‘Stop the horror’

Ireland’s president has said it is “time to stop this horror of history” after fresh Israeli outrages in Palestine and Lebanon and after Israeli legislators passed laws to block the work of the main aid agency in Gaza.

Michael D Higgins called on all EU and UN member states to make “clear” their support for the aid being delivered by the UN Palestinian refugee agency and repeated his calls for a ceasefire and for hostages to be released.

Israel passed the law to ban UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, from inside the country on the same day up to 200 innocent civilians were killed in a single day of bombings in Gaza and Lebanon.

At least 110 Palestinians were killed and missing and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday. Dozens of children were among the dead.

Those wounded in the strike could not receive life-saving care as doctors had been forced to evacuate the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital.

A further 70 were killed in similar massacres in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

Around 100,000 people are currently marooned in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies.

“100,000 people in northern Gaza, the majority women and children, are effectively trapped with no safe place to go to. Two of their three hospitals are destroyed and one is under siege,” President Higgins said in a statement.

“Older people are dragged from their hospital beds and the extraordinarily brave medical staff who have stayed with the most vulnerable are paying with their lives and the threat of arrest.”

He added: “Silence from those who have had the best of aspirations for the EU and its future during a grave humanitarian catastrophe would be more than disappointing, it damages the Union.

“Given the circumstances of people starving to death, the placing under attack of the United Nations agency that is responsible for keeping them alive constitutes an appalling failure of diplomacy and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

“It is time to stop this horror of history.”

Sinn Féin’s Declan Kearney described Israel’s ban on UNWRA operating within Israeli occupied territories as a “sadistic” escalation in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.

“This latest violation of international humanitarian law will effectively cut off the primary source of aid to the Palestinian people and intensify the immeasurable suffering of an already besieged and starving population,” he said.

“This is another affront to the United Nations, coming only weeks after the Israeli army’s blatant attack on UN peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon and demonstrates once again Netanyahu’s belief that, emboldened by the complicity of western global leaders, he is above the law.

“All right-minded people are sickened by the moral hypocrisy of those in the West. Their rhetorical censures of Netanyahu’s extremist government are meaningless.”

The Dublin government issued a statement condemning the vote in the Israeli parliament, but after a year of horrific atrocities, has yet to take any action against Israel. It has still not intervened against those military flights through sovereign Irish airspace which are carrying weaponry from the US to Israel.

It is also illegal to trade military technology and equipment with countries who commit human rights abuses.

It was announced on Wednesday that it will face a judicial review in Dublin’s High Court if it does not move to comply with its obligations under international treaties.

Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law said outside Government Buildings on Wednesday: “The increased level of military-related trade over the past year, as well as the use of Irish airspace for transporting arms to the IDF, puts the Irish government at risk of violating a number of national and international laws.”

“This is a formal legal notification to the government today to take the steps necessary to comply with international law and, in particular, their obligations under the Genocide Convention.

“The Government has 14 days from today to comply with those international obligations. We look forward to hearing from them in the near future.”

Urgent Appeal