Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) notes with disappointment, but little surprise, the lack of response from the international community after a weekend of devastation in the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, the occupation’s warplanes began a campaign of strikes that killed 46 people, 15 of them children, and left hundreds injured.
Those needing medical treatment were also hindered by a lack of hospital supplies due to the 16-year siege of Gaza, and a lack of power after the occupation’s authorities refused entry to fuel needed to run the power station.
The airstrikes also destroyed nine multi-residential buildings and 16 houses in Gaza. Another 1,500 housing units were damaged. Even more homes were demolished during attempts to dig out the dead and wounded. Hundreds are now homeless.
As Palestinians try to rebuild their lives yet again, comfort their traumatised children and bury their dead, the devastating truth is that world powers are happy to sit back and watch as Israel commits war crime after war crime with impunity.
And the airstrikes on Gaza are only part of the problem – Palestinians are under attack across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Just this week, 17-year-old Moamen Yassin Jaber was shot dead by Israeli forces in Hebron, while two others were shot and seriously injured in the same attack. Such attacks are commonplace yet receive little or no coverage in the international media or condemnation from world powers.
Contrast the response of Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, to China’s provocative military exercises around Taiwan or Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine with their lack of action on Israel. It is no wonder Palestinians feel abandoned.
Meanwhile, international news outlets are pushing the narrative of two equal sides trading blows in an ongoing conflict that has “no easy solution”.
This masks the fact that Israel is funded to the hilt by the US, which also supplies them with advanced weaponry to use against Palestinians on their occupied land. The “easy solution” would be for western nations to stop arming the occupation and impose sanctions.
How many more Palestinian families must endure the repeated trauma of searching for loved ones in the rubble, finding a new place to live or suffering in an under-resourced hospital?
AOHR UK calls on the international community to show some basic solidarity with the besieged and imprisoned residents of Gaza, and those across the Occupied Palestinian Territory whose lives are seen as worthless by Israel.
We also demand that the International Criminal Court takes seriously its supposedly initiated investigation into war crimes committed by Israel in Palestine. Under great pressure from the US, Israel and others, the investigation, launched in 2021, has shown few signs of progress. This is especially the case after the election of chief prosecutor Karim Khan in June 2021.
We demand not just words of condemnation – although these are also lacking – but also action. Across the world, millions of ordinary people are standing with Palestine. It’s time our leaders do the same.
