I keep staring at that map from 1947 — 30 years on from the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917 that laid the seeds of the current conflict . There is now nothing left of that once free Palestine. 108 years of gradual dispossession and unimaginable pain for the Palestinian people.
So much so that the best prospect for Palestinians now is that a shattered Gaza will be put under the care of those who initiated and enabled the two-year genocide inflicted on them. And that the West Bank will not end up the same way as Gaza.
It was announced on Friday last week that all the main Palestinian factions (including Hamas) had agreed that an ‘independent committee of technocrats’ should take over the administration of Gaza as soon as possible. There is still some hope that Marwan Baghouti, the leader of Fatah, could be released from prison in Israel to take his place on that committee – as the one person, it would seem, capable of uniting Palestine’s hopelessly divided factions. (Given that Israel has systematically – and very successfully – set about deepening those divides over the last 20 years, that seems extremely improbable to me. But it’s President Trump who will have to make that call).
So, the best hope of all those who continue to fight for a free Palestine today is that this is indeed what happens next. To stop the killing. To ensure the aid starts flowing again. To replace the dehumanised killing machine of the Israeli Defence Forces with an administration that will not have genocide as its primary goal. To ensure that the same fate does NOT engulf the West Bank.
The current situation is still deeply disturbing. Israel has only withdrawn from less than half of the Gaza Strip, has killed more than 120 people since the ceasefire came into effect, and is still restricting the vast majority of aid ready and waiting to be brought into Gaza — particularly through the Rafah crossing from Egypt which remains closed. It is also arming and coordinating criminal gangs and death squads inside Gaza, making it impossible for Hamas to disarm.
However, there are two further reasons why we should be reconciled to such shrunken hopes. First, the truth of what’s been happening in Gaza over the last two years can, at last, start to be unearthed and then broadcast, however belatedly, to the world. With the Israeli Defence Forces having partially withdrawn, Palestinian journalists will no longer fear the snipers’ bullets. And international journalists will be able, once again, to do their job: to reveal the truth.
This is the moment that Netanyahu has desperately been seeking to avoid for more than a year — the point at which he single-handedly sabotaged the negotiated agreement with Hamas at that time, which was all but identical to the deal that now (pray God) will actually stick. One year on, he could no longer resist the mounting wave of international outrage – and the peeved irritation of Donald Trump that Netanyahu’s intransigence had clearly contributed to the fact that he had not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
The second reason is that an ‘independent committee of technocrats’ (even one with a war criminal like Tony Blair on it) will be infinitely more circumspect in its recognition of the importance of the rule of law, and of the current legal status of Palestine in the eyes of the vast majority of the UN’s member states.
So, a quick reminder of what that looks like, in case the last two years have effaced proper understanding of the deep, abhorrent criminality of the state of Israel.
- Benjamin Netanyahu is an indicted war criminal.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrests of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (former Minister of Defence) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
2. The Israeli government, knowingly and strategically, is inflicting genocide on the people in Gaza, as defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention, or to be more accurate, “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’.
The definition under Article II includes “the deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival such as food or medical services, or systematic expulsion from homes….. or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”
3. According to the Genocide Convention, nation states have a binding duty to prevent and punish genocide as laid out under Article II. This duty includes “taking measures to prevent genocide, even outside their own borders, and punishing perpetrators, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”.
4. The State of Israel’s occupation of all Palestinian territories is illegal.
In 2024, The International Court of Justice (the UN’s highest court) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal in that it violates the legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, and the legal prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force.
5. This ruling was confirmed by the UN General Assembly later in the year, giving Israel one year to abide by the ICJ’s judgement. That deadline expired a few weeks ago.
6. This means that all member states now have “an obligation to suppress Israel’s violations” in maintaining its occupation, in 3 particulars:
- States must impose sanctions against Israel and against individual Israelis.
- States must not recognise the occupation as lawful.
- States must not aid or assist Israel in maintaining the occupation.
(Take note, Keir Starmer: all these obligations now fall directly on you and your Ministers. Even as you lay claim to some residual legality in belatedly recognising the state of Palestine’s right to exist).
7. In terms of the sale of arms and intelligence-sharing, states must not provide any support to Israel whatsoever. Any and all support provided to Israel demonstrably props up the continuation of the occupation.
On October the 20th, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights released a new report: ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime’.
“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled long standing systemic violations of international law by Israel. It has exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met, and justice is upheld”.
Two days later, the International Court of Justice issued a new ruling strongly condemning Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza and confirming that Israel must allow UN staff to be able to do their work in Gaza.
That is the legal reality as determined by the International Criminal Court, The International Court of Justice, and the UN General Assembly. The remit of the ‘independent committee of technocrats’ will clearly NOT include the daunting task of prosecuting every aspect of those binding legal mandates. Equally, however, it will not be able to ignore those mandates with the same callous impunity as Israel has.
Even as we speculate just how long it will take for these wheels of justice to turn, dwell for a moment on those whose lives have been most devastated by this two-year horror story:
- The relatives of the 1,195 Israelis killed by Hamas on October 9th 2023.
- The relatives of the 68,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza over the last two years.
- The relatives of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are still missing, presumed dead under the 65 million tonnes of rubble in Gaza.
- The relatives of the 16 dead Israeli hostages handed over since the cease fire.
- The relatives of the 15 dead Israeli hostages who have not yet been handed over, probably because they too are trapped under the 65 million tonnes of rubble.
- The relatives of the 135 Palestinians whose tortured and mutilated bodies have just been returned from the notorious Sde Teima detention facility in the Negev Desert.
- The relatives of the 1,500 Palestinians whose bodies Israel has as yet refused to return.
Even as we weep for the cumulative cruelty of what has happened since 1947, we need to be aware where the burden of guilt really lies.
Just check out that map one more time.
