International Intervention in Gaza Is Necessary, Asserts Australian Peace Network

For the last three months, Israel has been conjuring Hell on Earth in northern Gaza. In October 2024, the apartheid state commenced a fresh offensive in the north of the 40-kilometre walled-in region, which it continues into the present.

This is after having unleashed its full-scale extermination project in that part of The Strip in October 2023.

So, the Palestinian population in the north has been pounded by Israeli forces for more than 15 months, and the levels of degradation that the Netanyahu government is subjecting these fellow human beings to is almost inconceivable.

Yet, this living horror is continuing to be manufactured in the north 12 months after the highest judicial authority on the planet, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered Israel to stop its genocidal actions.

Indeed, the top court ruled that Israel is plausibly carrying out a genocide on 26 January last year, and due to the ongoing perpetration of the most serious of all criminal offences, the edifice of international law that’s been established since World War II, is being weakened and undermined in a manner that’s never occurred in the past.

“It is way beyond time for urgent action,” the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) outlined last week, and the body went on to explain that UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has already invoked article 99 of the UN Charter in response to Gaza, which involved drawing the UN Security Council’s attention to the situation that “threatens… international peace and security”.

But the appalling truth is, that as the US is one of the five permanent members on the council, it has been – in a similar manner to the way in which Tel Aviv has rejected any authority’s order to cease its slaughter of Palestinians – voting against any measures resulting from Guterres’ intervention, which permits this grave atrocity to continue, along with the undermining of international law.

Crimes identified left to fester  

“It is clear that words and resolutions are not working,” said IPAN spokesperson Kathryn Kelly, “and direct intervention by the international community is required.”

“IPAN condemns these attacks which have resulted in the deaths of health workers, destruction of essential equipment and pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse,” the former federal public servant continued. “These are war crimes.”

Whilst the ICJ determined that a “plausible” genocide is transpiring in Gaza 12 months ago, in issuing international arrest warrants against the names of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has identified the war crime of starvation and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

Kelly further points out that 15 months into the most high-tech military mass slaughter ever to have transpired, “Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks on and near hospitals in Gaza” continues unabated, and this has most despicably been on display of late in the Israeli military’s assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and its disappearing of hospital director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya.

“IPAN also deplores the fact that the Israeli government has not implemented the provisional measures it was ordered to take by the International Court of Justice almost twelve months ago, to prevent any acts contrary to the 1948 Genocide Convention,” the IPAN spokesperson further made clear.

An international edifice falling down

Guterres sent a letter invoking article 99 of the UN Charter to the UN Security Council on 6 December 2023.

This was the first time the UN secretary general had ever invoked article 99 since he took office in 2017. And article 99, the strongest UN mechanism that can be applied, has rarely been used over the time the United Nations has been operating.

Yet, as Israel’s mass slaughter and starvation project in the Gaza Strip continues on 13 months after this the head of the UN invoked this last resort power, what’s been revealed is that the United Nations system is incapable of ending the Gaza genocide.

The UN Security Council is the top body that works to maintain world peace and identify threats to it.

The council has five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, along with 10 more temporary members, who rotate every two years. And unlike most measures within the system of international law, if the council makes a decision on peacekeeping, international sanctions or it authorises the use of military force, it is an enforceable order.

The major problem with this body is as it considers resolutions, like the numerous Gaza ceasefire resolutions it has deliberated upon over the last 15 months, if any one of the permanent members votes against one, it is automatically vetoed, regardless of how the majority of members vote.

So, the United States has been voting down every substantive Gaza UN Security Council resolution that’s had the potential to end the Gaza genocide.

In identifying that a plausible genocide is underway in Gaza, the ICJ ordered on 26 January last year that in light of this finding, Israel must stop perpetrating its genocidal acts in The Strip, permit an increase in humanitarian aid to enter the region, as well as to report back on how this was being actioned in 30 days time.

And while the case brought by South Africa continues in the World Court, Israel has refused to act on the orders of 12 months’ ago, which again lays bare the inability of international law to make a substantial impact in the gravest of situations.

The bloodshed continues unabated

IPAN is calling on the Albanese government to recall this nation’s ambassador to Israel back to Australia, if no immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the release of Dr Hussam Abu Safia are not forthcoming.

The network further demands the application of trade sanctions against the Israeli state, the ending of bilateral military-technology trade with Israel, as well as that the government acknowledge the findings of the ICC in regard to its international arrest warrant against Netanyahu and to confirm our nation will enforce the order if the Israeli PM sets foot in this country.

However, Poland has recently announced it will be allowing PM Netanyahu to conduct an official visit to its country later this month and he will be under no threat of arrest, while Australian attorney general Mark Dreyfus is travelling to Israel this week to appease that state, after the Albanese government went off script last year and took some actions that weren’t pro-the genocide in Gaza.