Netanyahu flagrantly refuses to comply with the ceasefire resolution. The Security Council must take firm action!
March 29, 2024
The following message was today sent to the various Ambassadors accredited to Israel.
Dear Sir or Madam
In
January, South Africa appealed to the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) and charged Israel with state-led acts of Genocide in the Gaza
Strip.
The court ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could
fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no
acts which might lead to Genocide. However, this did not stop Israel
from continuing military operations which caused further mass loss of
Palestinians civilian lives, and from placing severe restrictions on the
entry of humanitarian aid.
International agencies reported with
alarm the increasing signs of spreading famine in the Gaza Strip, and
noted that this was no natural disaster - it is an entirely man-made
disaster, caused directly by Israel, its armed forces and its
government.
In March the United States - which vetoed several
previous ceasefire calls - abstained in the UN Security Council, thus
facilitating the adoption of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in
Gaza. However, the US tried to minimise the impact of this resolution by
stating that it is "not binding". Other members of the Security
Council responded that all Security Council resolutions are binding by
definition, and that there is no requirement to explicitly refer to
Chapter VII of the UN Charter for a resolution to be binding.
According
to that Chapter VII, entitled "Action with Respect to Threats to the
Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression", should a country
fail to comply with a Security Council resolution, the Security Council
may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures
as "complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail,
sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication,
and the severance of diplomatic relations".
It goes without saying that this would also include a call on all UN
member states to cease any supply of weapons and munitions. Should the
recalcitrant state continue its defiance, the Security Council may
resort to even more severe sanctions.
In the days since the
Security Council adopted the ceasefire resolution, the Government of
Israel made crystal clear that it has no intention whatsoever to comply.
This was expressed in militant statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu,
his ministers and senior military officers, and also in continuing large
scale military operations in the Gaza Strip and in continuing
preparations for a mass invasion of the city of Rafah - despite warnings
that such an invasion might cause a terrible death toll among a million
and half displaced Palestinians living there under deplorable
conditions.
This conduct by the Government of Israel fully justifies
and indeed requires the Security Council to go further and use - or at
least threaten to use - the above measures placed at its disposal by the
UN Charter.
Therefore we, citizens of Israel, are calling on your
government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming
to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel - in
order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the
end of Ramadan and beyond it.
It should be noted that in
November
1990, the Security Council adopted Resolution 678, calling upon Iraq to
withdraw its forces from Kuwait and setting a specific date - January
15, 1991 - by which Iraq had to comply or face severe sanctions. At the
time, there were in the international media some allegations of
atrocities committed by Iraqi troops in Kuwait - but these pale into
insignificance compared with the proven reports of what Israeli troops
did and continue to do in the Gaza Strip.
Of course, that was under
completely different circumstances, when the United States was eager to
launch its own war and rain death and destruction on Iraq. Still, an
important precedent was created in 1990 of how, under International Law,
a state which defies Security Council resolutions can be dealt with.
In the very different circumstances of the present, it is highly
necessary for
the Security Council to repeat what it did in 1990 and set a definite
date by which Israel must comply and implement a complete and lasting
ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Adam Keller for Gush Shalom
Yossi Schwartz for the ISL, RCIT section in Israel/ Occupied Palestine