SIDING with Israel is not popular these days — after all, its adversaries have succeeded in drumming up public opinion against what is now peddled as Israel's remorseless aggression. The International Court of Justice, through an Advisory Opinion, has held Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory to be a violation of international law. But, as UN experts — who are part of the "Special Procedures" of the Human Rights Council — themselves observe, the States of the world are unwilling to pursue the measures indicated by the Advisory Opinion against Israel. Why so?
In the first place, it should not be forgotten that Israel responded with a mailed fist only after it had been provoked by a Hamas attack that resulted in deaths and the abduction of Israelis and foreign nationals. It is true, of course, that the issue of settlements in the West Bank has been a sore spot in the fragile entente between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It is likewise true that the Palestinian Authority had all but relinquished control over the Gaza Strip to Hamas — a group that left no doubt about its mission to see to the eradication of Israel. The discovery of a warren of tunnels beneath Gaza confirms what Israel has maintained all along — that Hamas had virtually converted the whole of Gaza into an underground fortress. On New Year's Day of 2024, Reuters published a report documenting the tunnels discovered and the discovery that entrance shafts are sometimes "tucked away in private homes" into a system of "interconnecting passages that stretch below Gaza's streets, extending for hundreds of miles into almost every area of the enclave." What was Israel supposed to do? Leave this hive of militant activity undisturbed, although it was clearly laid out against Israel?
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