AP reports Israeli bombings killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 300 since the so-called “ceasefire” began last month. Drop Site News reports Israel has just moved the “Yellow Line” — expanded its zone of total control in Gaza.
CRAIG MOKHIBER, [email protected], @CraigMokhiber
Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist and a former senior United Nations human rights official. He just wrote the piece “The UN Embraces Colonialism: Unpacking the Security Council’s mandate for the U.S. colonial administration of Gaza.”
“More than two years into the genocide in Palestine, the UN Security Council has finally acted. But rather than acting to enforce international law, protect the victims, and hold the perpetrators accountable, it adopted a resolution that openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators.
“Most disturbingly, it hands control of Gaza and the survivors of the genocide over to the United States, a co-perpetrator of the genocide, and provides for the participation of the Israeli regime in decision making. Under the plan, Palestinians themselves are to be granted no such participation in decisions on their own rights, governance, and lives.
“In adopting this resolution, the Council, in effect, has become a mechanism of U.S. oppression, an instrument for the continued unlawful occupation of Palestine, and a complicit actor in Israel’s genocide.
“Not since the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 against the will of the indigenous people, setting the stage for 80 years of Nakba, has the UN acted in such a baldly colonial (and legally ultra vires) way, and trampled so recklessly on the rights of a people.
“On Monday, 17 November, the UN Security Council adopted a U.S. proposal to hand control of Gaza over to a U.S.-led colonial body called “The Board of Peace” while deploying a proxy occupation force, also U.S.-directed, called “The International Stabilization Force.” Both will answer, ultimately, to Donald trump himself. And both will function in consultation with the Israeli regime.
“In what will long be remembered as a day of shame for the UN, while both Russia and China abstained, they did not use their vetoes, and not a single member of the Security Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against what can only be seen as a U.S. colonial outrage, a ratification of genocide, and a flagrant abdication of UN Charter principles. …
“Despite the ICJ’s [International Court of Justice] finding that the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination on their land, the resolution strips that right away, empowering hostile foreign forces to govern them. … Its blatant disregard for the findings of the ICJ on these matters reveals the degree to which many of the terms of this resolution are in fact unlawful and ultra vires (beyond the authority of the Council). …
“Nor is Israel required to meet its legal obligations of compensation and reparations, with that responsibility handed instead to international donors and international financial institutions, in what amounts to a multibillion-dollar bailout of the Israeli regime. In sum, the resolution guarantees the full impunity of the Israeli regime, in addition to advancing its normalization. …
“Governments must be pressed to end their complicity in Israeli abuses, U.S. excesses, and in this atrocious colonial scheme. The Israeli regime must be isolated. Efforts toward boycott, divestment, and sanctions must be redoubled. A military, fuel, and technology embargo must be imposed. Israeli perpetrators must face judicial prosecutions in every available tribunal.”