By Earl Bousquet

THE Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has (thus far) issued two statements on the Israeli War on Gaza, both calling for a ‘two-state’ solution and for both sides to observe and obey international laws and conventions, including rules of war in situations of armed conflict.
The CARICOM statements can be said to sound broad on bark and soft on bite, adopting the traditional non-committal positions of regional organisations on global issues that affect them for fear of offending bigger partners or being accused of violating the invisible homogeneity of separate nations with individual rights to adopt different positions.
It takes inescapably horrendous situations, like what’s currently happening in Gaza, to move world leaders, regional groupings and nations to get off the usual fence and call a spade a spade, even to abandon pretenses to neutrality and tell friends they’re wrong when they are.
The United Nations (UN), European Union (EU) and G-7 groupings twist-and-turn to waltz and walk-away from calling for a ceasefire, but the pressure is mounting from the bottom, as millions of Palestinians and supporters worldwide continue pounding pavements in Western capitals, as government leaders and ruling parties face rebellions in parliament and foreign ministries.

More governments in Latin America and the Caribbean are revisiting and reviewing, breaking or freezing ties with Israel, including Bolivia –which joined others to call on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ‘War Crime’ – and CARICOM member-state Belize, which was the first to freeze ties with Tel Aviv.

Other CARICOM nations have been criticised for not yet having taken similar actions to ice Israel ties, but the same criticism even heavier applied to Arab and Middle East states, accused of being over-cautious in their responses and delaying agreements on action while Israel continues to wipe Gaza off the map.
China, which chairs the UN Security Council (UNSC) at present, invited Arab and Middle East state to Beijing this week and they together called on the world’s major powers to do more to ease the human suffering in Gaza.

Geopolitical analysts explain the apparent hesitance of the Arab world on understandable fear that Israel may target them, like it’s already done Lebanon and Syria, while now threatening to widen the conflict into the Red Sea against Houthi rebels in Yemen supporting the Palestinian cause.
But even so, traditional US allies like Egypt and Jordan have shifted to the side of critics of Washington, while Qatar and Turkey continue engaging with and between Israel and Hamas, the USA and Russia, regarding captive releases or prisoner swaps.

In the Caribbean, political leaders have been comparatively quiet in their open condemnations of Israel, except in societies with a Muslim presence (Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Surinam, Trinidad & Tobago, etc.) where Islamic voices have sounded loud protests.
But once again, Belize has distanced itself from the rest of the Caribbean pack, with a group of the Central American CARICOM member-state’s former leaders and foreign affairs ministers issuing a strong statement last week, supporting the government against criticism for its Israel stance.
In a November 16 statement, former Prime Ministers Said Musa and Dean Barrow and former Foreign Ministers Assad Shoman and Godfrey Smith, voiced their “complete and unwavering support for the decision of the government of Belize to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.”
Indeed, they said they regard it as “the very least” Belize could do “to comply with our obligations under the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on international humanitarian law.”

“Under those conventions,” the former leaders and foreign ministers said, nations are “obligated to do all in our power to denounce and seek to stop a violation of the conventions, especially one so egregious as genocide.”
They said the Belize government “cannot be accused of taking sides” because, in their considered view, “there are no two sides to a genocide.”
The signatories said, “The Israeli state is relentlessly bombing, laying complete siege to and invading places hitherto considered sacred, such as hospitals, with full knowledge that its actions will cause the death of thousands of innocents, including babies.”
“For more than a month,” they added, “it has sought to punish over two million people by bombing them in their homes and depriving them of essential needs like water, food, fuel, electricity and medical supplies.”

Since October 7, the ex-leaders and foreign ministers said, “Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza and “has killed more than 12,000 people, more-than-half being women, children and the elderly.”
“Unless this unrelenting siege and slaughter is stopped now,” they added, “thousands more will die as we watch in horror, night after night.”
They also said that “To remain silent in the face of a massacre is a violation of our humanity.”
According to the signatories, “This is not a religious conflict of any sort,” but instead a case of settler colonialism… of illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, taking territory by force and the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians without charge… a case of submitting them to torture and denying them every last vestige of their human rights.”

“That is why,” they said, “‘Not in our name’ has been the cry of thousands of Jews in multiple demonstrations in several countries…”
The ex-Belize leaders and ministers called for “a distinction between the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and “why Jews, as a people, bear no blame for the atrocities being committed by the Israeli state.”

“That is why,” they continued, “as a nation that depends for its very existence on the principles and laws being violated by Israel today, Belize too must say ‘Not in our name’…
And they concluded, “We therefore reiterate our commendation of the government of Belize for taking a courageous and principled stand against the war crimes, the genocide being committed by the state of Israel.”