‘Licence to Kill’ is the title of a James Bond movie – the 16th film in the James Bond series released in 1989. The movie’s main character James Bond was an MI6 secret agent authorised by the British Government to kill anyone he deemed necessary to accomplish his mission. This implies that James Bond had immunity against accountability for killings.

In the world today, it looks like Israel is the James Bond with a license to kill. According to the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have killed 42,961 Palestinians and injured about 100,000 since October 7, 2023. Among the dead are more than 14,000 children, as reported by UNICEF. So, on average, Israel has been killing 122 Palestinians including 40 children every day. During this time, Israel has also destroyed more than 70,000 homes in Gaza and demolished 1,299 structures in the West Bank.

On 23rd September 2024, Israel launched air strikes on dozens of towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The objective was to destroy Hezbollah who are supporting the Palestinian cause. On 24th September the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that 569 people were killed in two days of Israeli bombardment including 50 children and 94 women, and 1,835 were wound. It may be noted that the Israeli military has always been showing a unique aptitude for killing women and children.

The attack on Lebanon is continuing and Israel is preparing to launch a ground invasion. So, more will be killed in the days ahead. All such actions of Israel are routinely supported by the US and its Western allies in the name of Israel’s right to defend itself. To maintain the IDF’s operational capability, these countries are regularly delivering lethal military hardware to Israel. The rest of the world is mostly apathetic and remote.
There have been occasional discussions though, in the UN Security Council, on Israel’s attacks and atrocities against the Palestinians but the US veto has always been there to stop any resolution against Israel.

In December 2023 South Africa brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice for carrying out genocide in Gaza. The court ruled Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as unlawful and asked it to end it as rapidly as possible. The court also called upon Israel to evacuate all Jewish settlers from occupied Palestinian land and make reparations to the victims. However, none of these court decisions are legally binding on Israel.

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on 19th September 2024 asking Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian Territory within 12 months. Again, the resolution is not binding on Israel.
On May 20, 2024, Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for arrest warrants against some leaders of both Hamas and Israel including Benjamin Netanyahu. Interestingly, the issuance of these warrants by the ICC judges still remains pending for over four months now, whereas, the arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin requested by the same Prosecutor was issued just 25 days after the application.

So, directly by the US and its Western allies and indirectly by the rest of the world through their inactions, and due to the inadequacy of international institutions and systems, Israel is being granted a free hand in committing genocide against the Palestinians, a license to kill them indiscriminately as it deems necessary. Therefore, Israel is flagrantly defying international criticisms and protests for its killing spree or appeals for restraints.

The 1947 UN partition plan allocated 55% of Palestine to Jews which was disproportionately greater land. Since the Jewish state Israel’s 1948 independence, three Arab-Israel wars – all won by Israel – displaced millions of Palestinians who became refugees in neighbouring Arab States. Today, Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation have limited control over less than 10% of the original territory of Palestine.

Netanyahu doesn’t want a two-state solution to the Palestine problem. He doesn’t want to give away any occupied land for the Palestinian State. Prof. Dmitry Shumsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote on October 11, 2023, on Haaretz - an Israeli Newspaper, that Netanyahu wanted to perpetuate the rift between Hamas and PLO so that he could avoid negotiations for the two-state solution on the pretext that there is no single authority that represents all the Palestinians.

According to US estimates (mid-2022), the total number of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank is around 5 million – 2 million in Gaza and 3 million in the West Bank. Netanyahu wants to drive out these people through systematic killing, torture, eviction from their homes, destruction of their homes and businesses, and economic strangulation. But the problem is, these people have nowhere to go. So, they die and the world looks on.
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The writer is a former Corporate Professional and Academic