Gaza Running Short of Money…and Shelters
The UNRWA Director Robert Turner declared today that the agency might not be able to assist the population of Gaza, because the funds arrived from the international community are insufficient.
Last October, the international community, at the conference held in Cairo, pledged to the Palestinian Authority some 5.4 billion dollars, in order to enable Gazans to repair or rebuild their homes after the criminal Operation Protective Edge.
According to UN estimates, some 100.000 have been either damaged or entirely destroyed. The UNRWA said that so far it received only 135 million dollars and that it could help 60.000 families.
Though, this sum is far from being sufficient in order to rebuild homes and infrastructures. UNRWA estimates say that they need other 700 million dollars to reconstruct buildings.
So far, Gazans are living among rubbles, in the streets, in tents and sleeping bags. They are stuck between the Israeli and the Egyptian borders with no possible way to escape this horrible situation. The enemployment rate is tremendously high, there is no way to make a living, Palestinian fishermen are still fired when trying to fish by the Israeli army, children continue to die because of unexploded ordinances.
At the same time, though, Gaza is not on the spotlight. In the media, we barely read about the reconstruction and the daily life of this already exhausted population.
Personally, I am totally disgusted. This money comes, or should come, from the international community that is responsible for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, given that it has not been able to prevent this attack, to end the Israeli occupation, to end the siege and to assess Israeli responsibilities towards the Palestinians. This money comes from the taxpayers of UN Members, so us! We should collectively ask our governments to be held accountable for what is happening in Gaza. Where this money is? Why did it not arrive in the Strip? Why none asks Israel to rebuild what it has deliberately destroyed with its own money?
While Palestinians are suffering, we have also to bare the editorials Amira Hass writes on Internationale, an italian weekly magazine. Last week, precisely the 19th of January, Internazionale published the weekly editorial of Amira Hass. This time, the Israeli journalist, writing for Haaretz and living in Ramallah, complained about the fact that few Palestinians marched after the deadly attack on the caricaturists of Charlie Hebdo and the subsequent terrorist attacks in Paris. This hypocrite and privileged journalist, granting herself the luxury of choosing to live in the West Bank (whereas Palestinians do not have the choice to live where they want or where they are entitled to live or to return to their villages in Israel) went even further arguing that, instead, many Palestinians did not feel any empathy towards these attacks.
By chance, does Ms. Hass that Palestinians are not allowed to gather and march without being attacked by the IDF with rubber coated bullets, steal bullets, sound bombs and stun grenades? Does, always by chance, Ms. Hass that Palestinians have other problems to think about in this moment, for example their daily life constrained by arbitrary and ubiquitous checkpoints, affected by the lack of water, freedom, money, education and so on? Does Ms. Hass know that she should go marching and protesting against the policies of her own government towards the Palestinians? Does Ms. Hass know that she should protest as well in her country for the freedom of expression, that is hampered by her government without the need of terrorist attacks? Does she know that, in 1987, the Palestinian caricaturist Naji Al-Ali was killed, in a terrorist act, by the Mossad when he was in London? Did any Israeli show empathy towards him in that occasion?
Did the world show the same empathy it showed towards Charlie Hebdo, towards the millions of Palestinians who have been and still are killed, displaced, wounded and attacked for the past 100 years?
It does seem to me that, despite the terrible events happened in France (condemned jointly by Fatah and Hamas), Palestinians have something else to think about. And we should be the first ones to be outraged by the overwhelming indifference surrounding Palestinians since decades.
Petition to sign against advertisements selling homes in illegal settlements on Facebook: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/facebook_stop_ads_for_settlements_palestine_final/?snumzdb
Palestine and International (in)- Justice
One just needs to recall Antonio Cassese to understand and appreciate the value of international justice.
In an article published in 1998, Cassese analyzes the reasons why international justice is better than amnesties, revenge and forgetting.
As for revenge, it seems evident that it is not even a solution to be taken into consideration, because, as he says, it is a private form of justice that does not serve the main aims of justice itself, indeed it contradicts the very principles upon which justice is based.
As for forgetting, not only we could recall the German philosopher Habermas, according to who memory is essential for human beings and society because it is an indispensable tool to learn lessons from the past, but we should also consider that it is an impossible option with regards to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, Cassese argues that, even if genocides and crimes against humanity could be forgotten by some, the victims and the descendants of the victims will never forget what happened in the past. Besides, forgetting the victims of appalling crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is as killing those people once again. It is ending the bloody job started by someone else without our consent. This is the reason why we should all remember as far as possible all the victims of all the crimes whenever and wherever they have been committed.
As for amnesty, while some societies can adopt it voluntarily as an option in periods of transition, in order to prevent more and harsher conflicts within one’s society, as it happened in South Africa, Guatemala, Haiti and others, in some other cases, amnesty is unconceivable and it might even be counterproductive. Indeed, amnesty could bring to impunity, that in turn encourages more criminals to commit crimes because no punishment is foreseen.
In the second part of the article, Cassese reviews the reasons why there should be international justice in lieu of national justice. First, international justice, or at least the criminal one, is more appropriate to be dealt with by international justices because it refers to crimes of war and crimes against humanity, which are a part of international law. Secondly, because international tribunals are in a better position to analyze and state on those crimes than national tribunals. Indeed, international judges are not, or better said should not be, politically biased; international tribunals might have more means to acknowledge facts happened in different countries; politically, they might meet less resistance by citizens, because “national feelings are hurt less”; they contribute to internationalize and universalize crimes that are a matter of concern of the whole world.
This post is not aimed at giving a course on international justice (which is not my field of specialization), but these short paragraphs serve the purpose of introducing Palestine’s accession to the International Criminal Court.
After the failed adoption of a proposed resolution to the Security Council that aimed at setting a timeline to end the (never ending) Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority decided to join the International Criminal Court (from April Palestine will be a member of the ICC) and to accept its jurisdiction under Article 12 (3) of the Rome Statute over the crimes committed since the 13th July 2014.
The reactions to this decision have been far too shameful. First, John Kerry tried to convince Abbas to not go before the ICC. Secondly, the same threatened to withdraw the funding from the ICC and the Palestinian Authority. Thirdly, Israeli politicians criticized this choice, alleging that it will hamper further negotiations and that in any case Israel will do whatever is in its hands to hinder the international justice.
More than that, Israel has also decided to not transfer revenues to Palestinians. These tax revenues are collected by Israel on behalf of Palestinians, that should be transferred, under mutually signed agreements, to Palestinians. This money is Palestinian money and the measure Israel took is absolutely unlawful.
More recently, Israel also announced a lobbying campaign to persuade Australia, Germany and Canada to withdraw their funding from the ICC.
The ways in which the legal, diplomatic and peaceful means the Palestinians are using to achieve their goals have been welcomed is all but worrisome, creepy and disgusting. Those same States that proclaim themselves democratic, respectful of the rule of law and that pretend to present themselves as an example to follow (one worldwide and the other in the Middle East), then criticize Palestine for aiming at freedom, life, independence and dignity.
Be it as it may, the Prosecutor of the ICC, Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, announced, on 16 January, that she opened a preliminary examination into the Palestinian situation. The examination will focus on preliminary legal considerations, it will take years and, even if the ICC pretends to be an independent and impartial body, it is likely that this examination will not give birth to any further serious investigation. There are all the reasons to be pessimistic, though we might expect other developments and probably for once we could assist to the predominance of justice over politics and diplomacy.
Whatever will happen from now on depends highly on us, citizens. We should do whatever possible to commit our national governments to international justice and human rights. Impunity cannot last forever and this is the moment to prove that.
Sign the petition to ensure that our governments secure funding to the ICC: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/The_governments_of_Australia_Canada_and_Germany_Please_continue_to_fund_the_International_Criminal_Court/
Sources:
Antonio Cassese, “Reflections on International Criminal Justice”, in The Modern Law Review, Vol. 61, No.1, 1998, pp. 10
http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/press%20and%20media/press%20releases/Pages/pr1083.aspx
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