AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The brutal details of single murders dominating the headlines here in Ireland in familiar surroundings traumatise us. Yet, the equal horror of the slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces amid the ruins of Gaza are dulled to a terrible familiarity and consigned to the inside pages of the news.
What for me is even worse than the ongoing heartache over the fate of the 52,000 Palestinians slain in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, is the way world leaders have taken no action, bar issuing totally ineffective condemnations.
Their failure to act has given Netanyahu licence to do whatever he wants and clearly he wants to rid the Gaza Strip of its rapidly declining 2.3 million population. Leaders have turned their backs on their moral responsibility and the inaction seems like complicity – even collusion in some quarters – with Netanyahu’s recently declared aim to ‘go in and finish the job.’
Ever since the October 7 in 2023 atrocity in the Hamas-led attack on Israel with the seizure of 251 hostages triggered the war, diplomacy has failed to find any lasting cessation of hostilities. The UN has, as usual, failed to intervene – despite its supposed purpose to maintain peace and stability – and the threat of a US veto has prevented Palestine joining the UN.
The world has watched as the death toll in Gaza rose and as hospitals, schools and entire cities where reduced to rubble and the terrified population were driven hither and thither in a hell where there is no safe refuge. Yet, the means for international leaders to halt the slaughter have been there all along but have, until this tragic 11th hour, remain unused. A trade boycott could have reined in Netanyahu and his Government.
Europe is Israel’s biggest trading partner, with more than 30% of Israeli exports going to the EU. A year ago Ireland and Spain proposed that the Article of Association covering EU trade and co-operation with Israel be reviewed arguing that Israel was in violation of Article 2 covering human rights. The proposal was ignored by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
More than a quarter of Israeli exports go to the US, yet President Trump, who declares himself a deal- maker for ending wars, far from pulling the plug on Israel, has encouraged his friend Netanyahu by boasting that he could transform Gaza into a Riviera while its population was removed elsewhere.
The Israeli Army plans to take over the entire Gaza strip, following 11 weeks of blockading humanitarian aid and medical supplies, where starvation is used as a weapon of war and one five Gazans is at risk of starvation. There are plans to drive the population into three small strips of land while the slaughter continues. More than 250 Gazans were killed last week.
Only now on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe – when at the time of writing, 14,000 children were likely to die of starvation within the next 48 hours– have leaders begun to take action. Only last week, to ‘placate friends’ did Israeli forces allow around 100 aid trucks into Gaza.
Britain has suspended new trade talks with Israel over its ‘egregious policies’ in the Gaza and the West Bank and France and Canada have promised “concrete action”. A majority of EU States – 17 including Ireland out of a total of 27 – have backed a proposal to review trade relations with Israel in an effort to put pressure on Israel to stop its offensive in Gaza. By the time that the EU officials decide whether Israel is in breach of Article 2 and then decide what action to take it will be far too late for thousands more Gazans who will have died of starvation.
Too little, too late, the trade threats don’t even begin to answer questions over the future of Gaza and for peace in the region. The Israelis have been an occupying force in the Strip since the 1948 Israeli/Arab conflict: they should leave Gaza and cease their aggressive policies on the West Bank. While the aim of Zionism to create a national home for cherished Jewish people in a shared land is laudable, it is not acceptable today that it should involve colonialism and ethnic cleansing. That belongs in the dark past.
