaza and then hemmed it in by
land and sea walls that made Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison,
Israel has routinely bombed the Palestinians who live there. Each time
there is a bombardment, one worse than the next, the United States
government has backed Israel fully and re-armed it during the
bombardment. Calls for a ceasefire have been blocked by Washington in
the UN Security Council since the destructive bombing of Gaza called
Operation Cast Lead (2008-09). This time, on cue, the United States has
provided Israel with diplomatic support, with U.S. President Joe Biden
going to Tel Aviv and with the United States going as far as adopting a
flagrant lie that Israel did not bomb al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City
on October 17. Before Biden got to Israel, the United States sent two
major naval battle groups into the eastern Mediterranean—two aircraft
carriers, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Gerald Ford, with
their supporting naval vessels in two strike groups. Since then, the
U.S. has moved missile defense systems into the region to strengthen the
Israeli armed forces. The movement of these forces comes alongside
billions of dollars spent annually by the U.S. to arm Israel, including
$15 billion in extra military assistance over this recent period. These
wars are not merely Israel’s wars. These are the wars of Israel and the
United States, with its Western allies in tow.</p>
<p><strong>Gaza Will Become Mosul</strong></p>
<p>Meanwhile, the United States has sent senior military officials to
work closely with the Israeli generals. One of these officials is a
three-star Marine lieutenant general James Glynn, who has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/us/politics/israel-us-gaza-invasion.html">sent</a>
to “help the Israelis with the challenges of fighting an urban war.”
Glynn and others are in the Israeli military chain of command not to
make decisions for Israel but to assist them. Glynn was part of the U.S.
Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) in the years following 2014, when the United States bombed Mosul
and Raqqa (Iraq) to eject ISIS from those cities. As if to underline
Glynn’s Mosul and Raqqa experience, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin
told Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant that he had himself been
involved in Operation Inherent Resolve in 2016-2017 when Austin headed
U.S. Central Command. Austin’s comments and Glynn’s deployment to Israel
are in anticipation of the ground war that is expected against Gaza.
“The first thing that everyone should know,” Austin <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxtXjuWtU98">told</a> ABC News, “and I think everyone does know, is that urban combat is extremely difficult.”</p>
<p>Indeed, Austin’s comment about the difficulty of urban combat,
particularly with the Mosul and Raqqa experiences in mind, is
appropriate. In 2017, the Associated Press (AP) <a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-only-on-ap-islamic-state-group-bbea7094fb954838a2fdc11278d65460">reported</a>
that the U.S. attack on Mosul had resulted in between 9,000 and 11,000
civilian casualties. Very few people recall the brutality of that war
and the numbers of civilian dead are barely noted. If Mosul is the
example before the United States and Israel for the ground war to come
in Gaza, there are some differences that should be borne in mind. ISIS
had only two years to dig in its defenses, while the Palestinian
factions have been preparing for such an eventuality since at least 2005
and are therefore better prepared to fight the Israeli army one ruined
street after the next. It appears from all reports that the morale of
the Palestinian factions is far greater than that of the Israeli army,
which means that the Palestinian factions will fight with much more
force and with much less to lose than ISIS (whose fighters slipped out
of the city and vanished into the countryside).</p>
<p>In both Mosul and Raqqa, when the U.S. aerial bombardment began, tens
of thousands of civilians fled the cities for the countryside alongside
some ISIS fighters to wait for the destruction to commence and then
end. If they had remained in Mosul and Raqqa, the civilian casualties
would have been twice the number reported by AP. Mosul’s population was
just 1.6 million, smaller than the 2.3 million residents of Gaza—so the
numbers of civilian casualties would have to be adjusted upwards.
Palestinians in Gaza are trapped and cannot escape to the countryside,
unlike the residents of Mosul and Raqqa. They can go nowhere as Israeli
tanks enter Gaza, guns blazing. The civilian deaths in Gaza, already
outrageously high due to the uncontrolled bombing by Israel, will be
unimaginable during this ground war that began on October 27. Gaza,
already a ruin, will be left a cemetery.</p>
<p><em>This article was produced by </em><a href="https://globetrotter.media/"><em>Globetrotter</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<em>Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is
The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US
Power (New Press, August 2022).</em>
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