The US decision to send troops to Israel has upended the focus of attention for all those, globally, who have attempted to stop both the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the determination of the current Israeli government to create Eretz Israel: a territory incorporating – at minimum – all Palestinian land now occupied by Israel, but also likely southern Lebanon and parts of Jordan and Syria as well.
The US Department of Defence stated on 13 October 2024 that they were sending US troops to Israel as crew for a high-altitude air-defence system to “underscore the United States’ ironclad defence of Israel”.
Clearly, this development is the beginning of direct and open involvement of US troops on the ground in Israel in preparation for the Israeli escalation of conflict with Iran. It signals that the oft-repeated media statements by Biden and other US officials that they don’t support Israeli escalation to war with Iran have always been misleading, as all their other “opposition” to Israeli escalations in Gaza (such as Rafah being a “red line”), the West Bank and now Lebanon, have been.
All attempts by humanitarian organisations, the United Nations and many of its agencies, votes in the UNGA, decisions and orders by the International Court of Justice, to stop genocide and prevent Israeli determination to widen the war throughout the Middle East, have met with rejection by the US and Israel at every step.
It would seem that direct intimidation of the International Criminal Court has interfered with its ability to act in accordance with the evidence presented to it to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials Netanyahu and Gallant. In addition, of course, Israel has declared the leader of the UN, Antonio Guterres, persona non grata, and described the UN as a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of anti-Semitic bile”. Up until September 2024 Israel has killed with complete impunity nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, most of them UN workers, and most recently has attacked UN peacekeeper units in south Lebanon.
As US forces move into Israel, adding to US defiance of UNGA resolutions, Israel has stepped up its campaign of destruction, massacres and isolation of north Gaza, in what is being described as “a genocide within the genocide”, after the World Food Program has reported that all supplies of food, water and medicine for about 400,000 people have been cut off as Israel turns the top third of Gaza into a “closed military zone”.
According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 13 October the Netanyahu government “is not seeking to revive hostage talks and the political leadership is pushing for the gradual annexation of large parts of the Gaza Strip”.
In the light of what is now unfolding, from a green light for genocide of Palestinians and a green light for Eretz Israel, as far as they seek to create it, to a green light to turn Iran into a massive graveyard, we should briefly consider what that will mean for Australia.
Australia will now become even more peripheral and isolated within its own geographical environment than it has been since 1996, having lost any respect or trust that it might have retained even after the AUKUS debacle was launched in 2021.
As Nada Tarbush said at the United Nations on 10 October, “when all is said and done, no one will be able to say they didn’t know” what is happening in Gaza, and “it is there to see which countries have taken a principled stance and which have not…, which have stepped up to save lives and which sent weapons to destroy lives”.
She went on to say that “what the whole world is witnessing is that leadership is coming overwhelmingly from the Global South, not from those who refuse to condemn Israel, who continue to describe Israel’s actions as self-defence, who continue to provide diplomatic, political or military support”.
Australia was not explicitly singled out as a specific target for Tarbush’s criticisms, but they are extremely valid and pertinent in relation to Australia’s behaviour and decisions during the past year. They are criticisms which will cloud its relations with all countries of the Global South, across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral engagement, especially throughout the east Asian region, possibly irreparably.
Australia has failed most conspicuously in “not only a moral duty but a legal duty incumbent on all states to impose a two-way arms embargo on transfers of military items to and from Israel”.
Australia is most obviously one of those states (or subject states) which fall into the category of those which Tarbush was referring to when she concluded, pointedly:
“If you continue to send weapons to Israel as it
annihilates the Palestinian population of Gaza then you do not get to
pretend ever again that you support international law, care about human
life or have moral convictions that apply universally.”