Medicide in Gaza: the Killing of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh

BY JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

 MAY 10, 2024
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Dr. Adnan al-Bursh in Al-Shifa Hospital.

More than two weeks after Israel announced his death, it still has not released the body of one of Gaza’s most celebrated doctors, Adnan al-Bursh. Israel hasn’t said how this 50-year-old man in good health died, even though he died in one of its darkest places, Ofer Prison, a place where very bad things are done at the hands of Israeli prison guards and Shin Bet interrogators. It hasn’t explained why al-Bursh was detained in December, then stripped, bound and carried away from the hospital where he was treating the sick and wounded. And it hasn’t offered any reason for why he was held for four months without any contact with his family or a lawyer. 

Adnan al-Bursh was one of Gaza’s leading surgeons. More than that he was one of the Strip’s leading humanitarians, who had repeatedly sacrificed his own safety to provide life-saving medical treatment to people under bombardment. As the head of the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, al-Bursh helped pioneer the limb reconstruction unit, which opened after the 2014 Israeli military attacks on Gaza. But in December he’d gone at great personal risk to treat patients at Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

By the time al-Bursh arrived at Al-Awda in early December, the hospital had already come under repeated attacks by the IDF. Less than a week after the Hamas attacks of October 7, the Israelis ordered the evacuation of all hospitals in northern Gaza, including Al-Awda, which has the largest maternity ward in the district. The World Health Organization warned any raid on Al-Awda would be a death sentence for the hospital’s sick and wounded. 

On November 10, an Israeli airstrike hit an ambulance on route to the hospital. Ten days later, two doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières were killed in an Israeli airstrike at the Al-Adwa. On December 1, the hospital was again hit and damaged by Israeli bombs.

By December 12, the hospital was effectively under siege, surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks and under nearly constant gunfire from snipers. At least one pregnant woman had been shot at and one nurse had been shot through a hospital window and killed by an Israel sniper, while she tended patients on the fourth floor of the building. Supplies of fresh water had been cut off and people inside the hospital, including patients, were being nourished by only one meal of bread or rice each day. 

It was into this slaughter zone that Adnan al-Bursh rushed to help the flood of wounded civilians being admitted to the understaffed hospital. Al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most acclaimed surgeons, had received his medical training in Romania and later in England. In a sense, al-Bursh was coming home. He’d been born and raised in the Jalabia refugee camp on the northern end of the Gaza Strip and got his early education there.

Al-Bursh fully understood the kind of dire situation he was entering. In November, Al-Shifa Hospital came under Israeli attack and he was stranded inside along with his nephew, Abdallah al Bursh, for 10 days. When Israeli troops entered the hospital, they told Al-Bursh to move to the South. He refused and stayed to treat his patients until being forced out. 

“After the Israeli forces besieged us at Al Shifa Hospital for 10 days and asked us to move to the south [of the Gaza Strip], they refused to allow food and drink to enter the hospital,” said Abdallah. “They forced us to relocate to the south, but Dr Adnan refused to comply and decided to take the risk by moving to the north to continue serving people at the Indonesian Hospital.”

Adnan’s wife and six children also refused to go south, instead they sought shelter at an UNRWA school in the northern section of the Gaza Strip. Al-Bursh had argued that Palestinians who fled south would never be able to return to their homes in the north.

Dr. al-Bursh resting after performing multiple surgeries in 2018.

For many Palestinians, al-Bursh is revered for his efforts during the Great March of Return in 2018-19, when he performed over 28 surgeries in one day on Palestinians injured by Israeli fire, after joining a non-violent march to the apartheid fence separating Israel from northern Gaza. Al-Bursh grew up during the First Intifada and recounted the suffering his family and neighbors endured from the violent Israeli response.

Al-Bursh wanted to pursue the cause of Palestinian rights by becoming a lawyer, but he said his family convinced him to pursue a medical education.

“Children always affect me the most,” al-Bursh said. “When I treat them, I feel like they could be my own children. When I see a child crying, it feels like it’s my own child that cries. Our children don’t have a normal childhood as I saw abroad, outside of Gaza.”

On November 20, the Indonesian Hospital in Bait Lahia, where Dr. al-Bursh was now performing multiple surgeries a day, came under a fierce attack that lasted four days. al-Bursh was injured by Israeli fire while in the operating room. The hospital itself was badly damaged by Israeli tank fire.  More than 500 patients and several thousand displaced people were inside the Indonesian hospital when it was struck. At least 12 people were killed in the initial attack, when Israeli tank and artillery fire hit the hospital’s post-operative care unit on the second floor late at night, where dozens of patients and refugees were sleeping.

“There was chaos, darkness and fire in the department, which made it very difficult to evacuate the dead and wounded,” a nurse named Mohamad, told the BBC. With good reason, Mohamad said he didn’t want his full name made public because he feared for his safety. 

“On the fourth day, Israeli forces entered the hospital and inquired about my uncle, my father, Dr. Mirwan al Barsh, and other doctors,” Abdallah recalled. “Fortunately, the next day there was a truce, so they were not taken away.” But the hospital had lost power and water, forcing the staff to evacuate 200 patients by bus to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The International Red Cross arranged the evacuation of 400 other patients. The displaced people were largely left to fend for themselves.

The siege was harshly condemned by the Indonesian government which had financed the construction of the hospital, which opened in 2016. By December the Indonesia Hospital had been turned into an IDF military base and Adnan al-Bursh was applying his healing arts in Al-Adwa Hospital a few miles away.

“Health workers and civilians should never have to be exposed to such horror, especially while inside a hospital,” wrote WHO head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Before the war, Gaza had 36 hospitals. Eight months later only 11 are even partially functional. Two of the largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Nasser, have not only been effectively destroyed, but they have also been revealed to be the sites of mass graves of more than 500 Palestinians killed by Israelis, including many health care workers. “Some of the deceased were allegedly elderly, women and wounded individuals—with some found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Bob Kitchen the International Rescue Committee’s vice president of emergencies. 

The hospitals that remain are short of medical supplies, medicine, water and power. “These health care facilities are not built for mass casualty. And in fact, no hospital in the world is built for this kind of sustained severity of mass casualty, nor could any be able to sustain it,” said Dr. Seema Jilani, a surgeon with IRC’s emergency medical team who worked at Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. There have been more than 400 Israeli attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities, ambulances and workers since October 7, 2023.

As it faces airstrikes and a military invasion, there are only three functioning hospitals left in Rafah, but one of these, Al-Najjar Hospital, “which provides dialysis services for more than 100 patients,” is located in the area that Israel has ordered residents to evacuate, so, according to the WHO, “patients are afraid to seek services.”

Around 500 medical workers in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the start of the war. At least another 1,500 have been wounded and 310 detained. In theory, at least, medical facilities and workers are protected under international law. But there’s little question that what we are witnessing in Gaza is a form of “medicide,” the systematic destruction of a population’s medical infrastructure: hospitals, clinics, medical supplies and health care workers. (By comparison, around 1000 US medics were killed during the Vietnam War.)

After the truce at Indonesian Hospital, al Bursh decided to return to his old community in Jadalya refugee camp, continuing his life-saving work at Al Awda Hospital. Jabalia refugee camp was created during the Nakba in 1948, when Palestinians were forcibly evacuated from their homes in Israel. Until its destruction by Israel in the current war, it was the largest refugee camp in the Palestinian territories, where more than 100,000 residents were crammed into less than a half-square mile of land. Here is where the First Intifada erupted in 1987, after an Israeli truck driven rammed into a car at the Erez Crossing near the camp, killing five Palestinians. Al-Bursh was 14 and the uprising and its violent suppression left an indelible mark on him.

During the 2014 war, Jabalia came under repeated attack by the IDF, including an infamous strike on an UNWRA school which killed 15 Palestinian civilians, several of them children, as they slept on the floor of a classroom that had been designated as a UN shelter. Now one of Gaza’s best surgeons, al-Bursh helped treat many of the wounded from the airstrikes that pulverized his home camp. 

Ironically. Jabalia had been one of the major sites of the protests that sprang up in the summer of 2023 over the deteriorating economic conditions in Gaza, including rising anger toward Hamas over mismanagement and corruption. This disquiet with Hamas didn’t spare Jabalia from taking the initial brunt of Israel’s retaliatory attacks after October 7, when the camp was targeted by hundreds of airstrikes and an armed invasion, which left thousands dead and wounded and the entire camp effectively destroyed. After the IDF finally pulled out in February, a former resident described Jabalia to Al Jazeera as not containing “a single habitable house.”

This was the horrorscape into which Adnan al-Bursh returned in early December for two weeks, where he performed surgeries by the light of cellphones and without anesthesia, until Israeli troops entered the hospital, detained all of the medical personnel, checked their IDs, singled out 10 of them, including al-Bursh, for arrest, stripped them, cuffed them and hauled them away to Ofer prison. Once he and his colleagues entered the darkness of Ofer, there was no word about his condition, until the abrupt and callous announcement of his death. There is still no news regarding his colleagues.

Ofer prison, originally known as Incarceration Facility 385, is an Israeli black site, constructed in Palestinian land on the West Bank, between Ramallah and the illegal Israeli settlement of Giv’at Ze’ev. We don’t know exactly what happened to Dr. al-Bursh when he arrived at Ofer. But we know the kind of abuse that others have endured, treatment that closely parallels and often exceeds the kind of torture the CIA doled out at its black sites in Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, Thailand and Cuba. Even before the latest assault on Gaza, Ofer Prison, which was constructed in 1988 to confine Palestinians detained during the First Intifada, had a notorious reputation for the abuse of prisoners. In 2010, a team of British lawyers who visited the prison reported seeing children with their hands cuffed behind their backs and restrained by iron shackles. 

“We tried to get any news about my uncle from inside the Israeli prison,” al Bursh’s nephew Abdallah said. “The prisoners who were released told us that the doctor was facing a difficult situation and he was subjected to torture.”

What was this torture like? According to reports by human rights groups and the United Nations, Palestinian detainees have been kept bound in cages, deprived of water and food, beaten with metal bars, kicked, hit with gun butts, attacked by military dogs, anally raped with electric probes, urinated on, kept shackled so long arms and legs had to be amputated. Some were fed through straws. Others were made to wear diapers and kept blindfolded for days. Prisoners have had their families threatened with targeted airstrikes, forced to urinate and defecate in their cells, which were kept uncleaned for days. Both male and female prisoners have had their genitals beaten and groped. According to the Israeli military’s own tally, at least 27 Palestinians have died in their custody since October 7, 2023.

Al-Bursh’s family has hired a lawyer who used to work for the ICC to demand the return of his body and an explanation for his death from Israeli authorities. But what explanation can there be other than the obvious one, that he was tortured to death? Here was a doctor who was bombed from one hospital to the next, who, at each stop refused to leave his patients behind, and instead of heading south to the relative safety of the evacuation zones, went north, into the eye of the storm, where his skills and care were most needed, where the maimed and shattered bodies of his people were being pulled out of bomb craters and the rubble of ruined buildings by the hour. It’s hard to imagine a more heroic figure in our depraved and dispiriting era, which is, of course, why his example had to be erased. 

Adnan Al-Bursh was intelligent, humane, and committed. He could speak multiple languages. He saw and could explain the ravages of the occupation and the horrors of the war. He was exactly the kind of person, like the still imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, Israel has always feared might become a leader of the Palestinian people. For that reason, he was also exactly the kind of person Israel has been targeting for elimination under the cover of its bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. 

Failure To Safeguard Free Speech Is Always a Problem

Recent crackdowns on free assembly are a reminder that the state will always finish first in deplatforming contests. Parts of Canada’s Online Harms Bill may be a massive overreach that chills speech at the worst time possible.

By David Moscrop

May 12, 2024

Source: Jacobin

Chad Davis - University Police order protesters to leave. Flickr.



Campuses throughout the United States and Canada are witnessing a surge of free expression and assembly that is being met with repressive crackdowns. Largely driven by calls for justice in Gaza, for a lasting cease-fire, and for a free Palestine, students have occupied buildings, set up encampments, and held protests.

Responses to the action have varied in intensity, from state monitoring to snipers on rooftops and police violence against students and faculty. But all of it amounts to direct attacks on freedom of assembly and speech.
Free Speech Under Fire

Free speech is fundamental to democratic self-government. In the West, we tend to keep some distance between our democracy and our capacities to direct it, which is to say “self-government” is at best action at distance. Our politics are driven by representatives and state institutions rather than citizens. The former typically chart the course and navigate it. The latter vote every so often in an election.

From time to time, the many make themselves heard, often when they believe the state — or other power brokers — are condoning or actively participating in heinous violations of the principles of justice. Campus protests are a barometer for outrage. They are a signal that a line in the sand has been crossed. In recent decades, such protests have rallied against the Iraq War and against the bankers — and the 1 percent — and the politicians who shilled for them in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Now, as before, free speech is under fire as citizens assert their right to assemble and demand something from their government. However, the tension between free expression and efforts to curb it extends beyond campus actions. In Ontario, the legislature banned the wearing of a keffiyeh, calling it “political.” Meta has been accused of silencing support for Palestine on its platforms. In a chilling instance of stifling free press, the Israeli cabinet recently shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel. And lest anyone think the matter is merely a left-wing issue, in Brussels, local politicians attempted to shut down a radical right-wing conference with police, citing a threat to public safety, before a court ordered them to let the event proceed.

President Joe Biden is siding with the reactionary right and a slew of other politicians on curbing assembly and speech as police crack skulls and arrest protesters across the country. In Canada, one Liberal MP called for “university administrators, police,” and, as necessary, governments, “to act” against campus encampments. The state of free speech and assembly appears to be at a nadir — and these liberties need defenders to step up and advocate for broad and deep commitments to each.
The Online Harms Act

In Canada, the government is considering its Online Harms Act, Bill C-63, which is meant to deal with the sprawling problem of various threats that emerge from the internet, including hate speech, incitement to violence, counseling harm, nonconsensual sharing of intimate content, bullying children, and content that sexually victimizes minors.

Against the backdrop of ailing free-speech rights, the appearance of this bill, or some elements of it at least, is inauspicious, even as other bits are utterly essential. The bill may be seeking regulatory and criminal solutions for some of the most heinous and harmful behavior imaginable, but it is fraught with potential problems, as internet expert Michael Geist notes, since “the challenge will be to ensure that there is an appropriate balance between freedom of expression and safeguarding agains[t] such harms.”

Geist points out that the bill covers “obvious harms,” which it does. But he notes that “there are clearly risks that these definitions could chill some speech and a close examination of each definition will be needed.” While prohibitions and penalties will be more obvious and defensible in some cases (sharing intimate images without consent, for instance, or creating, storing, or sharing abusive material involving children), they will be far trickier in other instances (hate speech, or even incitement).

While existing Canadian jurisprudence addresses speech-related issues, Open Media, a digital-rights advocacy organization, warns that the tribunal process included in the bill for certain offenses “is not obligated to follow normal rules of evidence in court, or evaluate whether the offending speech was true.” There is also worry that Bill C-63 is too broad, too punitive with carceral and financial penalties, too far reaching, and too open to abuse.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is calling for “substantial amendments” to the bill, as it worries a provision on speech restriction in the bill “has the potential to censor strong opposition to political authorities.” Beverly McLachlin, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, suspects that the bill, if passed, will face court challenges.

In sum, it’s a critical moment for speech rights in the United States and Canada, and potentially a critical juncture in which free speech maximalists across the ideological divide have a reason to come together to protect fundamental rights necessary for democracy. As a rule, the state will clamp down on speech that threatens the status quo and elite hegemony, especially if that speech has the potential to sway public opinion and policy. However, while the state has supreme power to disperse and deplatform, it isn’t the only threat.
The Boomerang Risk

In recent years, voices from the liberal chattering class and the campus left have been far too ready and eager to silence critics and opponents, often foreclosing discussion and debate on spec and thus inviting the same treatment in return. At times, this effort to redact opinions and ideas that are deemed offensive has reached absurd heights, as with the school library that removed all materials published before 2008 in an effort to delete objectionable material from the prejudiced past.

Yes, certain speech crosses the line and becomes so odious that it genuinely oppresses, harms, and prevents others from taking part in social, economic, political, or cultural life. But these are extreme cases. While this speech is still protected under the First Amendment in the United States — unless it is a direct incitement to harm — hate speech is regulated in Canada.

There has been a concerning expansion of what counts as extreme, as the liberal-left has come to abandon a commitment to free speech. This shift risks boomeranging repercussions, as we witness now in legislature, on campuses, and in the streets. The net result is a more anemic democracy, a less engaging public sphere, and a weaker pro–free speech movement that ought to be secure and ecumenical.

Robust free speech protections also open space for debate, discussion, and deliberation that may change minds, but there’s more to speech than persuasion. When free speech is protected, the rights of individuals and groups to struggle for their conception of justice is protected, and their capacity to extract better policies and outcome from the state is bolstered. Speech isn’t merely about debate; it’s about connection, mobilization, communication of preferences, and the struggle for change among those who know what they want.

The impulse to shout down anyone who agrees with us or, worse, to crack down on them with force, compromises free speech and assembly for everyone. We should refrain from such behavior and instead prioritize safeguarding the rights of those with whom we disagree. This approach is not only principled but also strategically useful — we strive to uphold these rights for ourselves as much as our opponents. If there ever was a time to double down on a broad commitment to speech and assembly rights, it’s now.

The US Continues To Provide Cover For Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

By Ramona WadiMay 12, 2024
Source: Middle East Eye

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains set in his plans to invade Rafah, with or without US assistance. Responding to US President Joe Biden’s warning earlier this week that arms supplies will be limited if Israel invades Rafah, Netanyahu responded, “If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails.” It is quite likely that the fingernails will be spared, though, unlike countless Palestinian lives eliminated under Israel’s bombing.

In the early hours of this morning, the Times of Israel reported White House National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stating, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that what we’ve seen here [in Rafah] in the last 24 hours connotes or indicates a broad, large-scale invasion or major ground operation.” The statement follows a public confirmation by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that a munitions shipment of approximately 3,500 had been halted over concerns that the weapons could be used in Rafah. The weapons shipment halt had prompted Haim Saban, Israeli-American billionaire and donor to the Democratic party, to send an email to Biden’s aides opposing the decision. “Let’s not forget that there are more Jewish voters, who care about Israel, than Muslims voters that care about Hamas,” the informal email partly read. But again, genocide is not about the US elections, or caring about Israel or Hamas.

Two days ago, Axios summed up its predictions over the US State Department’s review of the use of weapons provided to Israel which, if found to have violated international law, can lead to suspension. According to three unnamed US officials, the report would refrain from “concluding it [Israel] has violated the terms for its use of U.S. weapons.” As it turns out, the report provided much in terms of shedding doubt on clarity, which means further veneer for Israel to proceed with its genocide in Gaza.

The report did find that US weapons were being used in violation of international law but the narrative taken by the US is not in accordance with international law. Since October 7 2023, the report states, “Throughout this period, the USG has engaged at all levels with the Government of Israel to understand Israel’s view of the applicable legal frameworks relevant to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.” That is not how international law works. Israel’s view normalises genocide and war crimes, to make international law inapplicable. Therefore, the so-called “imperatives”, among which the report lists “minimising civilian casualties”, already provides the necessary groundwork to dilute any measures the US can take in terms of weapons supply to Israel. And indeed, the language used in the report emphasises the usual trend of downplaying proof into likelihood.

For example, the report notes that “Israel has not shared complete information to verify whether US defence articles covered under NMS_20 were specifically used in actions that have been alleged as violations of IHL or IHRL in Gaza, or in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the period of the report.” It does state the use of US origin weapons but states, regarding their use, that they were “likely to have been involved in incidents that raise concerns about Israel’s IHL compliance.” Likely. Again, doubt is sown, and always in Israel’s favour.

The same tactic occurs throughout the report. The US State Department sources the UN, NGOs and human rights organisations to cite “credible reports of alleged human rights abuses by Israeli security forces”. Again – take note of the language. Credible and alleged within the same sentence only disputes credibility. And following lists of violations Israel committed against Palestinian civilians, the State Department report gives Israel the benefit of the doubt once again because, “with Hamas seeking to hide behind civilian populations and infrastructure and expose them to military action, as well as the lack of USG personnel on the ground in Gaza, it is difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents.”

“Given Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles covered under NSM-20 have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its IHL obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.” This would be one of the clearest admissions by the US in terms of its weapons being used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. However, in the next paragraph, Israel’s security forces harmed civilians “potentially using U.S.-provided equipment”.

The report also attempts to discredit “numerous credible UN, NGO and media reports” detailing Israel’s targeting of civilian infrastructure. Indeed, specific instances are mentioned in the report, including those of Israeli airstrikes targeting humanitarian aid workers, market places and refugee camps, but then resorts to the Israeli narrative of Hamas using human shields. Additionally, the report casts doubt on the civilians killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, stating that “the reported death tolls do not distinguish” between Hamas and civilians killed.

“Israel has a sophisticated system for identifying where civilians are located in order to try to minimise civilian harm,” the US report states. Undoubtedly Israel has the technology to locate civilians, but genocide wipes out everyone. Therefore, the report saying that international organisations have reported “mitigation efforts as inconsistent” is a very mild way of stating that Israel’s precision targeting precisely targeted civilians. Israel dividing Gaza into over 300 sectors, for example, is also touted as a mitigation effort to avoid civilian casualties. But if that were true, how does the US account for the genocide and its final destination in Rafah?

If the report set out to determine Israel’s compliance, it would have used definite language instead of employing purposefully contradictory language. Bureaucracy is not a deterrent for Israel. It merely suits the purpose of illusory action, but on the ground in Gaza, Palestinians are still facing genocide.

The US is already downplaying Israel’s actions in Rafah so far – how much impact will a report written in a way to protect Israel from accountability have? Furthermore, the report implicates the US not only by providing the means for Israel’s genocide, but protecting genocidal actions as well. Diplomacy and genocide, it seems, make for durable compatibility.

 

USA & Israel Defy World in Vote To Make Palestine Full UN Member

143 countries, representing the vast majority of the world, voted at the UN General Assembly to support giving Palestine full membership. They were opposed by the US, Israel, and seven other small states, representing just 5% of the global population.

By Ben Norton

May 12, 2024

Source: Geopolitical Economy Report

The vast majority of countries on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to endorse full membership for Palestine.

On May 10, 143 of the UN’s 193 member states supported a resolution that called to make Palestine a full member. However the United States, Israel, and seven small countries, representing just 5% of the global population, stood against the rest of the planet, opposing the measure.

In April, the US government used its veto power in the UN Security Council to kill a resolution that would have allowed Palestine to be recognized as a full member.

Palestine is an observer state in the United Nations, but without the approval of the Security Council, it cannot be admitted as a full member.

The combined population of the nine UN member states that voted against full membership for Palestine is just around 429 million, according to US government statistics:

• United States – 342 million
• Argentina – 47 million
• Czechia – 10.8 million
• Papua New Guinea – 10 million
• Hungary – 9.9 million
• Israel – 9.4 million
• Micronesia – 99,603
• Palau – 21,864
• Nauru – 9,892

Although these countries only represent 5% of the world population, the United States can oppose the will of the international community because it has veto power on the Security Council.

It is thus Washington that is denying the Palestinian people their rights to sovereignty and a state, as enshrined in international law. The only obstacle standing in the way of full UN membership for Palestine is the United States.

President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly claimed to support a “two-state solution” in Israel-Palestine, but have opposed all attempts at giving the Palestinian people a state.

Opposition to Palestinian sovereignty is bipartisan in the US, uniting both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

In March, Biden condemned Hungary’s right-wing President Viktor Orbán as a “dictator”. Orbán is an ally of Trump, whom Biden also ardently criticizes. Yet all three are allied in support of Israel and in opposition to Palestinian sovereignty.

A poll conducted in April found that a majority of Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most Republicans do not believe Israel is committing genocide. Biden is therefore allied with Republicans, against the base of his own party.

The General Assembly resolution that was voted on on May 10 asserted that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations in accordance with Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations”.

It called to allow “the participation of the State of Palestine in the sessions and work of the General Assembly and the international conferences convened under the auspices of the Assembly or other organs of the United Nations”.

The resolution likewise reaffirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine”, and demanded “an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967”, which violates international law.

25 countries abstained in the May 10 vote. These included Germany, Italy, and several other European states, along with Canada and Ukraine.

Ukraine’s post-2014, pro-NATO government has allied closely with Israel and opposed Palestinian sovereignty.

Roughly three-quarters of countries on Earth, 143 out of the total 193 UN members states, already have established official diplomatic relations with Palestine. It is principally the West that refuses to do so.

A Clubbable Admission: Palestine’s Case for UN Membership


by Binoy Kampmark / May 11th, 2024

I find it rather difficult to make it clear to my children why we are not eligible, for from one point of view it isn’t quite clear to me.
X, “The Jew and the Club,” The Atlantic, October 1924.

It must surely make certain ethnic and religious groups reflect, notably those languishing in minority status for decades, if not centuries. There was a time when the rental advertisements in London had such caustic couplings as “Irish and Blacks need not apply.” Oxbridge bursaries and scholarships, in all their variety, reveal a tapestry of personal prejudice and lively bigotry. In terms of recreational clubs, the east coast, moneyed establishment in the United States prided itself from keeping Jews out of the membership circle, notably in such mind destroying facilities as golfing establishments. The wall was impervious, idiotic, resistant.

The United Nations, yet another, albeit larger club, functions on similar principles. Do you have the right credentials to natter, moan and partake in the body’s constituent parts? Do you satisfy the seemingly elementary criteria proposed in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States? (These are: a permanent population, a defined territory, an identifiable government and a capacity to enter into relations with other states.) Meeting that threshold, the assumption of recognised statehood and, it follows membership, should be a matter of minor controversy.

What is not mentioned in the United Nations Charter is the political dimension that boils beneath the text: states who are refused admission, let alone recognition, on grounds petty or substantial. All clubs, it follows, are institutions oiled by the tenacity of small minds and rarely troubled by actual principle.

For Palestinians, the still incomplete road to recognition, let alone UN membership, has been particularly potholed. In November 1988, the Palestine National Council, the legislative wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, declared the existence of the State of Palestine. In 2011, an application was made for admission to the United Nations. All the way, their claims have been challenged. Israel, having pinched Palestinian land, guards the door to admission with zeal, and confident, for the most part, that a viable Palestinian state will never come into being.

On May 10, the UN General Assembly resolved (143 votes in favour, nine against, including the drearily predictable US and Israel, iced with 25 abstentions) to sanitise the Palestinian application to become a member of the club. The significantly diluted resolution throbs with enormous condescension, more a nod and wink than anything significant.

The summary from the UN does little to dispel this assumption, suggesting an “upgrade” to “the rights of the State of Palestine within the world body, but not the right to vote or put forward its candidature to such organs as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).” The Assembly merely found Palestine a suitable candidate for full membership, recommending the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.

What, then, can the Palestinian delegation actually do with its revised status? From September, delegates will be able to make, for instance, statements on behalf of a group, submitting proposals and amendments and their introduction. They will qualify for election as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the General Assembly. They will also be able to fully participate “in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.” Hardly breathtaking, though an improvement on the current “observer status” which should be designated “spectator status”.

Like an applicant to the Garrick Club in London or the Savage Club in Melbourne, private institutions long in tooth and vanity, their membership heavy with colostomy bags and short of females, the Palestinians were found to be partially deserving. In other words, they had, in circumstances absurd and crude, been deemed by the UN’s largest forum to be potentially clubbable. Exercising all rights of membership will ultimately depend on what the big boys and gals on the Security Council, notably the permanent five, say.

Some clue of what will happen when the matter comes up for discussion in the Security Council can already be gathered by the sinking of a previous resolution for Palestinian admission last month. The Algerian sponsored resolution was quashed by the United States as a matter of course, despite receiving 12 approvals. The grounds for doing so were familiar: recognised statehood could only spring from “a comprehensive peace agreement.” Sustainable peace was only possible “via a two-State solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” All other matters, including the debate on admission, were “premature”.

All of this makes the reaction from Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, all the more absurd. Before fellow delegates, the intemperate representative sported a miniature shredder in which he placed a copy of the UN Charter, declaring that granting Palestinians greater rights of representation entailed the following message: “you are telling the child-murdering Hamas rapists that terror pays off.” In that statement can be detected the echoes of such founding representatives of Israel as Ben Gurion and Menachim Begin, all of whom were well-versed in the calculus of violence and its ill-gotten rewards.

The unhinged Erdan, perhaps unwittingly, revealed a perspective many had suspected: that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is one of conflation, denigration and the eradication of distinctions. All are terrorists of the animal variety, as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, would have it, and all are, at best, only suitable for playing a subservient role on the international stage.

“We always knew that Hamas hides in schools,” moaned Erdan. “We just didn’t realise that it’s not only in schools in Gaza. It’s also Harvard, Colombia and many elite universities.” If all that was, indeed, true, then any improvement in the Palestinian situation, culminating in the UN General Assembly vote, must surely be regarded as pitifully modest. Palestine remains, at the end of the day, ineligible for full club membership.
A Modest Proposal: The UN General Assembly and Palestinian Recognition

by Binoy Kampmark / May 10th, 2024


Despite being described in some circles as such, the latest vote in the United Nations General Assembly on Palestine’s status is hardly extraordinary. For one, it does not vest the Palestinian territories with statehood but burnishes its credentials to join the club. It pushes those scrappy, desperate entities so despoiled and abused into deeper involvement with the processes at the UN itself. Palestinian non-observer status, granted in 2012, has left it mute in international affairs.

The May 10 resolution is seen, according to a summary from the UN, as an improvement, an “upgrade” to “the rights of the State of Palestine within the world body, but not the right to vote or put forward its candidature to such organs as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).” The Assembly found Palestine a suitable candidate for full membership, recommending the Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.

The resolution was adopted with 143 votes in favour and nine against, including US and Israel, with 25 abstentions.

The grant of Palestinian membership requires a recommendation from the most powerful arm of the UN, the Security Council. In that body, the United States vigilantly protects Israeli interests and can be relied upon to stultify moves towards Palestinian statehood. Just last month, an Algerian sponsored resolution seeking Palestine’s admission as a state was quashed by Washington’s exercise of the veto. Palestinian Statehood could only come into being, argued the US representative, from “a comprehensive peace agreement.” Sustainable peace was only possible “via a two-State solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” The resolution as it stood was a “premature” action.

Such reasons have become stale, a de facto acceptance that any Palestinian entity, should it ever arise, would be impotent on the international stage, defenceless, impoverished and subservient to Israel’s interests. For Israel, national security entails an impotent Palestine.

As things stand, the changes that will take effect from September 10 are hardly a reason for critics to stamp their feet or for supporters to roar with approval. The new status will permit, among others changes, seating alongside Member States in alphabetical order, the making of statements on behalf of a group, submitting proposals and amendments and their introduction, the right of delegate members to be elected as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the General Assembly and “full effective participation in UN conferences and international conferences and meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate, of other UN organs.”

With limitations duly noted, the momentum towards a more formal recognition of Palestinian statehood, and one the US-Israel partnership is increasingly losing control of, is unmistakable. In an interview on Spanish national radio RNE on May 9, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, confirmed the veracity of Irish media reports that Spain, Ireland, and a number of other EU countries will recognise a Palestinian state this month.

The General Assembly resolution proved unpalatable to Israel, whose ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, was melodramatic and histrionic in response. Having come equipped with a shredder (a wonderful piece of equipment for a diplomat), he proceeded to place a copy of the UN Charter into it. “I shredded the ‘UN Charter’,” he explained, “to illustrate what the General Assembly is doing by subverting the Security Council and supporting the entry of a terror entity.”

Erdan’s reasoning, which can be taken to be that of the Netanyahu government more broadly, makes no distinction about Palestinian groups, let alone the differently controlled entities in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are conflated, an easy thing to do when there is no appetite, or intention among Israel’s political classes, for the establishment of any form of sovereign Palestinian state. Just as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that Israel was “fighting against human animals” in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7, we have Israel’s face of respectability at the UN stating the following: “The ambassadors know that the Palestinians are not ‘peace seekers’ but rather, supporters of terrorism.”

Those who label certain actions terroristic in nature often throw up the mirror to see an unpleasant reflection, even as they rage against it. The activities of Hamas on October 7 were bloodstained and traumatic; the sanguinary operations of Zionist paramilitary groups waged to create an Israeli state were not much better. Statehood’s creation is often concomitant with horrendous violence and a breach of conventions. “The annals of Zionist history,” writes S. Shamiri Hassan, “are full of leaders outdoing other leaders in insisting on the importance of military power and the role of force and terror in the building and safeguarding of the Zionist state: Joseph Trumpeldor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Menahem Begin, Ben Gurion, and all the Israeli generals.”

The spectacle of the UN Charter vanishing as strips of paper in a shredder was inadvertently apt, given Israel’s own flouting of international law regarding Palestinian rights for decades, not to mention its current program of massacre, famine and displacement in Gaza. The fundamental lesson of May 10 for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is that its iron grip on the fate of Palestinian statehood is proving increasingly precarious.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.