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Caption, Demonstrations against the war in Gaza have spread to many countries.Article information
The Israeli military on Monday ordered Palestinian civilians to leave parts of eastern Rafah ahead of a planned operation in the southern Gaza city.
Using text messages, leaflets and social media, they ordered about 100,000 people to camps in the nearby towns of Khan Younis and Al Mawasi.
Several countries, including the United States, have warned Israel to avoid an offensive against Rafah, the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians.
Meanwhile, voices are increasing within the international community calling for Israel to end its offensive throughout that territory, and some countries have even decided to take concrete actions to pressure the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, either by cutting off relations diplomatic actions, suspending the sale of weapons or resorting to international justice.
Colombia, which announced the breaking of relations with Israel, and Turkey, which suspended trade with that country, have been the latest to take specific steps to try to influence Israel’s actions.
The impact of these measures may be “merely symbolic,” Yossi Mekelberg, an analyst with Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program, explains to BBC Mundo, “but their cumulative effect on their diplomatic isolation or on what they say about Israel and about how he conducts war is important.”
It is not the first time that Israel has faced condemnation from other countries for its actions in Gaza or the West Bank. But never before has international pressure been as intense as it is now, mainly due to the unprecedented scale of destruction caused by the Israeli retaliation to the Hamas attack on October 7.
On that date, Israel suffered the worst aggression in its 75-year history, with the death of some 1,200 people at the hands of Hamas militiamen, who also took 253 hostages, and its response was relentless: more than 34,000 people have died since then in Gaza due to bombing by the Israeli army, 85% of the population has been displaced from their homes and about half, around 1.1 million people, are on the brink of famine, according to the UN.
Given this situation, we explain below which countries have decided to take concrete actions against Israel.
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Caption, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on May 1 the breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel.
break relationships
After the outbreak of war, and as the devastation of Gaza increased, a limited group of countries decided to withdraw their ambassadors or suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.
Countries in the region, such as Jordan, Bahrain or Turkey, sent their ambassadors back home, something that Chad and several Latin American governments, such as those of Chile, Honduras or Colombia, also decided to do.
The latter has now decided to go one step further and suspend diplomatic relations, thus joining Bolivia and Belize.
“Today humanity, in all the streets, agrees with us. The era of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our humanity, cannot return. If Palestine dies, humanity dies and we will not let die,” said President Gustavo Petro in a speech this Wednesday, May 1, in which he announced the diplomatic break.
Six months earlier, on October 31, the Bolivian government spokesperson announced the same decision in similar words.
Bolivia “has made the determination to break diplomatic relations with the State of Israel in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive being carried out in the Gaza Strip,” said its Vice Foreign Minister, Freddy Mamani, at the time.
Two weeks later, Belize announced in a statement the suspension of diplomatic relations with Israel due to the “incessant indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza and because, since October 7, Israel had “constantly” violated international law.
What does this breakup translate into?
Well, actually, it’s not clear. None of these three countries has great political weight in the Middle East and their commercial and diplomatic exchanges with Israel before this crisis were modest.
Colombia is, however, Israel’s second trading partner in Latin America after Brazil. Both countries signed a free trade agreement in 2020, and the Colombian military uses Israeli aircraft and weapons to fight drug cartels and insurgent groups.
However, for the moment, this agreement does not seem to have been affected, and the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has communicated its intention to “maintain the activity of the respective consular sections in Tel Aviv and Bogotá.”
The effect of this break in relations is mainly “symbolic, and manifests a sense of isolation and a change in attitude towards Israel,” analyzes Mekelberg.
But the Chatam House expert also remembers that these types of decisions also usually have an ideological and internal political component: “It’s like what happened with Brazil; “With Bolsonaro there was total support for Israel and when the left returned, the criticism returned.”
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Caption, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has toughened his speech against Israel.
Cut commercial ties
Last Thursday, Turkey announced that it was suspending all trade with Israel until the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu accepts “an uninterrupted and sufficient flow” of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
According to the Turkish Trade Minister, “export and import transactions related to Israel, covering all products, have been stopped.”
Trade between both countries amounted to US$7 billion last year.
Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel, in 1949. But bilateral relations have worsened in recent decades.
The most tense episode occurred in 2010, when Turkey broke diplomatic relations with Israel after that country attacked a flotilla of six Turkish ships in international waters that were trying to reach Gaza, breaking the maritime blockade that Israel imposes on the Strip.
In the assault by Israeli commandos, 10 Turkish pro-Palestinian activists died.
Relations were restored in 2016, but both countries expelled their respective ambassadors two years later over a new dispute over the killing of Palestinians on the Gaza border.
The situation has worsened since October 7. Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have increasingly leveled mutual accusations.
While Erdogan has compared the Israeli to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin and described him as “the butcher of Gaza”, Netanyahu has said of the Turkish leader that he “supports the mass murderers and rapists of Hamas, denies the Armenian genocide [y] massacres the Kurds in their own country.”
Stop gun sales
Several countries – such as Canada, Italy, Japan, Belgium and Spain – have announced in recent months that they would stop selling weapons to Israel.
However, analyzing these decisions in a little more detail, the reality that prevails is a little different.
In Belgium, it was the region of Wallonia that has decided to suspend the sale of gunpowder to Israel. Italy also announced the suspension of arms exports since October 7, although its Defense Minister later acknowledged that they continued to send to Israel the orders that had already been agreed upon before, with guarantees that they were not going to be used in Gaza.
Something similar happened with Spain, which also announced that it was suspending arms shipments and later it was revealed that it had continued sending ammunition. Madrid said, however, that they were intended for military exercises.
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Photo caption, The vast majority of the weapons that Israel imports come from the United States and Germany.
The situation is similar with Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that possible new arms sales agreements to Israel were frozen, but not those that had already been concluded.
In Japan it has been a company, Itochu Corporation, that has suspended collaboration with an Israeli weapons manufacturer. And in the Netherlands, a court has forced the country to stop a sale of military aircraft to Israel.
But none of these decisions will have little impact on the war.
More than 95% of Israeli arms imports come from the United States and Germany, which have given no clear sign that they will be suspended.
The impact of these arms sales restrictions “is limited, since it is the United States and Germany that supply most of the weapons, while the others send mainly very specific components or equipment that can probably be replaced by others, as well that is not going to change anything,” argues Yossi Mekelberg.
Go to international justice
Faced with the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the accumulation of deaths, South Africa opted last December for a different strategy to try to stop it: it turned to international justice.
Their lawyers presented a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in which they accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, something that the Mediterranean country rejects.
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photo caption, South African Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, explained the case that his country brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice.
In January, the court, which adjudicates disputes between states, issued a provisional ruling ordering Israel to take measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, but stopped short of requiring it to stop its military offensive.
“Israel emerged relatively unscathed from those procedures, but the fact that they were carried out meant that Israel had lost the battle,” Michael Oren, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013, explained in an interview with the BBC.
Now, however, the alarm bells are ringing louder in Israeli high places, but because of the actions that another international court may take.
The possibility that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will issue arrest warrants against the main Israeli political and military leaders, including Netanyahu himself, has Israel on edge.
The ICC, which brings cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity, has been investigating Israel’s actions in the occupied territories for three years and, more recently, also the actions of the militant group Hamas.
In the past it has issued arrest warrants against leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, and soldiers such as Ugandan Joseph Kony.
The International Criminal Court has not confirmed anything, but in the ICC prosecutor’s last visit to Israel and the West Bank, Karim Khan made it clear that “all actors must respect international humanitarian law. If you don’t, don’t complain when my office has to act.”
“Where this is going to lead, I don’t know,” Mekelberg analyzes, “but it should send a message to Israel that actions have consequences.”
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