The Medical Association for Prevention of War renews its call of last week for the Australian government to express in the strongest possible terms that Australia supports the application of the rule of law impartially and in all circumstances, and explicitly condemns violations of it not only by Hamas but also by Israel in the horrific war unfolding in the Middle East.
The destruction of the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City, killing hundreds of sick and wounded people as well as healthcare workers and others sheltering there, and the loss of yet more critical medical infrastructure, is unconscionable and must be condemned as a war crime.
The destruction of the hospital is a most extreme escalation in a far more long-standing assault on the rights of the Palestinian people to life and adequate health care. Health inequalities resulting from the military occupation are manifest in underdeveloped and underfunded healthcare systems, with Palestinians faring worse than Israelis in indicators like infant, child and maternal mortality, life expectancy, mortality rates for leading causes of death, mental health, and access to COVID-19 vaccines. Access to health care is regularly impeded by the military occupation. In addition, dispossession of Palestinian land, homes, and livelihoods, as well as unlawful killings, excessive use of force, discrimination, arbitrary detention, and reduced freedom of movement and expression, as documented by Amnesty International, add to the burden of suffering.
While MAPW welcomes the government’s call for Israel to follow the rules of war, we deeply regret that the government’s words carry no message of shock or outrage at the suffering and terror being inflicted on Palestinian civilians, including the families and friends in Gaza of many Australians. Are Israeli attacks on health care, food, water and fuel not atrocities that should be named as such, just as we all recoil in horror at the atrocities committed by Hamas against young Israeli civilians? MAPW urges condemnation of Israeli crimes with language and demands that fit the scale of what is unfolding in Gaza.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has been collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides in the latest escalation of fighting. In addition to its condemnation of abhorrent crimes committed against Israeli civilians, the Commission states that it is gravely concerned with Israel’s latest attack on Gaza and its announcement of a complete siege on Gaza involving the withholding of water, food, electricity and fuel.
We call on the Australian government to withhold all political support from the Israeli government while the killing of Palestinian civilians and destruction of their infrastructure continue, and to stop any weapons exports from Australia to Israel.
Last week, the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said “I ordered a full siege on the Gaza Strip. No power, no food, no gas, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”. The Minister was in effect announcing plans to commit war crimes, as the protection of civilians everywhere, along with their access to life’s essentials, is fundamental to the rules of war. Similarly, he also said that the Israeli military is “prepared to eliminate Gaza”. The issuing by the Israeli government of evacuation warnings is meaningless if the warnings are impossible to comply with.
The Israeli Defence Minister’s words sound perilously close to, if not in fact, incitement to commit genocide. The Genocide Convention lists specific acts, any of which, if committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, constitute genocide. They include “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
Allies of Israel have a particular duty to unequivocally and explicitly condemn the indiscriminate attacks on and siege of Gaza, just as we unequivocally and explicitly condemn war crimes committed by others.
There have been repeated calls over decades for Israel’s military occupation, and the displacements, deprivation, poverty and humiliations of the OPT, to end. There can be no peace without justice. The UN Commission, cited above, “emphasises that the only path towards ending violence and achieving sustainable peace is through addressing the root causes of the conflict including through ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and recognising the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” It is time for Australia to state the same.