Which countries have taken concrete action against Israel for attacks in Gaza

Through text messages, leaflets and social media posts, the military ordered around 100,000 people to camps in the neighboring 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, the number of voices in the international community calling on Israel to end its offensive throughout the territory is growing.

Some countries have even decided to take concrete measures to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, whether by cutting diplomatic relations, suspending arms sales or resorting to international justice.

The impact of these measures could be “merely symbolic”, Yossi Mekelberg, an analyst specializing in the Middle East and North Africa at Chatham House, a consultancy and research center in London, explained to BBC News Mundo (BBC Spanish service).

“But its cumulative effect on diplomatic isolation or what it says about Israel and its conduct of 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.

However, international pressure has never been as strong as it is now, particularly given the scale of the unprecedented destruction caused by Israeli retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack.

At the time, Israel suffered its worst attack in its 75-year history, with the death of around 1,200 people by Hamas fighters, who also took 253 hostages.

The Israeli response was relentless: more than 34,000 people have died in Gaza since then, due to bombings by the Israeli Army; 85% of the population was displaced from their homes; and about half, approximately 1.1 million people, are on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations (UN).

Given this scenario, we explain below which countries decided to take concrete actions against Israel.

After the outbreak of war, and as the destruction 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 and Turkey, sent their ambassadors back home, something that Chad and several Latin American governments, such as Chile, Honduras and Colombia, also decided to do.

The latter has now decided to take a step forward and suspend diplomatic relations, thus joining Bolivia and Belize.

“Today humanity, on every street, agrees with us. The era of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our humanity, cannot return”, declared the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, in the speech in which he announced the break of diplomatic relations with Israel last week .

Six months earlier, on October 31, the Bolivian government spokesperson announced the same decision, using similar words.

Bolivia “took the decision to cut 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,” Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani said at the time.

Two weeks later, Belize announced in a statement the suspension of diplomatic relations with Israel due to the “incessant indiscriminate bombings” on Gaza, as, since October 7, Israel had “constantly” violated international law.

But, after all, what does this break mean?

In fact, it is not clear. None of these three countries has much 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.

Colombia and Israel signed a free trade agreement in 2020, and the Colombian Army uses Israeli aircraft and weapons to combat drug cartels and insurgent groups.

But for now, this agreement does not appear 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 rupture in diplomatic relations is, above all, “symbolic, and manifests a feeling of isolation and a change in attitude towards Israel”, analyzes Mekelberg.

But the Chatam House expert also remembers that this type of decision usually has an ideological and internal political component.

“It’s like what happened in Brazil; with (former president Jair) Bolsonaro, there was total support for Israel, and when the left returned (to power), the criticism returned.”

Last week, Turkey announced it would suspend all trade with Israel until the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu accepts “an uninterrupted and sufficient flow” of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

According to the Turkish Minister of Commerce, “export and import transactions related to Israel, covering all products, have been stopped.”

Trade between the two countries totaled US$7 billion last year.

Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel, in 1949. But its bilateral relations have worsened in recent decades.

The most tense episode occurred in 2010, when Turkey broke diplomatic relations with Israel after the country attacked a fleet of six Turkish ships in international waters trying to reach Gaza, breaking the maritime blockade that Israel imposes on the region.

The attack by the Israeli military resulted in the death of 10 pro-Palestinian Turkish activists.

Relations were reestablished in 2016, but both countries expelled their respective ambassadors two years later due to renewed conflict over the killing of Palestinians on the Gaza border.

The situation has worsened even further since October 7th. Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have increasingly exchanged mutual accusations.

While Erdogan compared the Israeli leader to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin — and called him the “butcher of Gaza”, Netanyahu stated that the Turkish president “supports the mass murderers and rapists of Hamas, denies the Armenian genocide [e] massacres the Kurds in their own country.”

Several countries — such as Canada, Italy, Japan, Belgium and Spain — announced in recent months that they would stop selling weapons to Israel.

However, analyzing these decisions in more detail, the reality that prevails is a little different.

In Belgium, it was the Wallonia region that 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 admitted that they continued to send orders to Israel that had previously been placed, with guarantees that they would not be used in Gaza.

Something similar happened in Spain, which also announced that it would suspend arms shipments — and, later, it was discovered that it was continuing to send ammunition. Madrid said, however, that they were intended for military exercises.

The situation in Canada is similar. The country’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, announced that possible new arms sales agreements to Israel were suspended, but not those that were already agreed.

In Japan, it was a company, Itochu Corporation, that suspended collaboration with an Israeli weapons manufacturer. And in the Netherlands, a court forced the country to stop a sale of military aircraft to Israel.

But these decisions are unlikely to have an impact on the war.

More than 95% of Israeli arms imports come from the United States and Germany, which have given no clear signal that they will suspend them.

The impact of these restrictions on weapons sales “is limited, since it is the United States and Germany that supply most of the weapons, while the others mainly send very specific components or equipment that can probably be replaced by others, so no nothing will change”, argues Yossi Mekelberg.

Faced with the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the increase in deaths in the territory, South Africa opted last December for a different strategy to try to stop Israel: it turned to international justice.

His lawyers filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, in which they accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, which the Israeli state denies.

In January, the court, which judges disputes between states, issued a provisional decision, ordering Israel to take measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, but stopped short of demanding that it halt its military offensive.

“Israel emerged relatively unscathed from this process, but the fact that the process was opened meant that Israel had lost the battle,” Michael Oren, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013, told the BBC.

Right now, however, there is strong concern among senior Israeli officials, but because of what action another international court might take.

The ICC, which has the power to charge and try 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 Hamas.

Although the ICC has not confirmed anything, when the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, visited Israel and the occupied West Bank in December last year, he made it clear that “all protagonists must comply with international humanitarian law.”

“If you don’t do this, don’t complain when my office is forced to act,” he added at the time.

Mekelberg says: “Where this will lead, I don’t know, but it should send a message to Israel that every action has consequences.”