ZIYAAD EBRAHIM PATEL
Palestinians in Gaza face an escalation in ultra-right fascist military annihilation in the long-standing belligerent occupation by Israel of the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and its effective military control of the land, air and sea borders surrounding the Gaza Strip.
Recent events emerging from occupied Palestine, where Hamas fighters successfully breached the heavily secured Gaza border fence in an orchestrated and well- planned paramilitary operation, into Southern occupied Palestine, the al-Aqsa Flood Operation, has been hailed in all quarters as unprecedented.
For the oppressed, a valiant act of defiant resistance to Zionist occupation of Palestinian land.
The Western democratic world, in utter hypocrisy of democratic values it espouses, have given the blood thirsty Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the carte blanch and his ultra-right cronies the green light to retaliate, as he deems necessary on the collective civilian population of Gaza.
Hamas resistance groups which carried out the attack must, however, be evaluated in context. Questions of what led to this turning point in the conflict must be scrutinised in the policy making decisions of successive Israeli governments, which have perpetually failed to recognise Palestinians as human beings with rights to safety and security and the protection of their fundamental human rights.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is, in effect, carrying out in Gaza the extermination of Palestinian life and culture in the regimes bloodthirsty madness of Israeli styled Zio-Nazi Neo-fascism.
“No electricity, no fuel, no food and no water”, says ultra-right fascist Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to Palestinian civilians living in Gaza.
The apartheid fascist state is oblivious to international humanitarian law, where ordinary Palestinians have endured decades long collective punishment and war crimes perpetrated against them. The evidence is insurmountable.
It is well documented: Gaza’s status of a large open-air prison. In 2023, the population of Gaza is estimated at 2.1 million people. Gaza ranks as the most densely populated place in the world, with its population living on only 365 square kilometres of land.
Palestinians have been victims of ultra-right widescale Israeli state terrorism backed by billions of US dollars in military aid and the support of countries such as the UK, Belgium and France under the watchful eye of the European Union.
The same weapons unleashed in the West Bank against innocent Palestinians are sold cynically back to Western democratic states and regimes as ‘battle tested’.
The unprecedented acts of resistance by Hamas cannot be a comparison of equal armed forces, where the military industrial complex of the US and western states has armed the IDF with nuclear warheads to ward off attacks from its neighbours and terrorise Palestinians.
The battle ground is not equal, despite the false comparisons made by Western media. War mongering bullies are aiding Israel to bombard a densely populated ghetto with frugal means and resources.
Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, maimed and injured in Gaza. There are ongoing IDF air strikes, with little to no warning to residents. These air strikes are disproportionate and without distinction of military targets from civilian population in IDF operations and wars perpetrated over the last decade or more. These actions fulfil the requirements of war crimes under international criminal law.
The South African government has also failed on a domestic level to create enabling legislation, such as the IPPRSA Bill (Implementation and Protection of Palestinian Solidarity Rights), in protection of Palestinian solidarity rights and also South African investigative and prosecutorial authorities - the National Prosecuting Authority - have shamefully evaded, despite many years of collation of evidence by human rights lawyers, in the various criminal complaints lodged documenting the mounting evidence of Israeli war crimes and apartheid constituting crimes against humanity.
In March 2022, the SA Zionist Terrorism Corridor Probe was launched that spotlighted the grave danger and risk to South Africans, whereby impressionable Jewish youth are being paramilitary trained and recruited by complicit Zionist institutions.
The first part of this probe is the investigation into South African nationals and/or citizens who have either previously served or are currently serving in the IDF in direct violation of the provisions of the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act 6.
The South African government and the Authorities are derelict in their constitutional mandate and, in terms of their international obligations, failed to protect the Palestinian people from this impending holocaust.
A blemish of our illustrious history in defeating apartheid and humiliation upon the incumbent political leadership. There should be mass protests by civil society, and Palestinian solidarity groups in demanding the rule of law be upheld and the protection of Palestinian rights from the effects of organised structural violence emanating from colonialism, apartheid practices, perpetration of war crimes, and genocide, to demand such steps are undertaken in holding Israel accountable for its actions.
The US and its allies must be reminded that, like past wars and the ones to ensue until justice of Palestinians is not restored with the legitimate aspirations and fundamental human rights of Palestinians entrenched, the right to safety and security of persons, right to life, human dignity, the right of return to their lands and properties, freedom to trade and associate, protection of their holy precincts, resistance shall be the only alternative means.
The cowardice of supplying conventional weapons of mass destruction to the IDF controlled by an ultra-right-wing Israeli regime have bloodied the hands of these hypocritical leaders. The tragedy and loss of innocent human life must apply fairly where Palestinian lives must matter.
What is expected when the occupier has taken so much from an occupied people, their human dignity, their lives, property and even wiped out their entire families, communities and Palestinian society, the cantonisation of Palestinian neighbourhoods and isolation of business districts from economic activity through incessant military checkpoints for purposes of unlawful settlement expansion.
Violence precipitates violence on both sides of hostile conflict. The context is everything, and judgment certainly does not rest with only the recent attacks carried out by Hamas fighters, where
Israeli settler colonial pogroms have been the preceding norm, and the architects of Israeli policy of apartheid, colonialism, belligerent occupation coupled with grand scale state terrorism since 1948 against the Palestinian people, which have the set the agenda and pace of the current human catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
International diplomatic multilateralism through the establishment of the United Nations and the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court have failed to curtail this Zionist monstrosity.
Operation al-Aqsa Flood under these conditions, where resistance is the only available tool in the struggle of the existence of the oppressed, is a significant achievement in carrying out the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people.
The valiant freedom fighters of Hamas and its armed groups of resistance in this context are carrying out both their moral, religious and national duty in liberating their people from a detestable occupation who fails to recognise Palestinian’s legitimate rights and aspirations in protection of their fundamental human rights in attaining a just political solution.
Ziyaad Ebrahim Patel is an international human rights lawyer and lawfare advocate.
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