AS Israel killed over seven hundred Palestinians in overnight air strikes on Tuesday, the highest 24-hour death toll since Israel began a bombing campaign to crush Hamas fighters who stunned the country with a deadly October 7 attack, the United Nations and influential members of the international community are affording the luxury of confining themselves to mere issuance of statements expressing serious concern over the ongoing carnage in Gaza Strip. Speaking at a high-level session of the Security Council, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire warning that the ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinians was a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The latest conflict in Gaza is yet another clear manifestation of the fact that the UN system has miserably failed to safeguard rights of smaller nations and the world body is being used by some countries to advance their nefarious designs in parts of the globe and establish their economic and military hegemony. The UN was used as a tool to justify naked aggression both in Iraq and Afghanistan which were bombed to stone age but the same actors are creating hurdles even in the passage of resolutions condemning Israeli genocide in Gaza. Israel is using 7 October attack of Hamas as a pretext to eliminate Palestinians physically and economically but the UN Chief represented feelings of the international community by pointing out that the Palestinians had been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” telling the Security Council: “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” In a related development, former US President Barack Obama advised that some of Israel’s decisions in its war against Hamas — including cutting off food and water for Gaza — could “harden Palestinian attitudes for generations” and weaken international support for Israel. All this is already happening but it has little or no impact on the Jewish State only because it is fully backed by the United States and Britain in its black deeds. The situation demands collective action by like-minded states against both the aggressor and its backers.
