In his article posted May 17, Professor Juan Cole at the University of Michigan provides several quotes from Vaughan Lowe, a lawyer and Oxford professor of Public International Law. Speaking at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Professor Lowe supported South Africa’s request that the Court order Israel to halt its assault on Rafah. Lowe said:
South Africa’s request to the ICJ was initially focused on Rafah, because of the imminent prospect of death and suffering on a massive scale resulting from Israel’s attack.
Since that request was made, it has become increasingly clear that Israel’s actions in Rafah are part of the endgame in which Gaza is utterly destroyed as an area capable of human habitation.
Lowe added, according to the New York Times: “This is the last step in the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian people.” (free link)
Professor Cole says the Oxford professor then countered the claim that the Israeli government is only exercising its right to self defense:
“First, the right of self-defence does not give a State a licence to use unlimited violence. No right of self-defence can ever extend to a right to inflict massive, indiscriminate violence and starvation collectively on an entire people.
Second, nothing — not self-defence or anything else — can ever justify genocide. The prohibition on genocide is absolute, a peremptory norm of international law.
Third, the Court ruled in 2004 that there is no right of self-defence by an occupying State against the territory that it occupies.”
Cole points out that “there are some laws that trump others. Genocide is the ultimate in this regard. It trumps every other law.”
There is no legal principle you can invoke to justify genocide, not even the right to self-defense, which is enshrined in the UN Charter and is generally sacrosanct.
Remember this the next time you hear a glib US government spokesman dance around the Gaza genocide by saying that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas.
Cole also quotes Professor Max du Plessis, a lawyer in South Africa who told the ICJ:
Deliberately herding 1.5 million Palestinians into Rafah and then carrying out a full-scale bombardment while sealing off entry and exit for life-saving aid to an already devastated population, while exposing them to famine and human suffering, leaves only one inference, regrettably, and that is of genocidal intent.
Not only is there nowhere for the 1.5 million displaced people and others in Rafah to safely flee — so much of Gaza having been reduced to rubble — but if Rafah is similarly destroyed there will be little left of Gaza or prospects for the survival of Palestinian life in the territory.
Professor du Plessis also said: “The last functioning hospitals are in Rafah, and if they are destroyed as all the others have been, health care in the Strip will be dead.”
Cole quotes South African attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, who told the Court of the many statements made publicly by Israeli officials showing genocidal intent, such as:
The Israeli Minister of Defence: Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “taking apart neighbourhood after neighbourhood” and “will reach every location” in Gaza.
Finance Minister and Cabinet heavyweight Bezalel Smotrich : “There are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat — total annihilation.” He goes on to say: “We are negotiating with the ones that should not have existed for a long time.”
Cole explains that on January 26, the ICJ found that Israel was violating specific provisions of the Genocide Convention regarding targeting a group of people because of their ethnicity:
(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; and
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Cole says that all of these actions have continued “and intensified” since January.
In addition, Cole says Israel has blocked “virtually all aid” by closing the Rafah border checkpoint from Egypt. “Gaza cannot feed itself in the best of circumstances, but it is now a basket case needing hundreds of trucks of food and medical aid a day to survive. Hunger and disease are spreading, since most of the trucks are now barred.” Cole’s post on Saturday, May 18, provides horrifying detail of the dire situation now in Gaza.
Cole also points out that the South African case has now been joined by Ireland, Egypt, Colombia, Libya, and Nicaragua, and Turkey says it too will join shortly.
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For an update on Israel’s defense at the ICJ on May 17, see this story by AvoidAmnesia: Israel's Denials at the ICJ Don't Square With the Facts on the Ground
UPDATE: Under Israeli Bombs, a Wartime Economy Emerges in Gaza (free link in the New York Times May 18) has details and pictures of Gazans and their effort to obtain food and goods.