“This Is an Emergency, Laws Don’t Apply”

by Joseph Essertier / July 23rd, 2024

The first chapter of Agamben’s The State of Exception (U. of Chicago, 2005) presents a brief outline of the history of the state of exception, including concrete examples from Nazi Germany, the U.S. (the Civil War and after 9/11), France, Switzerland, Italy, and England, roughly in that order. He explains that World War I was a “laboratory for testing and honing” systems for establishing states of exception, and that there was a “gradual expansion of the executive’s powers during the two world wars.” He quotes Walter Benjamin writing in 1942, that “the state of exception… has become the rule.”

Similarly, Matthew Marino, the Executive Editor of the University of Cincinnati Law Review, summed up the problem in the U.S. in March 2021:

Emergency powers have desirable features. As mentioned, Congress cannot act quickly in response to a crisis. Presidential authority has increased in most liberal democracies so presidents can effectively confront “a world besieged by complexity and crisis” that legislatures are ill-equipped to address. However, with more power vested exclusively in the President comes more potential for abuse of the emergency powers.

According to Marino, the National Emergencies Act (NEA) of 1976 was originally intended to hold back the executive branch, but “accountability and reporting provisions have not been vigorously enforced and therefore do not adequately restrain the President’s broad discretion under emergency statutes.” Congress members had “recognized that by refusing to terminate states of emergency, the President was retaining extraordinary power intended only for use during a genuine crisis.”

Marino adds that at that time, in 2021, the U.S. was under 40 ongoing states of emergency.

The NEA allowed President George W. Bush to declare a national emergency for the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and it allowed former President Trump to issue a “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak” on 13 March 2020. These are two of the “national emergencies” that stand out, but we are now accustomed, in fact, to constantly living under national emergencies, which can also be categorized in Agamben’s terms as “states of exception.” And most U.S. citizens are not aware of this, how different life is for us, compared to generations long ago, such as those who lived during the 19th century.

Agamben explains that the Patriot Act that was issued by the U.S. Senate on 26 October 2001 had already allowed the Attorney General to take into custody any alien suspected of endangering our national security, but under that law, within one week, the alien had to be charged with a crime or let go. (State of Exception 1.3). On 13 November of that year, then President Bush issued a “military order” entitled “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism.”

But “in a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2006, that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees. The court ruled that the tribunals violate U.S. laws and the international Geneva Conventions.”

In Agamben’s estimation, what was new about Bush’s order was that it radically erased “any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being.” (State of Exception 1.3). For Agamben the legal situation of Taliban members captured in Afghanistan was similar to that of Jews in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. With insights from the philosopher Judith Butler in mind, he writes that “bare life reaches its maximum indeterminacy” in the situation of the detainee at Guantánamo. (State of Exception 1.3)

I have argued in previous essays (starting in March 2021) that the U.S. government has engaged in fearmongering in order to establish “states of exception,” increasingly since the 9/11 attack, including establishing such a state in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. In February of this year, I gave examples of how COVID-19 was being manipulated through a filter of censorship by the U.S. “national security state,” allowing them to exaggerate the danger posed by the virus, create a state of exception through our fear of it, and generate suspicion against anyone who would dare downplay the threat of the contagion or criticize the biosecurity industry.

The several years after 9/11 saw a huge expansion of the U.S. budget for biodefense. And to raise awareness about the trajectory that we are currently on, with respect to the ideologies surrounding biodefense, here I outline some of the legal changes that have facilitated biomedical “states of exception” and the growth and empowerment of the biodefense industry.

Emergency Use Authorization (EUAs)

Under these EUAs, it became OK during an emergency to resort to relatively risky medical interventions. In 2004, Congress passed the Project BioShield Act. This called for $5 billion for purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bio terrorist attack. This opened the door to “EUAs,” and on 4 February 2020 the “HHS Secretary determined that there is a public health emergency that has a significant potential to affect national security or the health and security of United States citizens living abroad, and that involves the virus that causes COVID-19.” This legal emergency made it possible for many people to receive the new vaccines, even at the stage when there were doubts about safety and effectiveness. While these vaccines may have saved the lives of millions, some previously healthy people have actually suffered various injuries and harms, such as myocarditis. Surely very few knew, if any, about such risks when they consented to receive the vaccine. Such is the disadvantage of authorizing the use of vaccines that have not been thoroughly tested in clinical trials.

The 2005 PREP Act

The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2005. This law was essential to establishing a new system of irresponsibility for vaccine manufacturers. “During a public health emergency, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (“PREP Act”) gives immunity from lawsuits, for manufacturers, administrators and distributors of vaccines, as well as other qualified persons (i.e., healthcare and other providers) who prescribe, administer, or dispense countermeasures, unless they were acting with willful misconduct.” (Author’s italics. Of course, it would be difficult to prove willful misconduct in a court of law).

This PREP Act was a liability shield that protected manufacturers of “countermeasures.” It limited liability so that potentially life-saving countermeasures would be “efficiently developed, deployed, and administered.” (Author’s italics).

Kadlec and BARDA:

Following the introduction of those major laws in 2004 and 2005, the biodefense industry got a new law that facilitated the stockpiling of countermeasures in 2006. The Pandemics and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA, pronounced “Papa”) created the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and established the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) position. Former President Donald Trump nominated Robert Kadlec for this position and he held it from August 2017 to January 2021.

In the words of Paula Jardine, who has written about various aspects of the military approach to COVID-19, the “ASPR controls the national stockpile of smallpox and anthrax vaccines and other public health emergency medical equipment such as ventilators. During emergencies this Assistant Secretary [the ASPR] has expansive powers enabling him or her to act as the single point of control co-ordinating national response.”

Other Transaction Authority (OTAs)

In 2016, the definition of OTAs was changed such that prototypes of countermeasures could be deployed. Originally, OTAs were up in the 1990s to help DARPA promote basic research and acquire weapons. “DARPA” stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Department of Defense. Tom Burghardt wrote in 2010 that they have “geek squads” working on “bizarre projects hatched in darkness.”

Apparently, the Pentagon “loosened regulations guiding the use” of OTAs for the COVID-19 health policies. And through an OTA the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer gained financial support from the U.S. government. The mass media has not really questioned, problematized, or debated whether we want the mechanism of OTAs to authorize risky products, even when anyone can see that Pfizer used that mechanism. Pfizer is clearly referenced in a judge’s written decision for a case in which an employee named Brook Jackson sued Pfizer. Jackson’s case was dismissed, but the judge wrote:

Defendants claim that “due to pandemic-related exigencies, the Project Agreement was not a standard federal procurement contract, but rather a “prototype” agreement… Such prototype agreements are executed under the DoD’s “Other Transaction Authority.”

Trial Site News explains the case in a clear and succinct way. Jackson claimed that “in the race to secure billions in federal funding and become the first to market, Defendants deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.” The Defendants included three companies, Pfizer, ICON, and Ventavia. Jackson had worked for Ventavia until she started to raise questions and blow the “whistle.” That’s when she was fired.

Turning the Switch

By 2020, all the legal machinery for the mRNA vaccine profit-taking was in place. On 31 January 2020, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared the novel coronavirus a public health emergency. Six weeks later, on 13 March 2020, Trump issued a “Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak.” He authorized assistance administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Five days later, he notified the FEMA Administrator that his agency would be in charge of the federal pandemic response effort.

That was a first. FEMA had never been in charge of a public health crisis before.

In fact, according to Debbie Lerman, the National Security Council (NSC), a “group of military and intelligence people who advise about war and terrorism,” rather than civilian medical doctors who advise about disease, were the ones in charge of COVID-19 policy. (See Figure 2, “US Government COVID-19 Coordination and Response,” on page 9 of “PanCAP Adapted U.S. Government COVID-19 Response Plan,” 13 March 2020). The NSC decided the policy, and FEMA implemented it. Although Dr. Fauci has recently been publicly grilled about COVID policy failures, in fact, it appears that the NSC should be investigated since they made the big decisions.

Conclusion

In early 2019, Elizabeth Goitein, author of a report entitled “The New Era of Secret Law,” warned about what then President Trump could do to our country, given the unfortunate state of our laws.

Like all emergency powers, the laws governing the conduct of war allow the president to engage in conduct that would be illegal during ordinary times. This conduct includes familiar incidents of war, such as the killing or indefinite detention of enemy soldiers. But the president can also take a host of other actions, both abroad and inside the United States. These laws vary dramatically in content and scope. Several of them authorize the president to make decisions about the size and composition of the armed forces that are usually left to Congress. Although such measures can offer needed flexibility at crucial moments, they are subject to misuse. For instance, George W. Bush leveraged the state of emergency after 9/11 to call hundreds of thousands of reservists and members of the National Guard into active duty in Iraq, for a war that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Other powers are chilling under any circumstances: Take a moment to consider that during a declared war or national emergency, the president can unilaterally suspend the law that bars government testing of biological and chemical agents on unwitting human subjects. (“In a Crisis, the President Can Invoke Extraordinary Authority. What Might Donald Trump Do With This Power?” The Atlantic Monthly 323:1, p. 42).

Well, thanks to the DNC’s short-sightedness, Trump will probably get four more years to test out those emergency powers, once again, as he did with his “business-government-military partnership” Operation Warp Speed. Many decades ago a liberal president, too, violated our constitution by invoking emergency powers, in his role as the Commander-in-Chief, when he issued Executive Order 9066 directing that all Japanese-Americans residing on the West Coast be placed into internment camps.

In Where Are We Now?, Agamben cites the philosopher before him Michel Foucault, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, to question and analyze contemporary biosecurity ideologies, with his idea that “biopolitics tends to morph into thanatopolitics” (a politics of death). (Section 17, “Law and life,” Where Are We Now?). Arguably, that is especially true under a state of exception that is manipulated by a military institution, such as the Pentagon. He underlines the fact that the “first case of legislation by means of which a state programmatically assumed for itself the care of its citizens was Nazi eugenics” (Section 17)Facebook

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Joseph Essertier is an associate professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan, an international human rights advocate, and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Read other articles by Joseph.

 

Donald Trump’s Reckless Infatuation with Nuclear Weapons

by Lawrence Wittner / July 21st, 2024

Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely. Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway. Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones. Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States, and North Korea.

This June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that, given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation, “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”

This menacing situation owes a great deal to Donald Trump.

As President of the United States, Trump sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements of the past and the future. He single-handedly destroyed the INF Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them. In addition, as the expiration date for the New START Treaty approached in February 2021, he refused to accept a simple extension of the agreement—action quickly countermanded by the incoming Biden administration. Not surprisingly, Trump was horrified by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons―a UN-negotiated agreement that banned nuclear weapons, thereby providing the framework for a nuclear-free world. In 2017, when this vanguard nuclear disarmament treaty was passed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, the Trump administration proclaimed that the United States would never sign it.

In fact, Trump was far less interested in arms control and disarmament than in entering―and winning―a new nuclear arms race with other nations. “Let it be an arms race,” he declared in December 2016, shortly after his election victory. “We will outmatch them at every pass.” In February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force. We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” And, indeed, Trump’s U.S. nuclear “modernization” program―involving the replacement of every Cold War era submarine, bomber, missile, and warhead with an entirely new generation of the deadliest weapons ever invented―acquired enormous momentum during his presidency, with cost estimates running as high as $2 trillion.

Eager to facilitate this nuclear buildup, the Trump administration began to explore a return to U.S. nuclear weapons testing. Consequently, it announced in 2018 that, although the U.S. government had ended its nuclear tests in 1992 and President Bill Clinton had negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Trump would oppose U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty. The administration also dramatically reduced the time necessary to prepare for nuclear weapons test explosions. In 2020, senior Trump administration officials reportedly conducted a serious discussion of U.S. government resumption of nuclear testing, leading the House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, to block funding for it.

Though many Americans assumed that a powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal would prevent an outbreak of nuclear war, Trump undermined this wishful thinking by revealing himself perfectly ready to launch a nuclear attack. During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee reportedly asked a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them. The following year, Trump told the governor of Puerto Rico that, “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.”

Indeed, Trump came remarkably close to lunching a nuclear war against North Korea. In August 2017, responding to provocative comments by Kim Jong Un, Trump warned that further North Korean threats would “be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Trump’s threat of a nuclear attack triggered a rapid escalation of tensions between the two nations. In a speech before the UN General Assembly that September, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, whom he derisively labeled “Rocket Man,” continued his provocative rhetoric. Meanwhile, the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, was appalled by indications that Trump really wanted war and, especially, by the president’s suggestion of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and, then, blaming the action on someone else. According to Kelly, the military’s objection that the war would―in the words of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis “incinerate a couple million people”―had no impact on Trump. In early 2018, the U.S. president merely upped the ante by publicly boasting that he had a “Nuclear Button” that was “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.

What finally headed off a nuclear war, Kelly recalled, was his appeal to Trump’s “narcissism.” If Trump could forge a friendly diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the general suggested, the U.S. president would emerge as the “greatest salesman in the world.” And, indeed, Trump did reverse course and embark on a flamboyant campaign to pacify and denuclearize North Korea, remarking that May that “everyone” thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Eventually, however, the U.S.-North Korean negotiations, including a much-heralded “summit” between Trump and Kim, resulted in little more than handshakes, North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war―this time against Iran.

Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too-evident mental instability, we have been fortunate that, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the world survived his four years in office.

But our good fortune might not last much longer, for Trump’s return to power in 2025 or the recklessness of some other leader of a nuclear-armed nation could unleash unprecedented catastrophe upon the world.

Ultimately, the only long-term security for humanity lies in the global abolition of nuclear weapons and the development of a united world community.

This article was originally published by The Hill.Facebook

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Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.

 

Houthis Only Emboldened by Israeli Attacks

Tel Aviv bombed a vital Yemeni port in retribution for an earlier militant drone strike, but if history holds, it won't matter

by Daniel Larison Posted onJuly 23, 2024

Reprinted with permission from Responsible Statecraft.

Israeli forces attacked “vital civilian infrastructure” at the port of Hodeidah in Yemen on Saturday in response to a Houthi drone strike in Tel Aviv, according to Mwatana, a leading independent Yemeni human rights organization.

The Israeli military claimed that it hit “military targets,” but Mwatana reports that the strikes did extensive damage to oil facilities, fuel tanks, and the port’s wharf and cranes, all of which are critical to supplying the civilian population in north Yemen with much-needed fuel and food.

The group also said that the strikes knocked out the central power station providing power to the entire city. Houthi authorities say that the strikes killed at least three people and wounded 87. Yemen researcher Nick Brumfield commented on the Israelis’ choice of targets: “The Israeli attack on Hudaydah’s oil storage was not an example of the Houthis hiding weapons in civilian infrastructure and it getting bombed. As best as I can tell, this is Israel purposefully targeting vital civilian infrastructure in and of itself.”

The Israeli government used the same tactics in Yemen that it has employed to such devastating effect in Gaza.

The Israeli response represents a major escalation against the Houthis, who have been launching drones and missiles at Israeli targets without success since shortly after the war in Gaza began. The attacks have taken their toll: Israel’s Eilat port is now bankrupt as all shipping has been redirected elsewhere, to safer routes, and the U.S. Navy has spent over $1 billion in resources intercepting the Houthis’ far less expensive weapons in the Red Sea.

Like the ineffective U.S.-U.K. bombing campaign against the Houthis that began in January, these Israeli strikes play into the hands of the Houthis, the armed militia group and political movement that has been the de facto government of north Yemen for the last ten years. Direct conflict with both the U.S. and Israel is a significant boost for the Houthis’ domestic political standing, and their opposition to the war in Gaza has likewise raised their international profile.

Journalist Iona Craig observed on BlueSky that the strikes are a gift to the Houthis: “For a group whose existence, evolution and expansion depends on being at war they’re being gifted everything they need.”

In addition to being a disproportionate response to the drone attack, the strikes on Hodeidah seem certain to provoke the Houthis to launch more attacks on Israel. Hodeidah was a frequent target of Saudi coalition airstrikes before the 2022 truce took effect, but this did nothing to stop Houthi attacks on Saudi and UAE targets. After more than nine years of foreign governments bombing Yemeni cities, it should be clear that it doesn’t achieve anything except to inflict misery and death on Yemeni civilians.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli military knows that striking Yemen is unlikely to deter the Houthis from launching more drones and missiles. Escalation against the Houthis isn’t going to make Israel more secure, but it will further strain Israel’s resources as it brings the region closer to a wider war. As long as the U.S. continues backing Israel’s war in Gaza and wages its own military campaign in Yemen, the U.S. is at considerable risk of becoming further embroiled in that wider war.

The people that will suffer the most from Israel’s strikes are, as always, the civilian population of Yemen that has already endured a decade of war and deprivation. Craig added, “While helping the Houthis, the only damage such performative strikes do is to the Yemeni people by targeting the main entry point of food in a country that imports more than 70% of its food supplies and 90% of its wheat.”

Indeed, the U.S. has refrained from targeting the port in its bombing campaign because of concerns that doing so would worsen the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.

The Israeli strikes in Yemen will make it harder for the Biden administration to pretend that Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping have nothing to do with the war in Gaza. The administration wants to keep these conflicts in separate boxes to maintain the illusion that it has prevented the war in Gaza from destabilizing the region, but they are all obviously connected. It does no one any favors to ignore this reality.

If the U.S. wants to see an end to the Houthi attacks on shipping and those directed at Israel, it should stop trying to bomb its way to de-escalation and put real pressure on the Israeli government to end its campaign in Gaza. The war in Gaza is the main driver of all these other conflicts, and none of them will be successfully resolved until there is a lasting ceasefire and an end to the blockade that has been strangling the Palestinian people there.

At the very least, the U.S. should be pressing the Israeli government to avoid any further escalations against other countries in the region. Among other things, that requires delivering a clear message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he comes to Washington this week that the U.S. will not bail him out if he goes to war in Lebanon. The region cannot afford any more conflicts, and the U.S. must stop stoking existing ones with more weapons and support.

Daniel Larison is a columnist for Responsible Statecraft. He is contributing editor at Antiwar.com and former senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @DanielLarison and at his blog, Eunomia, here.

 

The Politics of Water Under Occupation: Israel in Palestine

by M. Reza Behnam Posted onJuly 24, 2024

The International Court of Justice released its historic advisory opinion on 19 July 2024 just as I was finishing my essay on Israel’s theft and abuse of the water resources of Palestine.

The 80-page opinion, “Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” unequivocally states that “the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible.”

The “Exploitation of natural resources” section (V/B.4, 124-133) was of particular interest to me. In it, the Court confirmed what I had set out to disclose, that Israel has used, misused and abused its illegal control over the water resources of Palestine to gain a permanent hold over all of the land.

The Court concluded that the occupied West Bank (especially Area C), rich in natural resources, has been used by Israel to the exclusive benefit of its own population, while disadvantaging Palestinians and their communities.  Area C covers 61 percent of the West Bank and is under the complete control of Israel.

Furthermore, the ICJ determined that Israel must relinquish control over all aspects of Palestinians’ lives, including its most vital natural resource, water.

The concept of water is deeply etched in the culture, politics, religion and mythology of the Middle East.  For example, it is a tradition, in the extreme summer heat, to leave a jug of water outside the front door or gate in neighborhoods as an offering to the thirsty.

In Islam, water is a treasured resource.  It played a central role in the birth of the new religion, in its narratives and rituals.  Extreme drought may have been decisive in contributing to the upheavals in ancient Arabia and in the societal change from which Islam emerged in the early 7th century.

Water is central to the mythology of Islam.  In Muslim lore, it was the bubbling waters of the Well of Zamzam in the Arabian peninsula that kept the young prophet, Ismael (son of Abraham and Hajar) alive.  The well, located in the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, continues to miraculously generate water after 4,000 years.   Water from the well is also distributed to the Prophet’s Mosque, Masjid al-Nabawi, in Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Mohammad.

Muslims in Gaza, much like the world over, stand prayerful in the direction of the two venerated mosques five times daily.  However, Israel’s relentless bombing campaign since October 2023 has made access to ablution water impossible.

To fully understand the gravity and pain that Palestinians have endured it is essential to remember what they have lost.

Since European Zionist migration to Palestine in the early 20th century, life for its indigenous people has been changed.

Israel’s founders were mindful that their colonizing dream in Palestine was sustainable only if they secured hegemony over the water that flowed above and beneath the land.

At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, ending World War I, Zionist leaders stated that a future Jewish state depended upon dominion over the Naqab (Negev) Desert, Syrian Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, Litani River in Lebanon and the West Bank.

The Mount Hermon basin – whose mountain range is located on the border between Syria and Lebanon – was seen as essential to their colonizing ambitions.  It is in this basin that its streams and rivers merge to become the Jordan River.

In December 1919, Russian-born Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president (1949-52), wrote to the British prime minister, Lloyd George, that “the whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon, from the headwaters of the Jordan and from the Litany [Litani] River.”  The Latani is the primary and largest watershed in Lebanon.

After seizing 78 percent of historic Palestine in the 1948 war, Israel moved quickly to implement its prepared plans to control the water resources of Palestine, which were nationalized and rationed in 1949.

The Arab-Israeli War of 1967 also had its origins over water.  Israel began work in 1953 to build an elaborate water system, the National Water Carrier (NWC), to transport water from the Upper Jordan River in the north to the center of Israel and to planned colonies in the arid South.  And in 1963, it began pumping water from the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberius) into the NWC, which posed a grave threat to Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian water resources.  As a consequence, Israel and the Arab states engaged in numerous clashes in what came to be known as the “War over Water” (1964-1967).

To thwart Israel’s scheme, in 1965, Syria and Lebanon implemented the Arab League plan to divert water from Jordan River sources (Banias and Hasbani Rivers) to their own territory.

In his memoirs, Israeli general and former prime minister (2001-2006), Ariel Sharon, revealed that the 1967 war was launched in response to Syria’s plan to reroute the headwaters of the Jordan.  Israel attacked construction sites inside Syria that same year, leading to the war.

Completed in 1964, the National Water Carrier diverts 75 percent of the waters from the Jordan River to Israel, while Palestinians are prohibited from using any of it.

Israel’s military victory in June 1967, had the effect of placing much of the Mount Hermon basin, the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli control.   It then declared the water resources of the captured land to be property of the state, putting them under complete military authority.

When it illegally annexed the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in 1981, Israel secured direct dominance over the headwaters of the Jordan River, fulfilling its early Zionist designs.

Israel has also coveted and remains determined to seize the water of southern Lebanon – the Litani River and the Shebaa Farms.  The Shebaa Farms area has abundant ground water that flows from the slopes of Mt. Hermon.

Historical records from the 1950s indicate that then chief of staff of the Israel “Defense” Forces, Moshe Dayan and others, favored conquering and annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani.

For that reason, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 (Operation Litani) and again in 1982.  The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon continued until its forces were driven out by Lebanese Hezbollah in 2000.

Claiming that the Shebaa Farms are part of the Golan Heights, Israel annexed it in 1981.  Hezbollah continues to battle for the liberation of this 16 square miles on the western slopes of the Hermon Mountain range.

The Occupied West Bank 

Israel’s objective has always been to decrease the supply of water to Palestinians so that they will inevitably have to leave. 

Tel Aviv’s apartheid water policies were set in motion by the interim Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, which gave Israel control over 80 percent of the West Bank’s reserves.  Under the Oslo II Accords, division of water resources was designated as an issue for “final status negotiations.”  Final status and a future Palestinian state were never reached, as Israel continued to illegally appropriate Palestinian land and water resources.

The 1995 accords, meant to last five years, have remained entrenched.  As a result, Israelis have access to water on demand, while Palestinians receive predetermined allocations set out in the “peace agreement,” that do not reflect population growth, climate change or average daily water consumption needs.

As the occupying power, Israel has defined responsibilities under international human rights law to respect Palestinians’ right to safe, sufficient and accessible water.  Israel has never ended its illegal occupation or lived up to its obligations. 

Israelis consume ten times the amount of water than West Bank Palestinians.  Israel and its colonies (settlements) consume 87 percent of the water from West Bank aquifers, while Palestinians are allocated just 13 percent.  And while they do not have enough water to bathe their children, Jewish children splash about in community pools.

The national Israeli water company, Mekorot, has forced Palestinians to depend on Israel for their water needs.  It has systematically tapped springs and sunk wells in the West Bank to supply its population, including  squatters, with a continuous supply of water, while Palestinians receive water sporadically.  The company routinely reduces the Palestinian supply and shamelessly, sells them their own water at inflated prices.  To counter the chronic water shortage, 92 percent of Palestinians store water in tanks on their rooftops.

Since 2021, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli authorities have demolished  nearly 160 Palestinian reservoirs, sewage networks and wells across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  While Israel continues to dig more wells, it has denied Palestinians’ drilling rights and blocks them from harvesting rainwater.

The expansion of Jewish colonies, Israeli industrial and military zones have contributed to water contamination, which has severely undermined the Palestinian agricultural sector.   As Palestinian farms wither from a paucity of water, Israeli farms receive unlimited amounts, often to produce such water-guzzling crops as tomatoes, oranges and cotton.

The Gaza Strip

The catastrophic water crisis in Gaza today predates the October 2023 war.  Israel’s 16-year blockade contributed to severe water shortages.  And potable water was hard to find after decades of Israeli invasions.

With no surface sources of water, the coastal aquifer, on the brink of collapse,  provided 81 percent of the enclave’s supply.  Three desalination plants and three Mekorot pipes provided the remainder.  Families had to buy often questionable drinking water from street vendors at high prices.  On 9 October 2023, Israel cut off the piped water it had been sending Gaza.

Since Israel withdrew in 2005, it has conducted five major wars on the small densely-populated Strip, destroying much of its infrastructure.  And for years, Gazans have lived with depleted, contaminated and salinated water because Israel has restricted the entry of construction and other materials like cement and iron needed to repair, maintain or develop the enclave’s water infrastructure.

The United Nations currently estimates that 70 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation plants have been destroyed or damaged, including all five wastewater treatment facilities, water desalination plants, sewage pumping stations, wells and reservoirs.  Those remaining are short on fuel to continue operating.  Tons of untreated sewage have seeped into the ground or has been pumped into the Mediterranean Sea.

According to the UN, 95-97 percent of the underground water is not fit for human consumption.  Most people are now getting drinking water from private vendors who operate small desalination facilities powered by solar energy.

According to Euro-Med Monitor, Palestinians have access to just 1.5 liters of water per person per day for all needs, including drinking and personal hygiene.  It is worth noting that the established international emergency water threshold is 15 liters per person per day.

The inability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and deliver uncontaminated water, in sweltering 90 degree (Fahrenheit) heat, has produced disastrous health consequences, including Hepatitis A, cholera, typhoid, diarrheal and skin diseases, and a stench that has made Gazans ill.  Crowded together in tent camps, Palestinians are finding it difficult to sleep because of flies, cockroaches and fear of scorpions and rodents.

Conclusion

Ten months of unabated bombing has ravaged the ecosystem of Gaza and its population.

The recent advisory opinion of the UN’s highest Court has unequivocally confirmed that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestine is unlawful and must end, that it must cease “settlement” expansion and evacuate all “settlers,” that reparations are owed Palestinians and that nations are obliged not to “render aid or assistance” in maintaining Israel’s presence in the territory.

Most UN member states honor their obligations under international law. There is little reason to believe that Israel and its chief enabler, the United States, will comply, since both have a history of disregarding UN resolutions, including an ICJ ruling in 2004 that Israel tear down a concrete barrier wall it had erected in the West Bank to separate itself from Palestinian cities and towns.

For half a century, Israel, with U.S. support, and the mercenary corporate media, has had free rein to expand and grow economically fat on the stolen natural resources of Palestine.

It is as simple as drinking a glass of water; so the saying goes.  But not in Palestine, where the people have been imprisoned between birth and death – for now.   There are finally signs, however, of an epilogue to the tragic Palestinian al-Nakba (the catastrophe).

Dr.  M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East.

© 2024 M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D.

 

What’s Behind Israel’s War Against UNRWA?

by Ramzy Baroud Posted onJuly 25, 2024

Targeting a school during a war could be justified as, or at least argued, to have been a mistake. But striking over 120 schools, and killing and wounding thousands of civilians sheltering inside, can only be intentional, with each attack a horrific war crime in its own right.

Between 7 October last year and 18 July, Israel has done precisely that, targeting with total impunity UN infrastructure in the besieged Gaza Strip, including schools and medical centres. According to the estimates of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), at least 561 internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in UNRWA buildings have been killed and 1,768 have been wounded since the start of Israel’s war. Within just ten days between 8 and 18 July, at least six UNRWA schools serving as makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians were targeted by the Israeli army, resulting in the killing and wounding of hundreds.

Historically, UN-linked organizations have been more or less immune from the impact of wars. The privilege of being neutral outsiders to any conflict allowed those affiliated with such organizations to carry out their duties largely unhindered. The Israeli war on the Palestinians in Gaza, however, is the primary exception among all modern conflicts. According to UN sources, 274 aid workers and over 500 healthcare workers linked to the international organisation have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

These figures are consistent with all other statistics produced by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Indeed, not a single category of people has been spared: neither doctors nor civil defence workers, mayors or even traffic police, let alone the children, women and elderly.

Not only those affiliated with Hamas or other groups, but also the civilian population and any international organization that came to their aid. Blaming and dehumanizing all of Gaza was and remains part of Israel’s strategy that lets its army operate without any restraints, and without even the most minimal moral threshold or respect for international law.

However, the Israeli attacks on all UN institutions, in particular UNRWA, the agency responsible for the welfare of Gaza’s Palestinian refugees, serve a different purpose than that of mere “collective punishment”. Israel does not attempt to mask or justify its attacks on the agency as it did during previous Gaza wars. This time around, the Israeli war was accompanied, from the very beginning, with the outlandish accusation that UNRWA staff had participated in the 7 October cross-border incursion by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Without providing any evidence, Tel Aviv launched an international vilification campaign against the UN agency which has, for decades, provided essential educational, medical and humanitarian services to millions of Palestinian refugees, not only in occupied Palestine, but also in refugee camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Sadly, and tellingly, some Western, and even non-Western governments, answered the Israeli call to punish UNRWA by withholding badly-needed funds, the urgency of which did not only stem from the direct impact of the Israeli war, but also the acute famine resulting from the war. UNRWA depends almost entirely on such voluntary donations from UN member states.

True, a number of governments eventually resumed their funding of the agency, but such action was only taken when much damage had already been done. Moreover, most, if not all, Western governments have taken no action against Israel for its continued targeting of UNRWA facilities, and thus the killing of hundreds of innocent Palestinians in the process.

This non-committal attitude has emboldened Israel to the extent that, just this week, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the first reading of a bill to designate UNRWA as a “terrorist organization”. On 18 July, Israeli spokesman David Mencer accused the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, of being a “terrorist sympathizer”.

For years, successive Israeli governments, not least with the aid of the Donald Trump administration in the US, have sought to shut down the agency altogether.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s former advisor on the Middle East, said in January 2018 that it was “important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA.” For him, the dismantlement of the agency meant the eradication of the legitimate Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Indeed, the issue is not just about UNRWA, but rather the historic role the agency has played as a reminder of the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in occupied Palestine, the Middle East and across the world.

UNRWA was established through General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. The founding of UNRWA came one year after the passing of UN Resolution 194, which granted Palestinian refugees the right to “return to their homes”. Although UNRWA’s mission has turned into a de facto permanent mandate (albeit one that has to be renewed periodically), since Palestinian refugees were not granted their right of return, the role of the agency has remained as critical as it was decades ago.

Since Kushner and others have failed to have UNRWA shut down, the Israeli government has taken advantage of its war on Gaza to try to do so. According to Israeli “logic”, without a UN agency specifically for Palestinian refugees, there must be no more Palestinian refugees, so the issue of their return would lose its main legal platform and would ultimately disappear. This would give Israel the space and leverage to “resolve” the problem of the refugees in any way it sees fit, especially if it has Washington’s full support.

Israel must not be allowed to dismantle UNRWA or to dismiss the generational struggle of Palestinian refugees, which is the core of the Palestinian fight for justice and freedom. The international community must challenge Israel’s vilification of UNRWA and insist on the centrality of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. Without it, no real peace is possible.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

 

Conventional Wisdom: The ICJ Ruling on Israeli Settlements

by Binoy Kampmark / July 21st, 2024

The International Court of Justice has again deliberated over the thorn-bloodied subject of Israeli-Palestinian relations.  Its latest advisory opinion, sought by the UN General Assembly early last year, was unremarkably conventional though nonetheless affirming: a finding that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with “the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”

Given the avalanche of international opinions, deliberation and understanding on the status of the settlements that arose after 1967, the ICJ was merely revising homework and reiterating home truths of international law.  As Eitay Mack, an Israeli attorney working for Palestinian rights in the West Bank told The Intercept, “The court just said the obvious.”

Various acts and practices are accordingly examined, amounting to what the Court considered annexation of territory Israel had no sovereignty over.  Israel, for instance, treated the Palestinians in East Jerusalem as “foreigners” requiring a valid residence permit and had imposed a strict building permit scheme, violation of which could result in structural demolition and steep fines.  In the West Bank, the Basic Law of 2018 had explicitly stated that Israel “views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation”.  Various areas prohibited Palestinian construction, while the expansion of Israeli settlements had burgeoned.

Israeli control of the occupied territory had been accordingly maintained by such things as the extension of its domestic law to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the maintenance and expansion of the settlements, the construction of relevant infrastructure connected with that aim, the ongoing exploitation of natural resources, and proclaiming Jerusalem capital of Israel.  Such practices were “designed to remain in place indefinitely and to create irreversible effects on the ground.”

The Court also found that Israeli authorities had failed to “prevent or to punish” the violence of settlers directed against Palestinians, thereby contributing “to the creation and maintenance of a coercive environment”.

The opinion further notes that Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem impose a separation between the Palestinian populace and Israeli settlers “transferred” into the territories.  Such a separation was physical and juridical, thereby breaching Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CERD).  As State parties to the CERD expressly condemn both racial segregation and apartheid, undertaking to prevent, prohibit and eradicate such practices in territories under their control, the finding is particularly damning.

Gaza’s imperilled status also drew the Court’s attention.  While Israel officially withdrew its forces from the strip in 2005 pursuant to its “Disengagement Plan” announced the previous year, Israel maintained effective control over the territory.  “Where a State has placed territory under its effective control, it might be in a position to maintain that control and to continue exercising its authority despite the absence of a physical military presence on the ground.”  In this case, Israel continued to exercise authority over land, sea and air borders, restricted movement of people and goods, controlled the collection of import and export taxes, and exerted military control over the buffer zone.

It also followed that international bodies such as the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and the international community were under an obligation not to recognise the status of such an occupation, nor supply aid or support in maintaining them.  Israel was also “under an obligation to end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.”  All further settlement activities were to cease, and all current settlers in the OPT areas evacuated.

As a result of its policies regarding the occupied territories, Israel had also incurred obligations “to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

For countries professing to follow the “rules-based order”, the opinion should have made perfect sense.  But in power politics, rules bend.  Take, for instance, these words from the US State Department to Reuters:  “We are concerned that the breadth of the court’s opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict and bring about an urgently needed just and lasting peace with two states living side by side in peace and security.”

As for observing international law, the Israeli government continued to prove not only selective but historically parochial.  “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land – not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria,” claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement.  This was, the PM went on to say, a “historical truth” that could not be contested.

Some Israeli politicians did acknowledge certain merit in the Court’s decision.  Labor MK Gilad Kariv warned that the policy of “de facto annexation” being pursued in the West Bank, the broader “theft of land” and the refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians threatened “Israel’s status as an accepted democratic country.”

What the decision amounts to is an excoriation of the occupation, those consequential to it (the settlements), and the bolstering system of segregation that has drawn accusations of apartheid from activists to tribunals. As an advisory opinion, it is non-binding though freighted with persuasive reasoning.  In doing so, the decision further pushes arguments for Palestinian self-determination and eventual statehood.  For Israel, the judgment will be a hard one to ignore.Facebook

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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.