As genocide unfolds in Gaza, the efficacy of international law is on trial
“Israel must stop using water as a weapon of war.”
These are the words of Pedro Arrolo-Aqudo, a UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation. On Nov. 17 he declared that “every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza Strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water…the impact on public health and hygiene will be unimaginable and could result in more civilian deaths than the already colossal death toll from the bombardment of Gaza.”
That death toll now surpasses 12,000, nearly 5,000 of them children. “If the figures are even close to accurate,” The New York Times writes, “far more children have been killed in Gaza in the past six weeks than the 2,985 children killed in the world’s major conflict zones combined – across two dozen countries – during all of last year, even with the war in Ukraine.”
But the Gaza Ministry of Health figures may be an underestimate. According to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Monitor, as of Nov. 17, 15,271 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed, 3,561 women and 6,403 children among them, and more than 4,000 people are missing beneath debris.
Tens of thousands of people have been wounded in Israel’s 15,000 bombardmentson the tiny Strip. They are largely without treatment given the widespread destruction of health care facilities – the World Health Organization called Al-Shifa, Gaza’s foremost hospital, a “death zone” - and lack of fuel to keep the few remaining hospitals running. The Ministry of Health reported that between Nov. 11 and Nov. 15 (the day Israeli soldiers invaded the hospital) some 40 patients in Al-Shifa died because of lack of electricity to power the medical equipment. Three premature babies were among them.
And now the winter rains have arrived. That should be good news, given UN reports that some 70% of the population are drinking water contaminated with sewage and sea salt and that in UN-run shelters, 700 people must share a showerand 160 people a toilet.
But with wastewater treatment facilities no longer functioning, the infrastructure pulverized and sewage flowing in the streets, the UN is warning of the very real threat of cholera and a surge of water-borne gastrointestinal and infectious diseases. Already UNRWA – which has lost over 100 staff members in the war - has seen a 40% increase in diarrhea cases in its shelters, and acute respiratory infections are spreading and likely to soar as rain soaks the tents provided to people forced to flee from their homes in the north with no change of clothes. They arrived in the south “dehydrated, hungry, exhausted and shell-shocked.” Their grim living conditions as the rains move in are captured in these photos.
Gaza’s residents are now facing “an extensive war of starvation” and dehydration, and the grim struggle to find food and water has made the fear of airstrikes “secondary.” Not only have the supplies permitted to enter the Rafah Crossing been woefully inadequate, but on Nov. 16, food ceased entering Gaza altogether because fuel for the aid trucks had run out. It reportedly took US pressure, overriding fierce objections of far-right cabinet ministers, to get Israel to agree on Nov. 17 to allow 60,000 liters of fuel transported by two UN fuel tankers to enter Gaza on a daily basis. About seven million liters had entered each week before the war.
On Nov. 13, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a complaint in a federal court in California on behalf of DCI-Palestine and Al Haq as well as named Palestinian plaintiffs, suing President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin for their failure “to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”
The 85-page complaint – which can be read here – gives a detailed description of how Israel is carrying out the crime of genocide and how the “unconditional support” of the US – military and diplomatic - has enabled Israel to do so, in violation of its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It assembles evidence of Israel’s ‘intent’ to commit genocide, from calls from government officials to “erase Gaza” to its implementation of “starvation and dehydration as a weapon of warfare.” In the words of Israeli Defense Minister Gallant, “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”
In 1988, then-Senator Joe Biden co-sponsored the legislation that led to the Genocide Convention being ratified by the US and added to the federal criminal code. He has invoked the Convention to justify sending arms to Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion.
Now the president and the other co-defendants are being charged not just with their failure to carry out their legal obligation to prevent genocide, but with complicity to commit genocide by providing “massive and unparalleled amounts of military assistance, equipment, weapons, and support to the Israeli government, without conditions and with promises of more, in full awareness of its plans to target and destroy in whole or in part the Palestinian population in Gaza.” The complaint calls on the court to order the defendants to stop providing Israel with financing and arms and to stop “obstructing attempts by the international community, including at the United Nations, to implement a ceasefire in Gaza and lift the siege on Gaza.”
This case could signify whether an international convention crafted in the aftermath of World War II in the effort to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust is to be taken seriously in the US, or is just words on paper, to be invoked or dispensed with according to superpower whims.
