Special Interview with Hassan Ben Imran on ceasefire in Gaza

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We welcome Hassan Ben Imran, legal advisor of the human rights organization law for Palestine, thank you, Hassan, for joining us From the South.

Transcript

00:00And to go further into this topic, we now welcome Hassan Benimran, Legal Advisor for

00:05Human Rights Organization Law for Palestine.

00:08Thank you, Hassan, for joining us here in From the South.

00:13Thank you, Van.

00:14It's a pleasure to have you with us.

00:16So let's get right into it.

00:18For the past year, the world has been waiting, demanding for a ceasefire in Gaza, with many

00:23instances of negotiations that have led nowhere.

00:26And finally, on Wednesday, the deal was announced by the Qatari Prime Minister, and it is expected

00:31to come into force on Sunday.

00:34But the attacks have stepped up since that moment.

00:37So I wanted to ask you, just how significant is this deal for the situation in Palestine?

00:43What situation will we have on Sunday?

00:46Of course, allow me to start by saying that this is one of the moments in history where

00:56you stand up and you think, why did this happen only now?

01:01This is a moment that has been being pushed for by human rights organizations, by different

01:06governments, by the International Court of Justice itself.

01:10Many months ago, from the very beginning of the war, everyone was talking about ending

01:14this genocide, stopping the bloodshed.

01:18And as we can see, the deal that has been agreed upon today in the morning or last night

01:24is almost the same that has been discussed many months ago.

01:27Nothing has changed except for losing many lives, many innocent lives.

01:32We're talking about almost 10,000 people that lost their lives ever since almost the very

01:36same deal has been put on the table back in May and June last year.

01:44Just yesterday, after the news of the ceasefire, we lost a very dear colleague of ours, the

01:49head of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, the director actually of the commission,

01:53and a commissioner in the Human Rights Commission, the Palestinian National Commission in Gaza,

01:59Mr. Rifat Salha, who lost his life together with his wife and many of his cousins and

02:06his children as well.

02:07And that was after the news of the deal has been delivered.

02:10This is one of the scariest moments in human history.

02:14It's an actual full-fledged genocide that we're waiting the ICJ to deliberate on and

02:20deliver a decision on.

02:22And yet, it was shocking that what happened yesterday or today in the morning, depending

02:28on the news, which source that we rely on, is something that could have happened more

02:34than a year ago, saving the lives of these innocent people.

02:39So exactly following that line of thought, why now and not then?

02:44Some things have changed.

02:45Of course, in the geopolitical scene, we have President Trump that is about to take office

02:50once again.

02:51Do you think that this comes into place?

02:53What has changed for this to be a scenario now when it could have been this in May or

02:57many months before?

03:01As you can see on the ground, there is almost nothing that has changed in Gaza.

03:06The bloodshed was going on.

03:08The genocide is going on.

03:09The suffering never stopped.

03:11The fighting on the ground never stopped.

03:13Israel claims to hold certain territories, but then it loses control quite fast.

03:20On the ground, I don't see any indication that anything has changed.

03:24It's almost identical.

03:26The only thing that has changed is the death toll, the number of victims killed.

03:31That's the only thing, and the friends and the people that we lost.

03:34Geopolitically, there might have been some changes that pushed Netanyahu to sign the

03:38deal.

03:40We have been looking at the discussions that he's been having with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich,

03:47two ministers of the more radical ministers, actually more radical than Netanyahu himself,

03:52in the Israeli cabinet, and the agreement was that they will step down from the government

03:56apparently as per the latest news, but without causing the government to collapse.

04:04Either way, that doesn't indicate that Israel is showing any intent to stop this genocide.

04:11The ceasefire has been signed.

04:15We need now guarantees that Israel will not go back to continue this genocide.

04:21We can't say that the genocide has stopped because the suffering of the people did not

04:24end yet, and we're not sure about the amount of humanitarian aid that has entered Gaza

04:28yet.

04:29We're not sure about the medical facilities and the capacity to reconstruct the completely

04:34collapsed health system in Gaza.

04:38On the ground, there is not much that has changed since the many months.

04:44Actually, it's the change in American politics that has pushed Netanyahu to take this decision.

04:50Either way, this requires so much further pressure to make sure that Israel does not

04:55go back to deploy its army in Gaza and continue this bloodshed.

05:02And exactly in that way, I wanted to ask you, we know from past experiences that a ceasefire

05:07does not equal the complete end to all aggressions towards Palestinians, of course, in this case.

05:14Also, for the past 15 months, Israel has been completely disregarding all its obligations

05:19to basically any international entity.

05:22So in this scenario, we said some geopolitical aspects have changed, but what can we expect

05:29in terms, can we rely on Israel's word in this case, in terms of the ceasefire?

05:36What do you see coming in the coming months?

05:40The short answer is absolutely not, like, forgive my honesty, but only a fool would

05:47trust Israeli government in its current format.

05:51We have seen this quite lately in Lebanon.

05:54Israel did sign a peace treaty or like a truce, a ceasefire with Lebanon, yet quite little

06:00has changed on the ground.

06:02Israel continued targeting Lebanon, continued actually having foot on the ground in South

06:07Lebanon until this very moment.

06:09And we're talking about almost more, we're talking about more than a month, like a month

06:14and 10 days probably, since the agreement has been signed or has been agreed upon.

06:21And yet Israel is violating its responsibility towards the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon

06:28or with the fighting paramilitary in Lebanon.

06:32The same applies to Syria.

06:35Israel is advancing within the Syrian territory without clearly stating its own military goals.

06:43There are now the Israeli troops are almost 20 kilometers away from Damascus, the capital

06:49of Syria.

06:50And Syria, at least the current formula that is governing Syria, has not posed any threats

06:56to Israel, yet Israel is acting, treating them as a foe and as an enemy.

07:01So we have little, actually we have quite much evidence to indicate the opposite, which

07:08means that this is a moment for us, for people concerned about international law, people

07:14working on the rule of law internationally, to keep pushing for a further action to prevent

07:22the Israeli cabinet and the Israeli government from redeploying its forces into Gaza.

07:28The levels of trust is close to non-existent.

07:31We have sufficient evidence to indicate that Israel will not abide by its obligations.

07:39In order to suggest otherwise, we need quite an argument to be able to argue that we can

07:46be secure about Israel not re-invading Gaza or redeploying its troops and inflicting serious

07:53life conditions on the people of Gaza.

07:56What needs to be done is further pressure.

07:59Unfortunately, the streets have got used to the massacres happening in Gaza.

08:05Less pressure has been expressed or exerted from activists, from academics who were quite

08:13active in the beginning of the war, from people and NGOs organizing different protests in

08:19London and other capitals to pressure the governments to exert actual pressure on Israel.

08:25What needs to be done, in my opinion and in the opinion of many people that have been

08:29working on this for the past 15 months, is that Israel will stop only when they face

08:38a sufficient pressure that makes them realize that they're going to lose more if they continue

08:43in this line of action.

08:44What does that mean?

08:45That means military embargo.

08:47That means economic boycott.

08:49That means also unseating Israel from the United Nations.

08:52Israel is disrespecting publicly the United Nations, shutting down the UN agency, publicly

08:58disrespecting the UN Secretary General, disrespecting the UN and actually banning many of the UN

09:03officials from coming into its territory.

09:07Perhaps this is a moment where we remember what happened to South Africa, apartheid regime

09:12in South Africa, when the Bouteflika rule was activated at that time with Algeria and

09:18other countries pushing for dismissing Israeli diplomats from the United Nations facilities.

09:24And that happened.

09:25South Africa, the apartheid regime of South Africa, was unseated from the UN.

09:28That isolated the apartheid regime in South Africa further, which created further pressure

09:33on them to realize that the only way to end this is to respect their obligations according

09:40to international law and to respect the bare minimum of human morality of dismantling the

09:49apartheid regime that has been constructed in South Africa back then.

09:53The same is applicable to Israel, in my opinion.

09:56And in terms of stepping up that international pressure, you were mentioning before the case

10:01at the ICJ that is at the moment continuing to investigate the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

10:11So in terms of this ceasefire agreement from an international law perspective, if the agreement

10:17was not followed, if what it's agreed upon in terms of the entry of humanitarian aid,

10:24for example, of the assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, if this is not kept, as we imagine

10:32could very well happen, as you were just saying, could that just add some arguments into

10:40that international pressure to be able to be stepped up and enforced on behalf of different,

10:47either other countries or the mediators themselves?

10:50Does the ceasefire agreement bind them in some way in that sense?

10:57The ceasefire agreement is meant to be binding.

11:01Binding on the warring parties, binding on third parties as well, third states.

11:08Binding on the UN, on the third states that are financing the Israeli genocide.

11:17The Israeli ammunition is coming from the US, Germany and other states, 70% is coming

11:21from the US, which means that it is binding on these states.

11:25The very idea that an agreement has been signed reinforces the calls and the demands and the

11:31action, the line of action that's being taken.

11:33Any Israeli action against the ceasefire further reinforces the South African case in the ICJ.

11:39So absolutely, the ceasefire is binding.

11:42It does end much of the unnecessary disputes, like intellectual conversations or intellectual

11:51exercises that are being practiced by some people here and there.

11:56This is an agreement that has been signed by the directly involved parties, that has

12:02been directly co-sponsored by the other parties that have been contributing to the situation,

12:08mainly the United States.

12:10So yes, it's binding, it should be upheld and there has to be a step forward to reconstruct

12:16Gaza and allow the people of Gaza to be able to resume a sense of normal life, which I

12:24can't imagine how that is possible after what they've been through.

12:27But at least in the sense of reconstructing the completely destroyed health system, the

12:33hospitals, the access to aid, access to humanitarian aid, to medical aid, so on and so forth.

12:40So of course, we hope that this binding quality is upheld and is enforced by the mediators

12:47along which are some very important nations, as you were mentioning.

12:51So we'll have to see what happens, of course, in the coming days.

12:56Thank you, Hassan, so much for joining us in From the South with such a clear perspective

13:00that allows us to further understand this topic.

13:03Advisor at Law for Palestine and also PhD scholar at the University of Galway.

13:11We now go for a short break, but stay with us.

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