When will the world finally hold Israel accountable?

A month ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear in a letter to the Israeli authorities that they had 30 days to boost humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk having American military assistance suspended. Many depicted this as the Biden administration getting tough.

The deadline is due to pass on Tuesday. Last week, the US State Department confirmed Israel had not met the criteria but it still had time.

However, nothing that has happened in the last 13 months gives any confidence that President Joe Biden will cut the weapons supply or impose any costs on Israel. Red lines, such as Biden telling Netanyahu not to go into Rafah, have been bulldozed as easily as every built-up area of Gaza. At no point has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu been forced to hold back.

Note the language. The US is not asking Israel to allow proper access for humanitarian aid, merely to boost it. Prior to this letter, Israel had not let any aid into Gaza for two weeks. The day after, it permitted a trifling 30 trucks into the northern part of the Strip. In October, only 6 percent of the aid that used to get into Gaza entered the besieged enclave.

But what is the reality on the ground?

If you watch the footage filmed by humanitarians who have gone into northern Gaza, it is hard to spot a single building left standing. What was an overcrowded concrete jungle looks like it has been ground down into dust. The occasional streetlamp stands unscathed. One UN official described the stench of rotting corpses.

The gap between the humanitarian agencies on the ground and the anodyne statement of American and European leaders is stark

Chris Doyle

The UN termed the situation in northern Gaza as “apocalyptic.” The latest assessment from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification states: “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” The aid agency Save the Children warns: “Famine is imminent in northern Gaza. The relentless Israeli bombardment and blocking of critical aid is driving starvation and malnutrition.” Although the official fatality count is about 43,000, the real figure is likely closer to 200 000. The UN has also determined that 70 percent of the dead are women and children.

The gap between the humanitarian agencies on the ground — with what they have been consistently reporting, with evidence, for months and months — and the anodyne statement of American and European leaders is stark.

Israel has insisted all Palestinian civilians have to leave northern Gaza. Worse, on Nov. 5, the same day as the US elections, an Israeli general confirmed that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza. This is clearly to implement parts of the “Generals’ Plan,” which envisages the forcible expulsion of the entire Palestinian population to the southern half of Gaza. It is planned and deliberate. In addition to the north, Israel has already effectively annexed the 56 sq. km of the Netzarim Corridor it has flattened for its own use.

It will not be long before the Israeli settler movement begins building homes on the ruins of those of the Palestinians, to concrete over the evidence of the army’s war crimes with more war crimes, their settlements.

What European and American leaders should be highlighting is the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and framing it as part of the genocide that Israel continues to perpetrate. Given the levels of death and destruction, which long ago went way beyond any possible claim of Israel self-defense, anything less looks like complicity.

These governments know what is going on. American and European publics can see what is happening and the atrocities that are being committed, which is why opinion polls consistently back a full arms embargo on Israel.

It will not be long before the Israeli settler movement begins building homes on the ruins of those of the Palestinians

Chris Doyle

More than any other genocide, this is recorded. Worse, the perpetrators even boast about it. The Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister, as well as other ministers, Knesset members, generals and other prominent Israeli public figures, have all made genocidal comments.

But genocidal comments about Arabs seem to be permissible. Look at the reactions to last week’s violence in Amsterdam. Leaders rightly condemned the antisemitic attacks on Israeli and Jewish fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv. But barely one called out the violent attacks by the visiting fans and their death chants about Arabs. The media focused on the former and underplayed the latter.

The anti-Arab racism is clear to see. Europe and the US did little to stop the Syrian regime’s war crimes. What has been done to end the horrors in Sudan? These leaders are now complicit in Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

A few honorable exceptions must be cited. Spain last week prevented a container ship reportedly carrying arms to Israel from docking at the port of Algeciras. Ireland’s parliament has passed a motion declaring that Israel is “perpetrating genocide in Gaza” and Dublin also joined the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

But it is the complicity of the US that the world is watching. Biden has just two months to stop this genocide, or that will be his lasting political legacy.

• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London. X: @Doylech