Fernando Alcoforado*
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the Palestinian people have been victims of crimes against humanity committed by the British Empire since the end of World War I until 1948, and of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the various governments of Israel since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Crimes against humanity are criminal offenses resulting from conduct that involves, with the knowledge of the perpetrator or perpetrators, a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population, resulting in a set of unlawful acts qualified by their gravity. The crimes against humanity are the following: i) Homicide; ii) Extermination; iii) Slavery; iv) Deportation or forcible transfer of a population; v) Imprisonment in violation of international law; vi) Torture; vii) Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization; viii) Persecution of a group for political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or sexual reasons; ix) Enforced disappearance of persons; x) Apartheid; xi) Other inhumane acts of a similar nature to the above that intentionally cause great suffering. In turn, war crimes defined by the Statute of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Geneva Conventions are those that include attacks on the civilian population, use of prohibited weapons or methods of warfare, murder, torture, improper use of humanitarian uniforms, among others. These crimes against humanity and war crimes are currently being committed in the Middle East by the Israeli government not only against the Palestinian people, but also against the people of Lebanon.
Crimes against humanity and war crimes practiced against Palestinians began well before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 by the British Empire, which contributed to the usurpation of Palestinian territory for the benefit of Jews at the end of World War I until 1948 when the State of Israel was constituted. These crimes have continued since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the Six-Day War in 1967, with the massacre of the Palestinian population and the destruction of the Gaza Strip since 2023 with the aim of annihilating Hamas and with the invasion of Lebanon and the bombing of its civilian population with the aim of annihilating Hezbollah and its leadership. In 1948, the Jews counted on the support of the British Empire in their struggle against the Palestinians and their allies. After 1948, the State of Israel counted as the decisive support of North American imperialism that transformed it into the spearhead of its political and military interests in the Middle East.
1. The usurpation of the territory of Palestine by the Jews
The first crime against humanity was committed against the Palestinian people after the First World War, when the Jewish Zionist Federation usurped its territory in favour of the Jews, with the support of the British Empire. The First World War had damaging consequences for Palestine. The defeat of Turkey (Ottoman Empire), an ally of Germany defeated in the First World War (1914-1918), which exercised domination over Palestine, had decisive consequences for the future of this region. After the global conflict, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations on 28 June 1919 created the Mandate system, which was intended to determine the status of colonies and territories under the control of the defeated nations. The British Mandate for Palestine was approved by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922. The British Mandate for Palestine no longer envisaged as its objective the full independence of the then inhabiting population, that is, the Palestinian population. Instead, in accordance with the wishes of the Zionist Federation, it promoted the creation of a Jewish national homeland, that is, the creation of a Jewish state with people who, for the most part, were still scattered throughout the world and therefore had to be brought in from outside.
Great Britain, the hegemonic power at the time, promised the Zionist Federation that it would do everything possible to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine with the so-called Balfour Declaration. The obstacle that prevented the process of Palestinian independence was therefore the privilege given to Jews to create the “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Jewish organizations took advantage of the administrative and economic infrastructures that the British Mandate placed at their disposal to accelerate the implementation of the project of creating the Jewish State in Palestine. To this end, they intensified the immigration of Jews from Eastern and Central Europe, in three main waves: in 1919-1923, 1924-1928 and 1932-1940. In 1931, Jews numbered 174,610 out of a total of 1,035,821 inhabitants of Palestine. In 1939, there were already more than 445,000 and in 1946 they reached 808,230 out of a total population of 1,500,000 and 1,972,560 respectively. In practice, there was a progressive occupation of Palestine by the Jews. Currently, there are 7.1 million Jews in Israel and 7.35 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel.
The Palestinians saw the sponsorship given first by Great Britain and then by the League of Nations to the Zionist project of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine as a denial of their right to independence. The Palestinians felt dispossessed. Naturally, the Palestinians opposed the project of creating a Jewish national home in Palestine from the very first moment they learned of the Balfour Declaration and tried by all means to prevent its implementation, as they feared that it would result in their submission, not only politically but also economically, to the Zionists, thus passing from Turkish to Jewish rule, with a British interval. The Palestinians presented protests against the Balfour Declaration to the Paris Peace Conference and the British Government. The first Palestinian demonstration against the Zionist project took place on 2 November 1918, the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. This demonstration was peaceful, but the Resistance soon turned violent, manifesting itself in attacks on Jews that degenerated into bloody clashes.
In general, the outbreaks of violence became increasingly serious as the British Mandate extended and the Jewish colonization of Palestine expanded and strengthened. Events unfolded in a sequence that became habitual. Palestinian resistance also occurred in the 1936–1939 revolt. In April 1936, local disturbances between Arabs and Jews degenerated into a general revolt by the Palestinians. The revolt was against the Jewish colonization of Palestine and the British authorities, the foreign power, from whom the Palestinians demanded the establishment of a national government. The British authorities responded with violent repression and the Jews with reprisals. Having come to the conclusion that the Palestinians would not renounce their independence, the British considered in 1937 the possibility of dividing Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. This solution did not satisfy either party. This disagreement continues to this day. The Jewish diaspora ended in 1948, when the State of Israel was created. With the formation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the occupation of Palestine by Jews took place, and many displaced persons and Jewish refugees migrated to the new sovereign state. It is estimated that 170,000 displaced persons and refugees immigrated to Israel between the end of the Second World War and 1953.
2. Israel’s advance on Palestinian territory
The second crime against humanity, and also a war crime, committed against the Palestinian people after the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967, was that which resulted in the occupation by Jews of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip established by the 1948 UN Partition Plan that created the State of Israel. During this period, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon after the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967 (Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Israeli conquests in the Six-Day War (1967)
Source: https://www.curso-objetivo.br/vestibular/roteiro_estudos/questao_palestina.aspx
Figure 2 below shows that the evolution of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians has led to Israel progressively conquering the territory of Palestine from 1947 to the present day. This situation cannot continue because it generates permanent conflict between Jews and Palestinians. The map of Palestine has changed over the years with Israel’s advance into Palestinian territory. Peace between Jews and Palestinians will hardly be possible if these conditions are maintained.
Figure 2 – Israel’s advance on Palestinian territory
Source: https://www.todamateria.com.br/conflito-israel-palestina/
3. The massacre of the Palestinian people and the destruction of the Gaza Strip
The third crime against humanity, in addition to war crimes, was the one recently committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip and the destruction of its infrastructure. The Gaza Strip (See Map 1) is a Palestinian territory consisting of a narrow strip of land in the Middle East located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordering Egypt to the southwest (11 km) and Israel to the east and north (51 km). The territory of the Gaza Strip is 41 kilometers long and only 6 to 12 kilometers wide, with a total area of 365 square kilometers. The Gaza Strip has a population of approximately 2.4 million inhabitants. With an annual growth rate of approximately 3.2%, the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated territories on the planet. The area suffers from chronic water shortages and has virtually no industry. Its infrastructure is precarious. The name Gaza Strip derives from the name of its main city, Gaza, which dates back to antiquity.
Map 1 – Map of the Gaza Strip
Map of the Gaza Strip showing urban areas, refugee camps and border crossings.
Source: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faixa_de_Gaza
Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack on Israeli territory, the Israeli government, in retaliation, has turned the Gaza Strip into rubble and the humanitarian situation of its approximately 2.4 million inhabitants is catastrophic. The bombings of the Israeli government, which has promised to eradicate Hamas, are relentless. The number of Palestinians killed has reached more than 40,000 since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, and a total of 83,680 have been injured in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. The situation in Gaza is one of pain, anguish and anger for survivors who are faced with the horror of mutilated bodies, often of children. With this mass murder of Palestinians, Israel is increasingly moving away from the possibility of being accepted as a regular, permanent state in this region, in order to integrate and survive.
With almost two million displaced people, the city of Rafah, in the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, has been transformed into a ghetto similar to that of Warsaw when the Jews were confined by the Nazis to an area of the city of Warsaw in Poland. In the Rafah ghetto, there are crowds of displaced people, tents in the middle of the street and the neighborhoods completely razed to the ground, where there is nothing but rubble. The Gaza Strip has disappeared before our eyes. After one year, exhaustion is evident. The Israeli army is destroying homes and historical heritage in the Gaza Strip whose victims are at the mercy of Israeli attacks. No place in the Gaza Strip is safe. The carnage that we see today in the Gaza Strip is nothing new, because it has occurred countless times by the Israeli government in the past throughout Palestine, although this time, the horror of the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity reaches new and shameful records.
Currently, around 2 million Palestinians are displaced because of the war that began on October 7, 2023. This number is equivalent to more than 80% of the total population of the Gaza Strip who have been displaced since the beginning of the war between the Israeli government and Hamas, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). So far, efforts to stop the Israeli massacre of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip have been in vain.
The ICC (International Criminal Court), based in The Hague, Netherlands, unanimously advised the issuance of arrest warrants for the criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as arrest warrants for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, and Al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Al-Masri, known as Deif. The five suspects are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Israel and the Gaza Strip. In addition, the UN Security Council has been unable to end the conflict due to the veto of the United States, the Israeli government’s main ally.
4. The invasion of Lebanon and the bombing of its civilian population
The fourth crime against humanity, in addition to war crimes, was committed by the Israeli government with the bombings against Lebanon and its population with the aim of annihilating Hezbollah and its leadership. Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia, bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Cyprus lies a short distance from the country’s coastline. Its current population is 6,825,000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations.
Map 2 – Map of Lebanon
Source: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geografia_do_L%C3%ADbano
Israel has inflicted enormous damage on Hezbollah in recent weeks, killing more than a dozen high-ranking commanders and destroying apparently thousands of weapons in airstrikes. Israel has also been blamed for the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies that left thousands of Hezbollah members maimed, blinded or killed. However, the death of Hezbollah’s supreme commander, Hassan Nasrallah, in one of the bombings in Lebanon was the biggest blow of all. It is important to note that Nasrallah, with the help of funding, training and weapons from Iran, transformed Hezbollah into a military force whose attacks led Israel to end a 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 and which fought Israel to the end during a month-long war in 2006.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon over the past two weeks, including 87 children and 56 women. Up to a million people—a fifth of its population—have been forced to flee their homes to escape Israeli bombardment. The Lebanese government is struggling to accommodate everyone, with shelters and hospitals overwhelmed. Hezbollah still has thousands of fighters, many of them veterans of the civil war in neighboring Syria, as well as a significant arsenal of missiles, many of them long-range, precision-guided missiles that could reach Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.
5. Conclusions
Based on the above, it can be stated that the massacres carried out by the Israeli government against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip with the aim of annihilating Hamas and against the civilian population of Lebanon with the aim of annihilating Hezbollah represent the continuation of the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the British Empire since the end of World War I, when the process of occupation of Palestine by the Jews began, and those committed by the Israeli governments since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The massacres by the Israeli government of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip and the civilian population of Lebanon are not contributing to mobilizing peace-loving countries, unlike what happened during World War II, when there was a mobilization to annihilate the Nazi empire in Europe. How long will the governments of peace-loving countries passively watch the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli government? How long will the UN stop being passive and mediate the conflicts in the Middle East? How long will most Arab governments continue to watch the Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon without taking any concrete action to stop the Israeli government’s warmongering actions, with the exception of the Iranian government? How long will peace-loving Jews in Israel and around the world continue to passively watch the Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip and the bombings against the civilian population in Lebanon in complicity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Netanyahu government? It is important to note that Israel will only be able to exist as a nation in the Middle East if it is accepted by the people living in Palestine and the Arab world. As long as it continues its warmongering actions against the peoples and countries of the region, Israel is digging its own grave. Israel’s future existence depends on what the Jewish people do now to remove Netanyahu’s fascist government and replace it with a democratic government capable of dialoguing with the Palestinians and the countries of the region. Only in this way will it be possible to avoid the outbreak of a new war in the Middle East and even World War III.
* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia and of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022), How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chișinău, 2023), A revolução da educação necessária ao Brasil na era contemporânea (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2023), Como construir um mundo de paz, progresso e felicidade para toda a humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2024) and How to build a world of peace, progress and happiness for all humanity (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2024).
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