Sanctions and arms embargo: tightening the screws on Israel

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently issued a call for the global community and its stakeholders to implement sanctions on “Israel” for a fundamental reason: its absolute failure to adhere to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s orders to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. For the settler-run regime, punitive sanctions and an arms embargo are a bare minimum, given the sheer gravity of war crimes, collective punishment imperatives and genocidal actions committed for months. Israel’s onslaught has killed at least 31,700 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced some two-million residents since October 7. 

Sustained war-mongering within Israel’s so-called “war cabinet” and efforts to step-up the genocide in Rafah make political agreements on all sanctions a firm necessity. “States must impose sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, to compel it to comply with the order issued by the International Court of Justice,” wrote the organization in a post on X.

From open assassinations to genocide by starvation, “Israel’s” manufactured devastation in Gaza knows no bounds. Western states identify with the highest degree of humiliation and hypocrisy for providing scores of weapons to a bloodthirsty cluster of Israeli war leaders. Their open support effectively ensures a carte blanche for Israel to sidestep ICJ’s anti-genocide order, a move that HRW’s Palestine chief makes clear has put Gaza’s population under even more “peril than before the World Court’s binding order.” 

Sanctions on arms, finance and critical resource access are long overdue for “Israel”, which spares no effort in micromanaging its genocide. That includes oppression through the theft of civilian organs, theft of farmers’ lands and deliberate obstruction of incoming aid to prevent any meaningful international humanitarian response from gathering steam. For long, “Israel” has touted falsehoods about facilitating life-saving aid access into Gaza and has lobbied to deflect critical scrutiny. It insists on projecting its dehumanization of Palestinians as a new normal. But damning reporting from Refugees International has already driven that propaganda to the ground, confirming that the Israeli regime has used aid obstruction as an intentional design to keep Gazans in the throes of mass starvation.

HRW’s call for sanctions thus should be a wake-up call for the West, particularly the European Union, which has enabled, funded, and shielded “Israel’s” genocide from accountability on the world stage. The brazen extent of EU’s bias towards the occupation is condemnable: the bloc says it reached a “political agreement” to sanction extremist Israeli settlers after weeks of disagreements. But what about the leadership that has been facilitating such violence, genocidal massacres and land theft in broad daylight? What the EU describes as a “solid compromise” on select sanctions is nothing but further reluctance to stand-up to Netanyahu’s genocidal leadership and inflict financial, political and diplomatic pain to stop occupation excesses on Palestinian soil.

More importantly, HRW’s open call for sanctions also speaks to an all-important threshold breached by the occupation regime. For instance, “Israel” is under compulsion to ensure all aid and basic service delivery to besieged Palestinians. It is imperative to keep this in mind because the ICJ decision driving HRW’s sanctions call specifically warns against disposing of any evidence that could be used in the “Israel” genocide case against the occupation. 

Thus, Israeli designs to alter the facts on the ground, including efforts to intensify the mass suffering of children, are a deliberate attempt to keep such evidence out of reach and skirt the consequences of ethnic cleansing. The regime deserves to be sanctioned for triggering a five-digital casualty toll of innocent children in Gaza, and the cold-blooded injuries sustained by legions of others in the midst of the genocide. “Thousands more [children] have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble … We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Catherine Russell recently said on air.

“Israel’s” push to create alternative facts, projections, and realities on Gaza also has other roots. It is supported by a political press that projects the occupation as relieved of any wrongdoing. Telling reports, including accounts of anti-Palestinian prejudice from US-based CNN staffers, reveal a network of pro-genocide, Zionist cheerleaders that want to keep prospects of sanctions, arms embargo or proportional penalties out of public view on “Israel”. “Failure to ensure “Israel’s” compliance puts the lives of millions of Palestinians at risk and threatens to undermine the institutions charged with ensuring respect for international law and the system that ensures civilian protection worldwide,” said HRW’s Omar Shakir.

Considering these glaring fault lines, HRW’s call for action is more vital than ever. “Israel” has fulfilled virtually all criteria for months to enable a barrage of punitive sanctions, which at once must align with the spirit of justice for Palestinians, and also show the world that “Israel” and its genocidal acts will never be above the law.