As the West belatedly wakes up to Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, wrings its hands over a “humanitarian crisis” whilst perpetuating the slaughter with an endless supply of weapons of devastation, Israel presses on with its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
As reported last week, the Lemkin Institute recently issued a “genocide alert” for the West Bank, a fact largely unreported in our mass media, as the attacks on refugee camps in the West Bank are intensifying, the latest being Nur Shams camp, close to Tulkarem.
This small camp, 2 square kilometres in size, was invaded on April 18th and besieged for 52 hours. All entrances and exits were closed – no one could get in or out, other than the Israeli army – a tactic used in the Nakba of 1947-49. The excuse was, as in Gaza, a search for “fighters”.
This was not the first invasion of this or other refugee camps. But as one resident said, this time was different: “In previous raids, if an armoured vehicle reached a dead-end in the camp’s alleys, it made a U-turn and looked for a different way through. This time they just demolished whatever they found in front of them,” he said.
Another resident reported: “Soldiers entered homes searching for fighters, and they arrested men randomly. My neighbour, Rajai Sweilem, 39, was arrested in his home in front of his four children and taken out to the streets. After the withdrawal of the occupation army, he was found lying dead with his body full of bullets. He was only a working man, nothing else.”
The narrow alleys of the camp were bulldozed; electricity, water and sewage systems ripped up and, at the end of the invasion, fourteen people had been killed, including three children. Two people with acute medical needs could not leave to get their essential treatment and died.
These attacks on refugee camps are part of the wider attempt by Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestine, undermine the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and destroy their claims to their lands, as illustrated also in the strenuous attempt to destroy UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency).
It’s worth remembering that in International Law the Palestinians are a “Protected People” as are all occupied people. The occupier has the duty to ensure their safety, can “police” the area but must provide for essential needs.
But what’s happening today is that the global rules-based order is being ripped to shreds by Israel and its partners, especially the US and UK. It’s not a new phenomenon – Israel is a serial violator of international law, human rights and basic human decency, but the pace of this process today is breathtaking.
We can all see the direction of travel, must resist the reduction of Palestine to “just” a humanitarian crisis, and strongly proclaim why Palestine is not a regional issue, confined to the Middle East, but a global fight for justice in which we must all engage for the long haul.
