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Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians Reveals West’s Double Standards

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Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians Reveals West’s “Double Standards”

Ceasefire Following Three-day Israeli Bombardment in Gaza

A ceasefire on Sunday, 7th August 2022, ended another unjustified three-day Israeli bombardment in the besieged apartheid Gaza strip. Devastating figures reveal the civilian cost of the escalation and the impact of crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced operation “Breaking Dawn” on Friday, 5th August 2022. Israel fired shots at targets it claimed were linked to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), killing a senior commander in the PIJ. The operation caused inconceivable damage to local civilians and infrastructure with a complete disregard for human life.

The UN Human Rights Office held that 49 Palestinians were killed, including 17 children, with more than 360 people injured. Nearly two-thirds of those injured were civilians, including 151 children, 58 women and 19 older people. Furthermore, 19 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied Palestinian territory in the past week. There were no serious injuries to report from Israel.

Most Severe Flare-up Since May 2021

Last week’s hostilities were the most severe flare-up on the Gaza strip since May 2021, when Israel attacked Gaza killing 256 Palestinians, including 66 children. In Israel, 13 people were killed, including two children. Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza since 2007. The 15-year blockade has left the occupied territory of Palestine teetering on the edge of a humanitarian disaster. Following the ceasefire, the aftershock of trauma sets in for Palestinians, leaving millions of lives shattered.

15-year Land, Air and Sea Blockade in Gaza

The Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million people, has been under an Israeli-imposed land, sea and air blockade for the past 15 years. The map below shows where the Gaza strip lies in relation to Israel and the main refugee camps.

Caption: Map of the Gaza Strip where Israel’s apartheid against the Palestinians originates. Image obtained from Wiki Media Commons.

Israel continues to launch airstrikes into densely packed cities and neighbourhoods filled predominantly with civilians. Shockingly, since 2008, Israel has initiated four conflicts in Gaza, killing approximately 4000 people, including 600 children.

Israel’s Systematic Apartheid Against the Palestinians

Israel’s apartheid of the Palestinian people is a cruel system of domination and crimes against humanity. Moreover, Israel commits unlawful killings, forcible transfers and drastic movement restrictions on Palestinians. Additionally, due to the blockade, Gaza lacks access to food, water, essential medicines, and commodities. Palestinians must smuggle food and medicines through illegal tunnels, which the IDF regularly bomb. Israel continues to carry out massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, defying international law.

Caption: The image shows the Palestinian loss of land from 1947 to 2020. Image obtained from Wiki Media Commons.

Furthermore, Israel denies nationality and citizenship to Palestinians. These listed elements of the brutal Israeli system amount to apartheid under international law. 

Amnesty International published a report titled “Israel’s apartheid Against Palestinians” in February 2022. The report calls out Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians as ‘apartheid’. The report concludes that Israeli laws and policies of segregation, exclusion, and dispossession constitute “the crime against humanity of apartheid” as defined in the Rome Statute and the Apartheid convention.

In addition to this, there have been calls on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate apartheid in Palestine.

Caption: A Palestinian lies in his home, which has been struck by an Israeli airstrike. Image obtained from Reuters.

The West and the United Nations Impose “Double Standards” of Crimes Against Humanity

The west reveals “double standards” of crimes against humanity compared to the reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the context of Ukraine, world leaders used solid and robust language to describe Putin’s crimes against humanity. However, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people is not met with the same strength of language.

In the video below, Richard Boyd Barrett captures the utter hypocrisy of the west’s “double standards” when it comes to imposing sanctions on Israel the same way they have sanctioned Russia.

Caption: Irish Politician, Richard Boyd Barrett, speaks out about Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and the government’s double standards on crimes against humanity.

Moreover, Israel’s position of an apartheid system weakens any prospect of establishing an independent Palestinian State. Moreover, despite the UN’s willingness to act decisively on other issues, the Council’s inability to act against Israel illustrates the persistent double standards through its selectivity on which principles apply to certain states.

Putin is Holding Up a Mirror to Israelis

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author, compared Israel and Russia as essentially interchangeable. Levy writes how Israel has behaved precisely like Russia more than just once. Israel and Russia use the same demonization strategy. The Ukrainians are depicted as Nazis, and the Palestinians are labelled as terrorists who wish to destroy Israel. With the assistance of Egypt, Israel has essentially turned the Gaza strip into an open-air prison.

International Finacial Aid Focused on Ukraine

The world will soon be on the edge of a global recession due to the financial constraints arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Skyrocketing inflation rates in the United States and other major European economies make obtaining international financial support for Palestinians very difficult at these times.

How Much Blood Must Be Shed Before We Take Collective Action?

Israel treats Palestinians living in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, as an inferior racial group and systematically deprives them of their fundamental human rights. 

There is a persistent lack of accountability for Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel commits recurring violations of international human rights law and the law of occupation of the West Bank while persistently using unnecessary and disproportionate use of force.

We must hold Israel accountable by urging the ICC to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation of Palestine. Furthermore, the UN Security Council has the ability to impose an arms embargo on Israel to cover all weapons and munitions. The UN Council can impose targeted sanctions such as freezing the assets of Israeli officials heavily involved in perpetrating the apartheid.

The war and persecution of the Palestinian people will continue while the climate of impunity prevails.

The real question now is whether the world will apply economic sanctions to Israel just as it did to end apartheid in South Africa and restrict Russia’s power in its invasion of Ukraine. Or will we continue to impose double standards on crimes against humanity?

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244 Million Out of School Children (Where’s Their Right to Education?)

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Education is the most basic right of every child. But for a staggering 224 million out of school children, education is a luxury they can’t afford.

That’s why, through this article, we are debunking the false mirage of all the “development in educational” and shedding light on:

  • The current status of such millions of out-of-school children
  •  Major driving forces behind the education crisis globally
  •  Potential solutions

244 Million Out of School Children Globally

In 2022, a UNSECO report displayed that over 244 million children and youth between 6 and 18 won’t start a new school year, with the most out-of-school children in the Sub-Saharn region (98 million).

Research has shown that children are the first to bear the brunt in today’s war-torn world and calamities heightened by skyrocketing inflation and extreme climate events.

Though the numbers have come down after the sharp COVID-19 (290 million), the current wars, inflation, and climate change have left aid organizations responsible for financing universal education without sufficient funds.

Throughout the globe, there are various factors causing children to drop out of school, with some countries being hit harder than others. Nigeria, Yemen, and Afghanistan, in particular, are grappling with a staggering increase in the number of out-of-school children, largely due to the following underlying reasons.

High Inflation – Low Economic Safety

For parents unsure, if they’ll have a next meal, sending children to school is the last thing on their minds. For example, over 80 million people in Nigeria live below the poverty line. This has led the country to one of the worst national education crises.

“I miss my teacher, friends, and all my schoolmates.”

10-years old Treasure, Nigeria (source: Frace 24 English)

Security threats, extreme poverty, and lack of public schools contribute to Nigeria’s education catastrophe. Like Treasure, 20 million Nigerian children are out of school, making them highly vulnerable to child labor, abuse, and underage marriages.

8-Year Long Civil War

In Yemen, out-of-school children are at increased risk of exploitation – being forced into civil war (child soldiers), early marriages, and child labor.

Mansour, a 16-years old boy, broke his spine in an accident at work in 2019 and has been unable to walk since. Once, Mansour went to school, studied, and regularly met his friends. Now, he is completely dependent on his mother for everything.

And Mansour is not alone.

Yemen’s war has forced 2 million children out of school, wrecking their future. Moreover, 3.7 million Yemen students consistently miss school due to the withholding of teachers’ salaries (almost 2-3rd of Yemen’s teachers have not received their salary in seven years).

Taliban Takeover

Since Taliba’s takeover in 2021, Afghan women over the age of 12 have been banned from school. With the new academic year starting in March, hundreds of thousands of teenage girls remain barred from classes.

Today, 80% of Afghan girls and young women (2.5 million) are banned from school. Out of which 30% have never even gained a primary education.

Despite repeated claims of reopening schools and universities for women, the Taliban (the de facto government) has failed to follow through. The group made similar claims during its previous rule from 1996 to 2001, but the girls were banned throughout the five-year rule.

“(the ban)takes away their ability to participate in their community in a way where they can ultimately have jobs, become doctors or teachers.”

Catherine Russell, Unicef (Source: al Jazeera) 

While the international community has made the right to women’s education the critical condition for aid negotiation, the Taliban is only giving empty promises in return.

Can Out of the School Children Crisis be Solved?

The out-of-school children problem is multifaceted and diverse. Almost every country’s fraction of students don’t go to school, but the numbers are significantly high in war-torn and under-developed countries. Even for students who are going to school, the quality of education and learning opportunities in such countries is vastly different.

According to a recent study by the world bank, these children are at the Irish of losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings. And unless actions are taken, learning losses will continue to endanger the future of these children, nations, and the world.

Experts advise that providing school meals to students will encourage poverty-ridden families to send their children to school for food. But this will need funding from international governments and organizations.

Education- A Fundamental Right

The world has come a long way in making education a fundamental right. From only 1 out of every ten literate individuals two centuries ago to today’s 9 in 10 adults with essential reading and writing skills – we’ve made progress.

But, to tackle the current and looming world problems in the 21st century and beyond, we’ll need a strong team of educated people. It’s hard to imagine that even today, millions of children are growing up without the opportunity for education that we had. But the reality remains the same.

So, yes, we’ve come a long way, but a lot of work is still left to make education a fundamental right for every child globally.

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Yemen’s Humanitarian Catastrophe 2023: Explained

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Yemen has been experiencing an armed conflict and humanitarian crisis since 2015, with seven brutal years of pain, fear, bloodshed and death. This article provides an update on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen as of February 2023.

Background to Yemen’s Humanitarian Catastrophe

Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when Houthi insurgents—Shiite rebels with links to Iran and a history of rising against the Sunni government—took control of Yemen’s capital and largest city, Sana’a, demanding lower fuel prices and a new government.

Two-thirds of the Yemini Population is in Need of Humanitarian Assistance

As of February 2023, two-thirds of the Yemeni population requires humanitarian assistance. The “Houthis” forces backed by Iran, the Saudi/UAE-led coalition, the internationally recognized Yemeni government, and UAE-backed forces, including the Southern Transitional Council (STC), have failed to spare Yemeni civilians grave human rights violations.

There has been a flagrant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law protections. Thus, the war has resulted in continuous incidents of abuse that have killed and injured thousands of civilians.

Nearly six million Yemenis are displaced from their homes since the beginning of the war, including 4.3 million internally displaced inside Yemen.

So far, there are no signs of the war stopping soon.

Parties to the War Responsible For Grave Human Rights Violations

Parties to the conflict in Yemen continue to commit grave human rights violations. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, the clashes between forces have led to continuous unlawful and indiscriminate airstrikes against civilians.

Houthi forces have used banned antipersonnel landmines and fired artillery indiscriminately into populated areas. Moreover, Houthi forces have launched indiscriminate ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia.

Read more: Children’s Rights in Yemen Are Teetering on the Edge of A Catastrophe.

Failed Truce in April 2022

An UN-mediated truce entered force on April 2nd 2022. The truce lasted six months, ending on October 2nd 2022. However, human rights violations continued, and the truce failed as parties broke the agreement with continued fighting and hostilities.

All parties to the conflict failed to protect innocent civilians’ lives. The truce in Yemen ended as both sides rejected a proposal presented by UN Special Envoy for Yemen to extend and expand the agreement.

However, on a brighter note, the truce brought noticeable tangible benefits to the Yemeni population. For example, access to humanitarian aid improved, and widespread economic opportunities became more readily available. Furthermore, there was a considerable decrease in violence and casualties across Yemen. A report by ACLED revealed the lowest number of reported political violence-related deaths in Yemen since January 2015. 

These noticeable and valuable improvements should not ignore that political violence continued in Yemen despite the truce. Worringly, 200 people died every month during the truce due to political violence.

20 Million Yeminis’ Face Food Insecurity

The humanitarian crisis hit a dangerously dire point in 2022 due to constant obstruction of aid from reaching civilians. Houthi forces and the Yemeni government continue unnecessarily imposing restrictions and regulations on humanitarian organizations and aid projects.

Moreover, enforced disappearances are a massive problem in Yemen, with little accountability or investigations. In addition, the economy’s collapse, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have led to Yemen being one of the world’s most unsettling humanitarian disasters.

More than 20 million Yemenis are facing food insecurity and have little to no access to health care services. The war has resulted in deliberate unlawful attacks against civilian homes, hospitals, schools, and bridges. For years, these war crimes have continued with impunity.

Read more: Yemen: War crimes hidden behind rampant violations.

FSO Safer Threatened a Humanitarian and Environmental Catastrophe

The FSO Safer is a “ticking time bomb”, holding an estimated 1.14 million barrels of light crude oil. Since 2015, the Safer has been stranded off the coast of Yemen.

Yemen’s national oil company owns the FSO. Due to the Yemen war, all production and export operations related to FSO are suspended. However, millions of barrels of crude oil remain onboard.

The ongoing crisis in Yemen has made the Safer too dangerous to move. According to the UN, the Safer could explode or rupture anytime, threatening an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. This dire situation could quickly become one of the worst oil spills in history, devastating Yemen and the environment. Luckily, a two-stage UN-coordinated plan to prevent the Safer from exploding or breaking apart was initiated in March 2022.

In September 2022, the UN stated it had raised sufficient funds to initiate a four-month-long operation to transfer oil from the Safer to a secure vessel. Following this first step, a second stage will involve installing a replacement vessel within 18 months. The rescue mission is estimated to cost up to $115 million for both stages.

However, despite these initiated plans,  recent efforts to rescue the Safer have been unsuccessful due to the region’s ongoing conflict.

Yemini Women’s and Girl’s Rights Under Threat

The Houthi rebels continue discriminating against girls and women and restricting their freedom and rights. There have been significant systematic violations of women’s and girls’ rights. The de facto law in Houthi-controlled areas requires women to travel with a mahram (a close male relative or their husband). In addition, evidence of written permission from their male guardian will also suffice.

Women’s access to healthcare services, particularly reproductive healthcare, have severely limited since the war began. Furthermore, women’s dress code, access to education and freedom of expression is severely controlled and limited by men.

Concluding Thoughts

The eight-year war in Yemen has caused immense suffering, and a recent UNDP report estimated that the number of those killed due to Yemen’s war could reach 1.3 million by 2030. Furthermore, the death toll from Yemen’s war is estimated to reach 377,000 by the end of 2021. To put matters into perspective, an estimated 70% of those killed will be children under the age of five years.

The evidence discussed in this article reveals alarming discoveries which must be addressed immediately. Mainly associated with girls’ and women’s rights, environmental threats, food insecurities and an increased number of civilians needing humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, an increasingly worsening economy, decimated public infrastructure, and a year-on-year decline in humanitarian funding have put Yemenis’ lives under direct threat.

The situation in Yemen is a complex protection crisis at its very core. Many Yemenis struggle to live in safety and dignity and enjoy basic fundamental rights or access to essential services. 

This worrying reality must be addressed and changed in 2023 with more focused attention on protecting and upholding human rights for everyone.

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The Repatriation of ISIS Children Detained in Camps in Northeast Syria 2022

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ISIS children in Syrian Camps

ISIS Detainees Denied Basic Human Rights

For the past four years, thousands of prisoners, primarily women and children, from the Islamic State (ISIS), have been arbitrarily detained in camps in northeast Syria. Approximatley, 42,200 people are currently detained in the camps despite the recently increased repatriation of women and children. Recent Turkish air and artillery strikes have exacerbated the dangerous circumstances in the camps. These Turkish strikes cut off electricity and stopped the water supply. They severely impacted fuel and food deliveries and detainees’ access to medical services in the Al-Hol and Roj camps.

In 2022, many children in the camps drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and several were run over by water trucks. Furthermore, hundreds died from preventable illnesses due to very limited access to healthcare. Prisoners have no legal basis or the possibility of reviewing the legality of their arbitrary detention. This severely undermines international human rights protections. The prisoner’s humanitarian situation is continuously deteriorating. They are subject to inhumane and degrading conditions with limited access to basic necessities and fundamental rights.

Background to ISIS Camps

Al-Hol and Roj are two camps in northeast Syria primarily holding the wives and children of male ISIS suspects. Among the prisoners, approximately 18,000 are from Syria, 28,000 are from neighbouring Iraq, and more than 10,000 are from 60 other countries. Shockingly, the prisoners consist of 60% children. Of these children, nearly 80% are under age 12, and 30% are age five or younger.

In northeast Syria, 56,000 women and children from ISIS have been arbitrarily detained in the al-Hol and Roj camps.
Caption: Image obtained from VOA. Children gather outside their tents at the al-Hol camp, which houses families of ISIS members, in Hasakeh province, Syria.

Read also: Syria: A Growing Humanitarian Crisis Amid the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

The conditions in the camps have created a children’s rights catastrophe. The camp conditions are deplorable, as continued violence resulted in the death of nearly 100 people in 2021.

The Political and Legal Hot Potato of Repatriation

The repatriation of women and children from camps in northeast Syria has been a very controversial and complex legal issue for countries for many years. The Committee on the Rights of the Child and numerous UN Special Rapporteurs have continuously demanded that states repatriate their nationals trapped in these camps.

Unfortunately, many countries contest these demands and make inconsistent responses to the ongoing human rights violations. However, several European countries recently began to increase the repatriation of women and children from the camps. For example, Germany and Denmark repatriated 37 children and 11 women. The Netherlands repatriated five women and 11 children. Belgium repatriated 16 children and six women. Sweden repatriated 20 children and ten women. More recently, France repatriated 35 children and 16 women.

Moreover, the table below illustrates the number of children, women and men that were repatriated by country.

Caption: Figures obtained from Rights and Security International and the table from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

Landmark Jurisprudence: HF and others v France

On September 14th 2022, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a consequential judgment in HF and others v France. In this case, two grandparents initiated proceedings at the ECtHR. The case was filed against France for their unwillingness to repatriate their grandchildren and daughter from ISIS camps in Syria.

On the one hand, the judgement laid down substantial implications and guidelines for France and other countries in similar situations. European states must now follow concrete and defined obligations flowing from this decision. Consequently, the judgement can speed up repatriation processes and force a potential political reckoning.

On the other hand, the judgement is rather disappointing. It does not order the repatriation of these individuals back to France. Moreover, it does not imply that France has the jurisdiction to protect the rights of its nationals under these circumstances.

From an international legal perspective, the ECtHR does recognize some positive obligations in the extraterritorial context in this judgment. These positive obligations stem from issues concerning the age, health, and safety of the children.

ECtHR and CRC Committee Deliver Differing Approaches in HF and others v France

Notably, the ECtHR ruling diverted from the approach used by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC Committee). The CRC Committee went much further in recognizing the states’ jurisdiction in this case. The Committee found in 2020 that France exercised jurisdiction over the children detained in Syria camps.

“the state of the children’s nationality has the capability and the power to protect the rights of the children in question by taking action to repatriate them or provide other consular responses.”

cOMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD, HF and others v France (2020).

Furthermore, on a positive note, the ECtHR’s judgement addresses misconceptions about the barriers to repatriation due to national security implications. The decisions clarified that EU states have access to the Syrian camps and have previously successfully repatriated nationals without serious consequences.

The court’s decision strongly indicates that states do not have a convincing legal argument for denying repatriation requests. This explicitly applies to vulnerable children who have had their fundamental rights violated for over four years.

Repatriated Children Integrating Well in New Countries

According to a November 2022 report released by Human Rights Watch, many of the children repatriated are successfully integrating. The report illustrates the experiences of approximately 100 repatriated children between 2019 and 2022. These countries included France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and Uzbekistan.

These children have been subjected to many years of life-threatening conditions. They had limited access to basic necessities such as food and water. They have witnessed and experienced unimaginable violence, abuse and neglect. Despite this, many of the repatriated children are doing well in school, making new friends and integrating smoothly.

Moving Forward & Recommendations

States can dramatically improve reintegration by quickly providing repatriated prisoners with birth certificates, identity cards, and other documents. The Autonomous Administration controls the Syrian ISIS camps and repeatedly urges states to repatriate their nationals. Additionally, they have requested an increase in aid to improve the prisoner’s disgraceful living conditions.

Although it is highly controversial, states must fulfil international human rights obligations. As highlighted in HF and others v France, states are responsible for protecting their citizens when they face serious harm. Children’s inhumane conditions in these camps call for governments to help end their nationals’ unlawful detention urgently.

In conclusion, the arbitrary detention of these prisoners amounts to collective punishment, which is considered a war crime under international law. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children should only be detained as an “exceptional measure of last resort”. States must take responsibility by bringing detainees home, prioritizing the most vulnerable and providing rehabilitation and reintegration services.

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