No humanitarian crisis in the world is better documented than the one the Palestinians have been experiencing for years. But the West preferred to turn a blind eye and believe Israel, which believed it had the situation well under control, complains Professor Michael Lynk, a specialist in international humanitarian law. Interview with the man who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for six years, until 2022.
Published at 1:33 am. Updated at 5:00 am.
Back in 2018, Michael Lynk, now an associate professor at the law school at Western University in Ontario, wrote: “With its economy in free fall, with 70% of young people unemployed, with widely contaminated tap water and with the collapse of …” Because of its health system Gaza has become uninhabitable. »
Before the current war, the last major clash between Israeli and Palestinian armed groups was in 2014. The UN estimates that 67 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed on the Israeli side. On the Palestinian side there were around 2,100 dead, mostly civilians.
“In 2014, 1,500 Palestinian civilians were killed and the reconstruction of Gaza, funded by international aid, took six years,” Lynk said. However, in ten days there are already more dead Palestinian civilians and the damage in Gaza is already greater than in 2014.”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MICHAEL LYNK
Michael Lynk served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for six years.
If he dared to make a prediction now, it would be this. “The international community will struggle to rebuild in the face of a humanitarian crisis, and the United States may have to come to Israel’s aid if too many soldiers have died in the country.” »
Until October 7, Israel’s strategy held, he continues. The country “continued its occupation, resisted calls for Palestinian self-determination, continued to resettle more settlers in the occupied territories, and continued the blockade of the Gaza Strip.”
The United Nations and humanitarian organizations have multiplied the resolutions and denunciations. American and European leaders knew full well that the Palestinians were in “a desperate situation,” Mr. Lynk noted.
The media has shifted its focus to more recent conflicts. The Palestinian situation has therefore largely fallen under the radar in recent years.
Boiling situation
Mr. Lynk himself tried several times to raise the alarm in vain. He points out that his work as special rapporteur was also made significantly more difficult by the fact that Israel blocked his access to the occupied territories and forced him to rely on local actors (Mr. Lynk had previously lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, he Remarks).
“Israel did not recognize my mandate and considered the United Nations biased. Israel rejects criticism of this. » Life went on, the country convinced its people and its allies that it was armored with its anti-missile shield, that wall behind which its enemies were well contained, and that the worst was behind it.
However, it was illusory. Israel is “on a volcano” that erupted on October 7, emphasizes Mr. Lynk.
Israeli civilians were brutally shot and taken hostage. Israel’s missile defense shield, the Iron Dome, could not withstand the thousands of rockets fired simultaneously into the country.
According to Lynk, Hamas knew full well that Israel’s reaction would obviously be terrible. He suggests that what he hoped for was “another Battle of Stalingrad,” a turning point in World War II.
One thing is certain: as the media has since reported, Israeli civilians are doubly stunned by the fact that they have suffered such violence and by the shock of realizing that their government is not as powerful as they had hoped.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains on the course of his predecessors and the creation of a Palestinian state is in no way in sight, just as there is no diplomatic or political path in sight, analyzes M. Lynk.
PHOTO EVAN VUCCI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed US President Joe Biden upon his arrival in Tel Aviv on Wednesday
Joe Biden’s warm embrace of Netanyahu on Wednesday, “at a time when the number of Palestinian casualties from Israeli tanks and rockets is rising” and “in the wake of the attack on the Palestinian hospital – whatever the ‘author’ may be, In his opinion, they leave an aftertaste for many people, “including America’s allies in the Middle East.”
The gap between the United States’ support for international law relating to the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine and its opposition to international law relating to the Israeli occupation of Palestine has never been greater.
Michael Lynk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
The protests in Arab countries are increasing and will not stop, he says.
He concludes with John F. Kennedy’s famous sentence. “Whoever makes a peaceful revolution impossible will make a violent revolution inevitable.” That is what is happening. »