Israel should finally realize that its bad behaviour in Gaza is no longer acceptable to its supporters. That the bad behaviour continues was made clear by its eager resumption of both bombing and ground invasion of Gaza as soon as the recent ceasefire came to an end. One result has been that there are now 17,000 Palestinian casualties, which is far more than the 1200 Israelis killed on October 7 in the Hamas attack which started the whole savagery. It is almost as if the Israeli side agreed to the ceasefire in order to launch themselves upon the Palestinians with more vigour. This might explain why the UN Secretary General has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, which permits the Security Council to intervene in a matter where it is feared that there will be an administrative breakdown in a member. It is doubly interesting because the Gaza Strip is an occupied territory. Israel is thus being told that it does not seem that it can maintain even minimal civic functions in the Gaza Strip.
Part of the outcry seems to be because there was an expectation that the truce would lead to a prolongation of peace as the Israelis recovered from their blind rage. However, it seems that now the most uncritical supporters of Israel have been struck afresh by the genocidal nature of what the Israelis are doing. The US Senate’s refusal to pass a funding bill for Israel may be rooted in domestic politics (where a Republican-controlled Senate wanted to do down a Democrat President), but it have been unthinkable if the American public had not had its screens filled with images of the results of Israeli atrocities against unarmed civilians.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Israel is losing the hearts and minds of the American people and European nations, upon which it had relied for so long. Without unquestioned backing, it will not be feasible to commit genocide in Palestine. The only solution, and that too a temporary one, is for the UN to intervene and stop the bloodshed. A permanent solution may seem impossible to achieve, especially in a dispute that dates back to the Sykes-Picot agreement, which first promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine, back in 1916. However, the world must first stop the killing, which is not just mindless violence, but seems an act of genocide.
