US kills 4th UN call for peace in Gaza, helping Israel violate Hague’s genocide ruling

USA BLOCKS PEACE IN GAZA

The US used its veto power to block a fourth UN Security Council resolution that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The Biden admin sends weapons to Israel, helping it violate an ICJ ruling.

Ben Norton

Feb 22, 2024

The United States has since October voted against four United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for peace in Gaza.

Top UN officials have called for a ceasefire, but the US government has stood in their way, facilitating further violence.

In January, the highest UN judicial authority, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that Israel must abide by the Genocide Convention and stop killing Palestinians. But Tel Aviv ignored the Hague’s decision and killed thousands more Palestinian civilians.

By vetoing a fourth Gaza-related Security Council resolution on February 20, and by continuing to provide weapons to Israel, the US government has helped Israel violate an ICJ order.

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The resolution that Washington vetoed on February 20 had been introduced by Algeria, and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

In the session, 13 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted in support of the resolution. The UK abstained, and the US was the only country that voted against it.

The 13 nations that voted in support of the resolution were permanent members China, France, and Russia, plus Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

The US designed the United Nations after World War II by concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats to the war’s five victors: the US, UK, France, Russia (the former Soviet Union), and China.

The Security Council’s permanent members have veto power, which Washington has abused to advance its foreign-policy interests.

On December 9, the US vetoed another resolution in the Security Council, which had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates and called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

That vote was the same: 13 countries in support, an abstention from the UK, and the US veto.

Back on October 18, the US vetoed a resolution that had been introduced by Brazil, which the UN News Agency noted “would have called for ‘humanitarian pauses’ to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza”.

In this case, 12 countries voted in favor. The US voted against it, and two countries abstained: the UK and Russia.

Why did Russia abstain on this resolution that had been introduced by Brazil?

This was because two days before, on October 16, there was a vote on a stronger competing resolution that Russia had introduced, which called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

This had been the first resolution concerning Gaza to be introduced in the Security Council since the war began on October 7.

In this first resolution, five countries voted in support of the ceasefire: China, Gabon, Mozambique, Russia, and the UAE.

Four countries voted against it – the major imperial powers that had colonized much of the world: France, Japan, the UK, and the US.

Six countries abstained: Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta and Switzerland. (Brazil only abstained because it had introduced its own competing resolution, which was voted on two days later, and vetoed by the United States.)

US helps Israel violate ICJ ruling

The US veto of the Algerian resolution on February 20 is particularly scandalous, because Washington did it after the top legal authority on Earth, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), located at the Hague, ruled in January that Israel had to stop killing Palestinians.

The Hague stated that there is sufficient evidence to investigate Israel on charges of genocide.

The ICJ was very clear in its ruling. It ordered (emphasis added):

Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of … (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Since this ruling, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and injured tens of thousands more.

The United States has also continued to send weapons to Israel, to help it kill Palestinians – and violate the Hague’s ruling.

Israel’s war on Gaza is one of the deadliest in modern history

Meanwhile, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported on February 5 that roughly 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza had either been killed or wounded by Israel, or were missing – trapped under the rubble of the buildings that Israel had destroyed with US weapons.

Furthermore, the WHO estimated that “60% of the 27,019 fatalities reported by the enclave’s health authorities have been women and children… with more than 66,000 now injured and requiring medical care that remains difficult to access”.

As of February 21, Israel had killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The Gaza health ministry’s data has proven to be consistently accurate. Israeli intelligence agencies have used its casualty figures for their own analysis.

Moreover, despite US President Joe Biden’s misleading claims to the contrary, multiple medical experts published peer-reviewed scientific articles in the leading medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizing the data from the Palestinian health ministry and concluding that it is accurate. If anything, the death toll is conservative, and actually understates the number of Palestinians who have been killed by Israel.

In fact, the most mainstream of media outlets in the US, the Associated Press, or AP, published a report in January titled “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history, experts say”. It wrote (emphasis added):

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history.

In just over two months, researchers say the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that the US has sent Israel these 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs during the war.

The newspaper noted that, between October 7 and December 1, the US had delivered to Israel 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.

In fact, the Biden administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress, using extraordinary measures to ship more weapons to Israel.

While US officials claim that they supposedly want a ceasefire in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported on February 17 that the US plans to continue shipping Israel tens of millions of dollars worth of additional weapons.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemns Israel’s “slaughter” in Gaza

Even the European Union, which strongly supports Israel, has publicly criticized its atrocities in Gaza.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell admitted in a press conference on February 13 that Israel is carrying out a “slaughter” in Gaza.

Borrell highlighted the “illogical” hypocrisy of the US, arguing, “If you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed”.

The top European diplomat stated:

I don’t pretend to be in charge of the foreign policy of the US. I have enough with the foreign policy of European Union. But let’s be logical.

How many times have you heard the most prominent leaders and foreign ministers around the world saying too many people are being killed? President Biden said this is too much on the top; it is not proportional.

Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed. It’s not logical.

…

They [Palestinians] are going to evacuate. Where? To the moon? Where are they [Israel] going to evacuate these people?

So if the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe they have to think about the provision of arms.

And by the way, today [February 13], a court in the Netherlands has said, has ordered the government to stop exporting the spare parts of the F-35 fighters to Israel, in order to be sure that the International Court of Justice ruling is being implemented.

So I don’t know; every member state is an owner of its foreign policy. But this is a little bit contradictory to continue saying that there are too many people being killed, too many people being killed; please take care of people; please don’t kill so many.

Stop saying please, and do something.

Canada continues to arm Israel as well

The Canadian government has been equally hypocritical. Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly tweeted on February 10, “We are deeply concerned by reports of an Israeli military operation in Rafah. It would have devastating impact, putting the lives of Palestinians and foreign nationals, including [Canadians], seeking refuge in grave danger and making the vital delivery of humanitarian aid dangerous”.

However, local news outlet The Maple reported that the Canadian government has approved $28.5 million worth of new permits for military equipment exports to Israel during its brutal war on Gaza.

Full article here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/us-veto-un-resolution-gaza-israel-hague?publication_id=457596&post_id=141914246&isFreemail=true&r=q32pq

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