The Schiller Institute of France issued the following emergency statement:
At the end of February, the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came to an end. On March 2, Israel brutally implemented the blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza. At the beginning of May, two months after this decision, the situation is such that the Red Cross has just warned of the danger of a total collapse of humanitarian operations. In concrete terms, this means that two million people who have endured bombardment, displacement, non-existent sanitary conditions and constant hell, are condemned to starve to death sooner or later.
Of course, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—prosecuted by his country’s justice system and by the International Criminal Court—bears a crushing responsibility, both for having played the Hamas card for his own calculations, and for having deliberately thwarted the prospect of positive developments that were taking shape with the temporary ceasefire negotiated in Doha (Qatar). But no one can be fooled. If Netanyahu has trampled for so long and with such impunity on every one of the most fundamental principles of our common humanity, if he has been able to go so far in the cynical violation of every provision of International Law, it is because he has benefited from the unlimited indulgence of his Western protectors.
Make no mistake about it, the bloodshed of thousands of victims, the dead, the crippled, the erasing of a culture—whether through the elimination of Gazans or the destruction of its heritage—will not be swept under the carpet of history, despite the attempts to rewrite it that are already emerging.
As far as the blockade of humanitarian convoys is concerned, it should be remembered that International Humanitarian Law, and in particular the Geneva Convention of 1949, “obliges third States to put pressure on belligerents to respect their obligations.”
