Islam Times - Palestinians’ ’March of Return’ Sparks Anti-Occupation Global Wave

Islam Times - Releasing results of its investigation of the Israeli violations against the Palestinians, the UN probe committee said last week Israeli forces’ killing of the Palestinian protestors in the Gaza Strip border could amount to war crimes and called for the trial of the Israeli security and military chiefs.

The report, published on February 2 by a committee of the UN investigators, suggested that the Israeli army’s snipers and some commanders have deliberately targeted peaceful Palestinian protestors who posed no threat to the security of the Israelis.

The report also pointed to deliberate shooting at the journalists, rescue teams, and children, measures as an apparent breach of the international conventions by the Israeli military personnel.

“Thirty-five children, two journalists and three “clearly-marked” paramedics were among those killed by Israeli forces, in violation of international humanitarian law,” the Reuters news agency quoted the report as reading, adding that the investigators will send this findings to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet who will have to share them with the International Criminal Court.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, since the launch of the “Great March of Return” on May 14 last year on the heels of the transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Al-Quds (Jerusalem) 260 Palestinian demonstrators were killed by Israeli live fire and over 26,000 were wounded. However, the UN Commission of Inquiry's figures show very smaller numbers: 189 killed and 6,100 injured.

Israeli Regime most condemned entity worldwide

Immediately after the release of the inquiry findings, the Israeli officials, as ever, rejected the report and questioned the qualification and independence of the internationally-picked investigators. In the first reaction, Yisrael Katz, the acting Foreign Minister of the regime, labeled the report as “hostile and deceitful and biased”, asserting that nobody should question the Israeli right for self-defense.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, castigated the inquiry results.

“The council is setting new records in hypocrisy and lies, out of obsessive hatred of Israel”, Netanyahu said in a statement that also claimed Tel Aviv regime was “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In December last year, Nikkei Haley, the resigned US envoy to the UN, put the number of the UN’s anti-Israeli resolutions at 700 and said that the resolutions the Human Rights Council passed against Tel Aviv outnumbered the whole of the HRC’s resolutions and reports so far issued against various countries around the world.

The global wave of condemnation of the regime’s atrociously repressive measures against the Palestinians trigged Tel Aviv response by lowering its representation in the HRC. The decision came only two days after the US quitted the UN organ. The moves by the two sides received sheer condemnation worldwide, with many analysts arguing that Washington and Tel Aviv want to continue their violence against the Palestinians without challenges by the international law.

Still what now causes worries to the Israeli authorities is the effort launched by the committee to refer the results to the ICC.

Tel Aviv and return marches nightmare

The Great March of Return that saw its 49th round last week, is held on the tightly guarded borderline between Gaza and occupied territories. The marches are now a huge nightmare to the Israeli leaders. The Israelis do not know how to put down the peaceful rallies without drawing international criticism.

The Palestinian peaceful protests’ influence on the awareness of the Western public of Israeli repressive and warlike nature in a time when the social media hardly allow effective censorship has been to an extent that even the Western allies of Tel Aviv now cannot fully cover up Tel Aviv's crimes. The Western leaders, under the pressure of their public, criticize the Israeli actions occasionally, something rendering furious the Israeli leaders. Some slogans, for example, during the yellow vests protests in France also supported the Palestinian quest for freedom from the yoke of the Israeli occupation, now in its 8th decade.

The pro-Palestinian stances are not limited to the public. After the UN Gaza report, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labor Party, in a Twitter post blasted the massacring of the Palestinians by the Israelis and called on the government to freeze the arms contracts with Tel Aviv.

Seeing these reactions by the public and politicians in the West leads to a notion: The decades-long Israeli struggle to shape the Western public opinion to its favor with a campaign of deceit and censorship has been unsuccessful.

The Israeli failure encourages the Palestinians to intensify their anti-occupation protests and calls for the return to their motherland. Ahmad al-Mudalal, a senior official at Palestine’s Islamic Jihad Movement, expressed satisfaction with the HRC’s report and said this was just a start by a committee over the past few months raised its voice against the Israeli occupation. This “honest voice” draws the picture of genuine criminals for the international sides.

“The occupiers who kill the children, women, and elders are the real criminals. The crimes against the Palestinian people are crimes against humanity. The criminals should be prosecuted and tried by the justice,” he said.

Al-Mudalal highlighted the continuation of the Great March of Return until the final goals of Gaza siege breaking and the return of the displaced Palestinians are realized.

Musab al-Barim, Islamic Jihad’s spokesman, called the Gaza probe committee’s results a success to the “Palestinian narrative” that insists on a legal and diplomatic clampdown on the occupation.