September could be a decisive moment for Palestine
The Trump administration has criticised these countries and tried to punish the Palestinians by imposing sanctions on so-far unnamed Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials who could be denied visas to attend the General Assembly. Washington has justified its stand by claiming 'the 'the two Palestinian organisations have 'taken actions to internationalise' their conflict 'with Israel, including through the International Criminal Court, and said both had continued 'to support terrorism.'' On the latter charge, neither the Authority nor the PLO supported Hamas' October 7th, 2023, raid into southern Israel during which 1,139 Israelis and visitors were killed and 250 abducted.
The US previously excluded Palestinian leaders from the opening of the annual Assembly session. Although he had addressed the General Assembly in 1974, the US refused PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat a visa for the 1988 opening. A special session was held in Geneva in mid-December to enable Arafat to speak.
After this debacle, his successor, Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas, has addressed the opening session of the Assembly for nearly two decades.
Palestine has been recognised by 147 of the UN's 193 members, 75 per cent, but the US has vetoed its full membership. Consequently, Palestine has observer status which permits it to attend and participate in General Assembly and Security Council sessions but not to vote. Palestine also has gained membership in UN-related institutions despite US objections.
Palestine has sought recognition as a state since November 15th, 1988, when the Palestine National Council, the parliament-in-exile, issued the declaration of independence in Algiers. Written by Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, the declaration called for a mini state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza occupied by Israelis in 1967 instead of the whole of Palestine.
This amounted to a strategic shift in policy by the PLO which had demanded a Palestinian state in the whole of Palestine. The shift was in line with UN Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967 which called for Israel to withdraw from territories seized that June.
Following its independence declaration, Palestine was instantly recognised by Algeria, Malaysia, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, and Somalia. On December 15th, 1988, the General Assembly acknowledged the declaration of independence and recognised Palestine rather than the PLO as representing Palestinians within the UN system. Palestine subsequently gained recognition from states in Asia, Africa, the non-aligned group, and Eastern Europe and by the end of 1989, 94 states had recognised Palestine.
EU members Ireland and Spain and Norway recognised Palestine last year. In addition to France, Britain, and Canada, Andora, Finland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, San Marino, and Malta are set to recognise Palestine this year. Australia has refused to fix a time while Germany and Italy do not intend to offer recognition.
The addition of France and Britain will mean that four of the five permanent UN Security Council members (including Russia and China) will have recognised Palestine. The US is the sole hold-out.
The Trump administration has criticised the process of recognition and has threatened to impose high tariffs on Canada for taking this action. Donald Trump has fully backed Israel in its war on Gaza and blockade of the strip which has starved 2.3 million Gazans and has been branded genocide by prominent Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Israeli Doctors for Human Rights as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israeli experts on genocide.
B'Tselem dubbed the terrible and tragic situation in Gaza 'Our Genocide' and stated: 'For nearly two years, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza, acting in a systematic, deliberate way to destroy Palestinian society there through mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm and creating catastrophic conditions that prevent its continued existence in Gaza. Israel is openly promoting ethnic cleansing and the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure for individuals and the group, with 2 million people starved, displaced, bombed, and left by the world to die. The genocide must be stopped.'
Israeli Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) presented a position paper entitled 'Destruction of Conditions Of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide.' PHR stated, ' Over the past 22 months, Israel has systematically targeted medical infrastructure across the Gaza Strip, attacking 33 of 36 of Gaza's hospitals and clinics depriving them of fuel and water. More than 1800 of Gaza's medical staff have been killed or detained.' PHR argued that this assault is 'a deliberate, cumulative dismantling of Gaza's health system, and with it, its people's ability to survive. This amounts to genocide.' Haaretz reported in a podcast that the 'mass starvation and death in Gaza seems to have finally cut through the layers of denial and media self-censorship in Israel – and in both Arab and mixed cities – demonstrations against the horrifying humanitarian situation are drawing thousands of protesters.' Haaretz said three out of four Israelis want to end the war which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prosecutes to maintain his fragile coalition. It is now a minority government since two ultra-Orthodox religious parties have exited because he did not pass a law granting military exemption to their youths.
Israel's war on Gaza propelled France and Saudi Arabia to hold a conference in New York last week to urge countries round the world to recognise the Palestinian state and press for the two-state solution. The conference, attended by 125 countries, issued a call for a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas' handover to a new administration, and a roadmap for the step-by-step establishment of a Palestinian state.
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Trekking for food By design, the GHF is set up in a way that encourages displacement, because it forces people to trek through lawless, dangerous and difficult terrain with no guarantee they will be receiving aid, a crime under international humanitarian law – by forcing people to move closer to the few aid sites. In contrast, the UN operates hundreds of distribution sites across Gaza and delivers aid to those in need, whether in schools that have become shelters, hospitals, tents or homes. On average, the distribution sites give out anywhere between 3,000 and 9,000 boxes a day – according to posts on their Facebook page – barely enough for a population of 2.2 million, all of them in need. What began on May 27 with fenced queues, intense screenings and segregated entry and exit lanes, seems to have devolved into near total disorder in which crowds surge from every direction. 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Once that happens and panic sets in, people begin running in all directions, trying to avoid the fire. The Israeli army fires again because people start moving in "unauthorised directions". This happens again. And again. Once more, when people arrive to find that all the boxes have been taken, they sit and sift through the sand for grains of rice and pasta that their predecessors left. And another time, when there is nothing left, and the armed men tell people who had walked for 12km or so, starving and thirsty, to come back tomorrow. "They say 'we're staying here till you get us something' – and that's when the Israeli army starts firing again. The fourth massacre of the day," said an expert on aid distribution with knowledge of the process. Everyone a target The body of evidence backing deaths and injuries at or near the aid distribution points is solid. 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The dangers are too numerous, he said. Mr Assaf, luckier than others, said he instead opted to buy aid being sold on the black market, albeit at exorbitant prices, with the cost of 1kg of flour ranging anywhere between $300 and $800, depending on the prospects of a ceasefire and the amount of aid entering the Strip. Israeli testimonies Shots fired at civilians rushing for boxes of aid containing their only source of food are being labelled as "crowd control" measures. But evidence of the carnage taking place at and around the distribution sites is widely documented in videos, testimonies and statements by members of the GHF who blew the whistle anonymously or openly. Speaking to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, several Israeli soldiers who worked at GHF distribution sites acknowledged the use of firepower, through heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars, either as warning shots or to disperse crowds. "Our form of communication is gunfire," one said. "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." Mr Aguilar claimed that using machineguns and military quadcopters to disperse hungry and desperate people in famine-stricken Gaza results in widespread panic and an increase in the lack of safety for them and others. He recounted numerous missteps, from bringing armed contractors like him on a tourist visa to witnessing war crimes in the form of live ammunition being used against unarmed civilians. The GHF has repeatedly rejected Mr Aguilar's claims, calling them "categorically false" and made by a "disgruntled former contractor who was terminated for misconduct". Claims of shootings are not limited to witnesses, former GHF officials and soldiers, however. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which operates a field hospital in Rafah, has been running "beyond maximum capacity almost daily" since the GHF began operations, treating more patients in that time than it did in the entire preceding year, it said. "Its staff are racing to treat an unrelenting tide of injuries, the vast majority caused by gunfire," it said. These include toddlers, teenagers, the elderly, mothers, and men and boys, who are known to frequent GHF sites. Last week, the UN released a video showing shots being fired towards people waiting for food in humiliating conditions, many of them children, as an aid convoy approaches. The shots are fired into the ground in front of a crowd of people, who begin rushing towards the UN vehicles as they draw near. Olga Cherevko, spokeswoman for the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the UN team faced 'several constraints' when they went to pick up food supplies from the border crossing. 'One of the constraints that we faced was waiting about two and a half hours at an Israeli forces checkpoint, which by the time we were allowed to pass, we were met on the road by tens of thousands of hungry and desperate people who directly offloaded everything from the backs of our lorries.' Israel had not given the UN enough time to secure the aid on the lorries, Ms Cherevko said, making it easier for the packages to fall off. Blame game After months of denials and deflecting responsibility for its role in the reported deaths, Israel acknowledged some of the reality on the ground. "Following incidents in which harm to civilians who arrived at distribution facilities was reported, thorough examinations were conducted in the Southern Command and instructions were issued to forces in the field following lessons learnt," the Israeli army told The National, without clarifying what the new instructions were. A "review" of the "incidents" was being conducted, it said. Since Israel stopped all aid from entering Gaza in March, dozens of people, including 24 children under five, have died of malnutrition, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. The army also clarified it is not running the GHF centres, although it "allows the American civil organisation [GHF] to distribute aid". Security of those zones is handled by the organisation," Israel's military added. But the GHF has taken a different position. Referring to a video with which the Associated Press confronted it during an investigation into its conduct, the organisation said the shots heard were not coming from them, but from Israeli forces. Israel has created an atmosphere in Gaza that has pushed people to starvation, caused prices to rise sharply to hundreds of dollars for basic necessities like flour and sugar, all the while making roads dangerous, medical assistance a rare privilege and safety almost non-existent. With almost the entire population of Gaza displaced, more than 40,000 people are crammed into a 1 square km space. To wonder why the Israeli army, or the armed guards working under its watch, are firing at hungry Gazans is to ask why the GHF has been created.
