In a letter to the António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations this Tuesday, the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society in Bahrain explained how Israel’s war on Gaza is in drastic violation of international law, and demanded the UN top official to find a way to stop the ‘genocide of Palestinians’.
In the letter, the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society explained that for more than 30 days the deadly campaign against Gaza by Israel is still continuing and all these 30 days, “Israel has breached over a dozen of international regulations on human rights and war conditions. The permitted methods and means of warfare are dictated by international humanitarian law, or jus in bello, which includes the 1949 Geneva conventions and 1977 protocols.” The letter noted.
Reminding Guterres that during this one month of Israel’s invasion in Gaza, thousands of buildings and non-military places have been targeted by Israeli air strikes, the group also wrote in the letter that “the devastations include 260,000 residential units, 221 schools, 52 mosques, 7 churches, and multiple locations supervised by UNRWA, healthcare centers and hospitals, markets, and the infrastructures of the city which were partly or entirely demolished. Israel has utilized illegal ammunition against the civilian people, including the white phosphorus munitions.”
What is Al-Wefaq group?
Known also as the Islamic National Accord Association, the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society is the largest political community in Bahrain, which was founded in 2001 by the country’s Shiites with the general secretary of Sheikh Ali Salman, a Shiite cleric. The government of Bahrain disbanded the group after the popular uprising in this country in 2011 along with several other parties.
The Al-Wefaq group also rebuked Israel for killing so many civilians and wrote to the UN Secretary Geral in the letter that since the start of the war, “over 10,022 civilians lost their lives in Gaza, including over 4,104 infants and children and over 2,641 women. Israeli army kept targeting reporters (killing over 31), emergency services, the displaced camps, religious centers, UNRWA centers (leading to the death of 88 of your colleagues), healthcare centers, and refugee camps. In one case, the brutal raid on Al-Ahli hospital led to the death of over 500 civilians, including the patients, healthcare staff, and hundreds of people who took shelter there.”
This is while according to the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian laws and their additional protocols hospital and safety zones must in fact be established for groups such as the injured, sick and pregnant women, and Civilian hospitals and their staff must be protected against any attack.
Israel should be brought to court, Al-Wefaq demanded Guterres
Concluding the letter, the Al-Wefaq group demanded that the UN Secretary General uses the relevant apparatus like launching the research committees to shed light on the crimes that Israel have so far committed in Gaza.
The group also called for emergency special sessions (of UN or UNSC) and submitting the case and documents of the massive breach of international regulations and human rights, massacre, forced displacement, genocide, and violating the rights of nations under occupation by Israel to ICC and ICJ so that Israel is brought to an international court.
