HOW MANY MORE WILL DIE? STOP THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA, STOP THE SLIDE TO GENERAL WAR

On this grim first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, Peace Quest Cape Breton adds its voice to countless others in the Middle East and around the world demanding unremitting efforts to stop the genocide in Palestine and the wider war now predictably underway in Lebanon and elsewhere. Today, violent events are moving as fast as hopes for peace are fading. And those hopes can only be revived by peacemaking itself, by deploying every possible non-violent means at humanity’s disposal – diplomatic, political, economic, legal, cultural, spiritual – to end the slaughter and break the fever endangering and sickening us all. 

The carnage, to date, is indeed astounding. The October 7 attacks killed nearly 1,200 people, over 800 of them civilians; 250 hostages were taken, most of whom – in the absence of a ceasefire repeatedly sabotaged by the Netanyahu government – have since been killed by Israel and Hamas. In a pulverized Gaza Strip, before October 7 one of the world’s poorest and most overcrowded places, nearly 42,000 war deaths have been reported – including at least 11,000 children and 6,000 women – with thousands unaccounted for, 100,000 wounded and disabled, and famine and disease rife. Among the dead are over 800 doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel; nearly 300 aid workers, 225 from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and 128 journalists – making this, as the International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) detailed in October 1, “the bloodiest period in the history of journalism”. Nearly two million people, over 90% of the population, have been displaced, most of them multiple times. Two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged, over 50,000 of them (mostly homes) destroyed, erasing in the process swathes of priceless cultural heritage. The UN estimates that the over 40 million tons of rubble could take – at vast cost – 15 years to clear. 

Outside the Gazan epicenter, over 500 Palestinians in the illegally-occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli security forces and settler-extremists. In Israel, nearly two dozen people have been killed in sporadic violence, with tens of thousands more internally displaced, mainly from the northern border with Lebanon. Since Israel launched its full assault on Hezbollah on September 27, 1,500 people have been killed – more than in the 33-day 2006 war – with over a million Lebanese displaced. And after the Israeli assassinations of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, followed by a rebuffed Iranian missile attack on Israel, a potentially region-engulfing war now looms between the region’s only nuclear-armed state and a state moving ever-closer to the Bomb since President Trump walked away from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal – a deal President Biden bafflingly refused to return to. 

So while tens of thousands have already died, millions of lives hang in the balance: a balance that can only be tipped toward peace by diplomacy delivering either what the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API) envisaged – full Arab normalisation of relations with Israel in return for a two-state solution premised on Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories to its 1967 borders, enabling the creation of a meaningfully independent Palestinian state sharing its capital of Jerusalem with Israel – or a democratic ‘one-state solution’, neither a Jewish nor an Arab State, granting and guaranteeing equal status and rights to each citizen.   

Serious progress in either of these directions, possible only in the context of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon, will in turn create space for détente and demilitarization between Iran and all its neighbours, as well as opening the ‘peace path’ to Israeli denuclearization and the establishment of a Middle East Zone free of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such a future is massively in Israel’s interest, but significant external pressure will be needed to alter the calculus of the present extremist government. 

The most important forms this external pressure can take are: a total arms embargo; divestment – by governments, banks, corporations, universities, etc. – from the Israeli war machine; and recognition of a Palestinian state, as a political precursor to its creation. Canada suspended approval of new arms transfers to Israel on January 8, and we commend the government for belatedly (September 10) halting all previously-licensed transfers. Canada should now join the global majority of states – 146 out of 193 – recognizing Palestine as a sovereign nation. This number has understandably grown during the genocide, with three western nations – Austria, Ireland and Spain – making the historic commitment in May. 

The biggest difference could be made by a new US Administration, and the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamila Harris, has used stronger rhetoric than President Biden to condemn Israeli actions. She may also more fully appreciate the extent to which the last year has been an epochal reputational disaster for US diplomacy and policy, with Washington ineffectually urging ‘restraint’ and avoidance of civilian harm on a regime it continues to arm to the teeth, fully support with its military intelligence and firepower, and diplomatically defend through repeated (ab)use of its Security Council veto. 

The moment of truth for America may come soon, with the expected issuing of arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The US (like Israel) is a member of the Court, and as the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, stressed at the UN General Assembly on September 24, not only do the “ICJ’s orders make it clear that that there is a plausible case of genocide against the people of Gaza,” but “further make it clear that States must also act to prevent genocide by Israel – and ensure that they are not themselves in violation of the Genocide Convention by aiding or assisting in the commission of genocide.” 

Ultimately, for justice to be done, Palestine needs to be free. As President Ramaphosa powerfully added: “The violence the Palestinian people are being subjected to is a grim continuation of more than half a century of apartheid. We South Africans know what apartheid looks like. We lived through it. We suffered and died under it. We will not remain silent and watch as apartheid is perpetrated against others.”