AntiWar.com reports: “Israeli Attacks Kill 134 Palestinians in Gaza Over 24 Hours,” “Former Israeli PM Says Israel’s Plan To Build ‘Humanitarian City’ in Gaza Amounts to Concentration Camp” and “Funeral Held for American Killed by Israeli Settlers in the Occupied West Bank.”
Middle East Eye reports in “Spain and Ireland to join more than 20 states to declare ‘concrete measures’ against Israel” that “Turkey, Portugal, China and Qatar also among countries that will be attending The Hague Group’s ‘emergency summit’ in Colombia” this week. The meetings are co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia.
RAED JARRAR, [email protected], @raedjarrar
Jarrar is advocacy director for DAWN, founded by slain writer Jamal Khashoggi. They have co-sponsored a petition “UN General Assembly: Deploy an Emergency Armed Multinational Protection Force to Gaza!” It will be delivered to The Hague Group this week.
Jarrar said today: “There should be serious sanctions on Israel, but if countries like Brazil and China insist on continuing to trade, the least they could do is ensure a protective force. You have grassroots efforts to get aid in, with another Freedom Flotilla boat now on its way to Gaza. These states need to step up to their responsibilities to prevent the continuation of this genocide.”
The petition calls “upon the United Nations General Assembly to invoke its authority under the Uniting for Peace mechanism — previously employed in the 1956 Suez Crisis to establish the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) — to authorize a multinational armed protection force for the Gaza Strip.
“We demand the immediate deployment of a UN multinational armed protection force with the following mandate:
- Protect civilians from further violence and displacement.
- Ensure full, safe and sustained humanitarian access to food, water, shelter, energy, and medical care.
- Assist in the initial stages of reconstruction, enabling families to return to their homes and rebuild with dignity.
- Preserve and secure evidence of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and human rights violations to enable future accountability and justice mechanisms.
“The Uniting for Peace precedent was established to break Security Council deadlocks and to uphold the UN’s founding promise: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, as well as to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for international law can be maintained. That promise is being tested by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
See recent piece by Sam Husseini: “Hague Group: ‘Concrete Measures’ or Sack of Cement? Will It Move to Sanctions, Peace Force and Ensuring Aid to Gaza?“