Warning win

Japanese grassroots Nihon Hidankyo movement founded by survivors of the US atomic bomb attacks has won the Nobel Peace Prize. This has been touted as a warning not to use these weapons to the nine global nuclear weapons powers: the US, UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. So far, only the United States, controversially, at the end of the Asian campaign in World War II when Japan was about to capitulate and did not need the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Tokyo to surrender.
Scholars have debated this use of the ultimate weapon which some considered a war crime.

This award could also be regarded as an appeal to countries without nuclear weapons not to build them. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that the organisation was receiving the Peace Prize for “its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” The survivors “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to... grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.” There are just about 100,000 survivors alive today.

On Aug.6 and 9, 1945, the US detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between 150,000 and 246,000 people, mainly civilians. Japan surrendered on Sept.2. The bombs caused thousands of Japanese to suffer from burns and develop radiation sickness.

This was not the first such organisation to win the Peace Prize. The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons won for its failed efforts to secure a mandatory ban on these weapons. Of the 193 UN members, only 60 have ratified a 2021 treaty prohibiting the possession and use of nuclear weapons.

A Japanese recipient of the 2024 Prize said, “I thought those fighting for peace in Gaza would deserve it.” He added that images of Palestinians covered in blood in Gaza remained him of Japan nearly 80 years ago.

When making this choice the Nobel Committee evaded controversy and condemnation from Israel. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres were on the “unofficial shortlist” and among the favourites to win this year.

UNRWA has been on Israel’s hit list for decades. Over the past year Israel has stepped up its campaign against the agency arguing that some of its staff took part in the attack by Hamas which killed 1,139 and abducted 251 from southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023. The Israeli Knesset is considering legislation banning UNRWA from working in the Palestinian occupied territories and seeks to demolish UNRWA’S headquarters in Jerusalem and confiscate the land for an illegal Israeli colony.

The agency, established in 1949, provides shelter, food, education, and health care to 5.7 million Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. As no combination of other UN agencies can provide these existential services, UNRWA is indispensable. Israel wants its abolished because UNRWA has become a quasi-state for the survivors and descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes, villages, and land by Israel’s war of establishment in 1948 as well as 250,000 made homeless by Israel in 1967. Israel wants to see Palestinians absorbed by Arab host countries and the Palestinian national identity disappear. This will not happen.

The ICJ has challenged Israel’s colonisation policies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2004 and this year. The earlier ruling declared Israel’s West Bank wall and colonisation policy illegal and called for the dismantling of the wall and demanded reparations for persons damaged by its construction. This year the ICJ ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory as unlawful under international law and that Israel’s colonisation amounted to annexation. The Court decided Israel’s legislation and measures against Palestinians violate the international ban on racial segregation and apartheid. The ICJ ordered Israel to end the occupation, dismantle its colonies, compensate Palestinians, and facilitate the return of displaced Palestinians. The Court dismissed the internationally held notion that Palestinian self-determination must be secured by negotiations with Israel as this formula has not worked for three decades while Israel has subjected Palestinians to violence, dispossession, and abuse.

Early this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz banned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres from entering Israel. He accused Guterres of giving “backing to terrorists” from Hamas, Hizbollah, the Houthis and Iran, which Israel blames for regional destabilisation. Guterres’ spokesman called this a “political statement” and “just one more attack...on UN staff.” Israeli attacks have killed 226 UNRWA staff members since October 7th, 2023, and last week UN peacekeepers on the Lebanon-Israel border came under Israeli fire which wounded four and Israeli tanks crashed into a UN post and released smoke grenades harming troops.

This region has seen some unfortunate Peace Prize judgements by the Nobel Committee. In 1978, it was awarded to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin for the agreements leading to the first Arab peace treaty with Israel. Before Israel’s establishment, Begin was a terrorist who headed the Irgun Zwei Leumi terrorist organisation which blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 Britons, and massacred 200 Palestinian men, women and children at the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. Four years after receiving the Peace Prize, Begin ordered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to drive the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from its base there. Hizbollah was founded during Israel’s occupation.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres won the Peace Prize in 1993 for the Oslo Accord which as seen as a means to launch negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis which could lead to a Palestinian state. Oslo failed because the accord did not end Israeli rule over Palestinians and halt Israel colonisation of land they require for their state. While Arafat had previously been labelled a “terrorist” for fighting Israeli occupation, Rabin – as minister of defence – urged Israeli troops to break and arms and legs of Palestinian protesters during the First Intifada (1987-1993). An officer in Israel’s underground army in 1948, Rabin ordered the expulsion of 70,000 Palestinians from the central cities of Lydda and Ramle. Survivors who straggled during the long hot walk to Ramallah were either killed by Israeli forces or died of stress and dehydration.

Photo: AFP