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#palestine A must-read analysis of Israel’s #genocide in #Gaza by Nimer Sultany, “A Threshold Crossed,” drawing on many other analyses to make an overwhelmingly clear case https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2351261
This article is divided into two parts. The first part describes the increasing legal consensus, manifested in a convergence of the interpretations of Israel's intent and pattern of conduct in Gaza as genocide. In particular, it discusses the IC orders, the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967 Francesca Albanese, and Colombia's intervention in support of South Africa. It argues, however, that the focus of this emerging consensus should not be limited to Israel's weaponization of starvation. Instead, the "military" logic - and Israel's concomitant deployment of highly permissive interpretations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to frame its actions - should be critically examined. This framing conceals genocidal acts and intentions and ignores the context of occupation and apartheid in which Israel's conduct unfolds. There is ample
Israel's conduct unfolds. There is ample evidence and compelling legal arguments to establish genocidal intent, despite the presumably high threshold required. Indeed, following the demand by six western states in the Myanmar case to lower the threshold required to determine intent, consistency requires the application of a similar threshold to determine the existence of genocide in Gaza. Additionally, Judge ad hoc Aharon Barak's separate opinions, which insisted on an exclusive IHL perspective, further show the weakness of the military rhetoric to frame Israel's actions. This rhetoric falsely presents the occupier who imposes an apartheid system as acting in "self-defence" in response to an "existential" threat.
Writing prior to October 2023, George Bisharat notes that Israel has engaged in a systematic effort to reshape international law to allow a greater degree of infliction of violence on Palestinians. This has included the reframing of previous rounds of violence from "law and order" under an occupation to "armed conflict short of war," rewriting the "principle of distinction" between civilians and combatants, "voluntary human shields," and deliberate disproportionality. Thus, he writes, Israel's actions "threaten to turn international humanitarian law on its head, allowing law to extend the scope of violence and suffering to previously protected areas and persons."61 Similarly, Albanese argues that a "core feature of Israel's conduct since 7 October has been the intensification of its de-civilianization of Palestinians, a protected group under the [Genocide] Convention."62 By "de-civilianisation" Albanese means the designation of the entire population into a killable target. Albanese had
In Gaza 2023-2024, however, Israel went beyond disproportionate colonial war. Having dispossessed, dominated, fragmented, and besieged the Palestinians for decades, it now moved towards annihilation. Consistent with the "logic of genocide," Israel's actions in Gaza envisage a "world without civilians" in which "everything from taking shelter in hospitals or fleeing for safety is declared a form of human shielding" and thus transforms "the entire civilian population" into "a legal target."65 The
#palestine #genocide #Gaza
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