Photo credit: Yossi Zamir/Shatil Stock
After more than a year, and with 101 Israelis still held captive, the war in Gaza continues. NIF grantees and NIFC project partners are among the few who are working to ensure that inhumane practices of the IDF are made public. Shining a bright light on human rights violations is one of civil society’s key tools to bring these practices to an end.
For example, a few weeks ago, a coalition of well-respected human rights groups called the Israeli Ceasefire Coalition, which includes NIFC project partner Yesh Din and NIF grantees Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) and Gisha, released a statement calling on the international community to prevent Israel’s forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who still remain in northern Gaza and allow essential fuel and humanitarian aid to enter there.
PHRI is also insisting that the IDF provide safe evacuation routes from the most dangerous parts of the Strip. PHRI published a joint statement along with 17 other health and human rights organizations, detailing a series of requirements and principles to guarantee the Palestinians’ right to health. Some of the statement’s principles were elevated in a petition to the Israeli High Court to press the IDF to change its policies. Among the demands articulated by PHRI are the establishment of an immediate, regular evacuation mechanism to allow Palestinian patients in Gaza to receive life-saving medical treatment, humanitarian corridors from northern Gaza to southern Gaza, for the IDF to stop attacking healthcare facilities, and to allow humanitarian aid such as food and medical equipment into Gaza.
NIFC project partner Breaking the Silence (BtS), which collects testimony from IDF veterans, also creates domestic pressure in Israel to prevent human rights violations. It publicized the horrifying tactics and partial implementation of what’s known as the “Generals’ Plan” in Gaza based on these testimonies. The plan involves the systematic withholding of “humanitarian aid as strategic leverage to return the hostages and defeat Hamas.” In theory, Breaking the Silence says, the plan is supposed to create enough desperation among Gazans to lead a revolt against Hamas and force those capable of fleeing northern Gaza to evacuate, likely permanently. Not only does the plan constitute a violation of International Law, but what appears to be its partial implementation has been labeled “ethnic cleansing” by even the most hawkish IDF generals. It is illogical, unpragmatic, and counterproductive to securing a hostage exchange deal, and further endangers the lives of the hostages remaining in Gaza.
Breaking the Silence has also published testimony on severe human rights violations in Gaza. A recent New York Times investigation (also featured on The Daily) utilized photos and soldiers’ testimony collected by Breaking the Silence around the IDF’s apparently widespread practice of using captured Gazan civilians as human shields. The number of soldiers returning from Gaza and providing testimony on this and other inhumane practices continues to grow.
NIF is proud to stand alongside PHRI and Breaking the Silence to shine an ever brighter light on human rights violations and help end the war, bring the hostages home, support innocent people in Gaza, and insist on a future that brings safety and freedom to everyone.