Mass Killing

Genocide or not, stop the massacre of Palestinians

- A Faizur Rahman

ON October 25 this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, issued a grim warning that the “darkest moment” of Israel’s war is unfolding in northern Gaza as the “Israeli military is subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and starvation”. Türk urged world leaders to stop the coming genocide because, “under the Genocide Convention, State parties also have the responsibility to act to prevent such a crime, when risk becomes apparent”. His assessment was justified within a week when 15 UN and humanitarian organisations—including the WHO, the UNDP, the UNHCR, the UNICEF and Oxfam—revealed how hospitals attacked by Israel were “almost entirely cut off from supplies... killing patients, destroying vital equipment, and disrupting life-saving services”.

Their statement also mentioned how schools serving as shelters were either bombed or forcibly evacuated; tents sheltering displaced families shelled and people burned alive, and rescue teams deliberately attacked and thwarted in their attempts to pull people buried under the rubble of their homes.

In conclusion, the 15 organisations warned that the situation is “apocalyptic” to the extent that the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying of disease, famine, and violence”. Death is imminent also because on October 28, Israel’s parliament declared the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) a terror organisation and banned it from conducting any service inside Israel. To understand the scale of the impending cataclysm, it is enough to know that Israel’s ruthlessness has been so brutal that it has displaced the entire population in Gaza. More than 2.2 million Palestinians are now living—or about to die—in an area of roughly 38 square kilometres in uninhabitable conditions. In North Gaza alone, an estimated 400,000 civilians are hoping to survive amid destroyed buildings and shattered infrastructure.