Editorial | Rein in Israel

In Sudan, which has been in the throes of civil war for more than two years, over 24 million face starvation as the parties to the conflict – the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of recognised leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid support Forces (RSF) of Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo – use food as a weapon.

The United Nations and international NGOs have drawn attention to the Sudanese crisis, as the SAF and RSF block, or slow down, the delivery of food aid and their fighting undermines the growing and harvesting of crops.

But is not only in North Africa are populations being deliberately starved, it is happening in plain sight, in the Middle East, on the Gaza Strip, and in a manner in which Generals al-Burhan and Dagalo could be led to believe that they have or should be allowed a moral shield and to make the case for moral equivalency.

For until recent days, Western leaders and the West’s assorted media, but for an occasional mild scolding, were almost all in with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his government of rightwing extremists, in their collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, ostensible in the pursuance of a war against Hamas.

Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu is still fêted at the White House and some leaders in major capitals, most notably the British prime minister, still fret and prevaricate over calling out Mr Netanyahu, or falter at exerting real and necessary pressure on Israel to get a change in behaviour.

Yet, no rational person with any sense of decency can believe what is taking place in Gaza, or in the occupied West Bank, is the pursuit of legitimate war aims and within the realm of international humanitarian law. Indeed, even Israeli supporters of the war against Hamas are likely to be appalled at the turn of events, and of the images that are beginning of emerge from Gaza – the bodies of children that, but for the fact that they are in colour, might be mistaken for photographs of individuals after the liberation of places like Auschwitz or Dachau.

This war began after the October 2023 incursion into Israel by fighters from Hamas, the radical Palestinian group that ran Gaza, who killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and took another 200 hostages.

ENDORSES

This newspaper fully endorses Israel’s right to exist in the context of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian dispute. Israel has a right to defend itself against aggression. So, it was fully expected that Israel would retaliate against Hamas, a radical group that ran Gaza.

But what Mr Netanyahu’s government has done, with the complicity of the United States and the West, has gone well beyond the bounds of war and humanity. Gaza, a densely-packed flat and narrow, 25 miles-long strip of land, about the size of the Jamaican parish of St James, has been flattened with Israeli bombs.

Of the strip’s pre-war population of 1.2 million, more than 60,000, mostly women and children, have been killed, and more than twice that number injured. Many bodies are believed to be underneath the rubble.

But beyond the bombing, Israel limited the flow of food, water and electricity into the territory, then tightened the screws further by banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from operating in Israel and the occupied territories. Israel and the United States stitched together an organisation called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to deliver relief to the strip, but its efforts have been largely chaotic. The UN has declined to be part of a politically choreographed aid relief system.

In this humanitarian catastrophe, with Hamas largely decimated as a fighting force, Israel has continued to bomb Gaza, where large swathes of the population are extremely food insecure and people, especially children and the elderly, have begun to die of starvation. Photographs of children with skeletal frames, distended stomachs and sunken eyes have begun to appear. At hospitals some doctors are reported to have grown too weak or burnt-out to care for the ill and injured. In the occupied West Bank settler violence has increased since the Hamas incursion, and Israeli soldiers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians.

CONTINUES TO DENY

Mr Netanyahu continues to deny that his government is engaged in extreme behaviour, but even some of Israel’s staunchest supporters in the West can no longer resist the humanitarian catastrophe – and possibly worse – that he has wrought.

France’s prime minister, Emmanuel Macron has pledged to formally recognise Palestine as a sovereign state at the UN General Assembly in September. Mr Starmer, despite pressure from his Labour Party, continues to dither.

At the summit in Jamaica earlier this month Caribbean Community leaders repeated their condemnation of the Hamas attack, but also deplored Israel’s “disproportionate military response, actions contravening international law, and systematic undermining of peace by illegal settlement expansion”.

Added the leaders: “We are appalled by UN and humanitarian reports depicting widespread hunger, disease, and displacement, deliberately exacerbated by deprivation of basic necessities such as food, water, medicine. Critical fuel shortages further threaten to halt all lifesaving services. The weaponisation of essential resources is morally repugnant, intolerable and unconscionable.”

That is the kind of language, not anodyne statements, Mr Netanyahu must hear from the West – followed by real action.

Then, with moral weight, the same actions can be imposed on the combatants in Sudan and wherever the food and human relief are used as weapons.