LAST week, Israeli Premier Netanyahu unveiled a deviously devised centrifugal post-war Gaza plan. The plan promotes differences between Israel and its western allies, particularly the United States and the UK. As per this one-sided conceived plan, Tel Aviv will move forward to establish a security buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Gaza Strip’s border, arguing that the said security zone would remain “as long as there is a security need for it”. It also envisages Israeli security control “over the entire area west of Jordan” from the land, sea and air “to prevent the strengthening of terrorist elements in the (occupied West Bank) and the Gaza Strip and to thwart threats from them towards Israel,” the report said. Given the impracticalities and transgressions attached to it, this plan will ultimately fail.
The Plan lay out: Netanyahu unjustifiably intends to prolong a military presence in the Gaza Strip via ‘’made in Israel right to self-defence’’. The plan states that Israel will move forward with its already-in-motion project to establish a security buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Strip’s border. The proposal, which Netanyahu submitted to his security cabinet on February 22, sees the Israeli army persisting in its war on Hamas until it achieves key goals.
Netanyahu’s plan envisions hand-picked Palestinians– in Gaza administering the territory—who it says would “not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them” – essentially proposing that Gaza’s future Palestinian administrators will be appointed at Israel’s discretion. Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs spokesman said in a statement, ‘’the plan is an official recognition “of the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, and Israel’s imposition of control over it to prolong the war against our people, and an attempt to gain more time to implement. “Gaza will only be part of the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” he added, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa’’.
Laleh Khalili, an academic at the University of Exeter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, said, “This has been a fantasy of revisionist Zionists going back to the grandfather of the Likud Party, the self-identified fascist, Zeev Jabotinsky, who believed that an ‘iron wall of Jewish bayonets’ would defeat Palestinians and force them into accepting a permanently subservient position.’’ The plan, which is broken down into immediate, intermediate and long-term goals, reiterates Netanyahu’s more pressing ambitions to see Tel Aviv‘s full control over the Gaza Enclave via demilitarization.
Israel’ false notion of impunity & self-defence: Netanyahu claimed that Israel was committed to international law after the World Court ordered it to take action to prevent acts of genocide in its war in Gaza, but he reiterated that it had a right to defend itself. The first pillar of Israel’s self-styled right to self-defence is its characterization of the entire population of Gaza as armed enemies.
The right to self-defence, in both international and criminal law contexts, refers to the justified use of force to repel an attack or imminent threat against oneself, others, or a legally protected interest. Under international law, the notion of self-defence can be traced in two different institutions i.e., jus ad bellum (international law regulating the resort to force) and jus in bello (international law regulating behaviour in war). Article 2(4) of the UN Charter strictly prohibits states from using force that threatens the territorial integrity or political independence of any nation, except in cases of individual or collective self-defence as stated in Article 51.
Moreover, International humanitarian law (IHL) clearly delineates between combatants and civilians and explicitly prohibits targeting civilians alongside military objectives. Indeed, the right to self-defence operates within this framework, and customary international law restricts states’ use of force in response to attacks to only the armed targets that are the source of the attack against themselves. By no means, the use of force to non-combatant civilians be justified under the right to self-defence. “The Israeli government has simply ignored the ICJ’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid’’, according to the Human Rights Watch.
What must draw the attention of the international community that by fostering its false notion of self-defence doctrine, Israeli forces have killed more than 29,000 people in the Gaza Strip Gaza, two thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza-run Health Ministry. Israel says it has killed 10000 militants, without providing evidence. So far, Israel has displaced about 80% of the territory’s 2.3 million people who have crammed into increasingly smaller spaces looking for elusive safety.
The US, UK stance: Just after the said plan was revealed, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank was inconsistent with international law, thereby signaling a return to long-standing US policy on the issue, which had been unilaterally reversed by the Trump Administration. While commenting on Israel’s post-Gaza war plan, US’ National Security Advisor (NSA) Jack Sullivan has also vowed that our position is very clear about what we expect with respect to the future of Gaza and our overall vision for the future of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.
UK’s Foreign Secretary on Friday said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for the post-war Gaza “will not work.” “If you think about it from both sides, Israel needs to see that its security is guaranteed. The Palestinian people need to see there is the prospect of a Palestinian State so they can live in dignity,” David Cameron told the reporters at the UN Headquarters in New York. Meanwhile, efforts appeared to gain momentum, with mediators to present a new proposal at an expected high-level meeting this weekend in Paris.
As for the US current official policy, the Biden Administration seeks eventual Palestinian governance in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to Palestinian statehood, an outcome vehemently opposed by Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Washington-Cairo-Doha have been struggling for weeks to find a formula that could halt Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza. US President Joe Biden has radiated hopes Monday that a cease-fire will be reached in the Gaza Strip by 4 March.
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law. He deals with the strategic and nuclear issues.
Email: [email protected]
views expressed are writer’s own.
