HRW: Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza

 

I wrote this blog post on 30 October 2023:

https://melissa.substack.com/p/gaza-the-crimes-were-talking-about

HRW finally has this report out today:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/14/israels-crimes-against-humanity-gaza

Haaretz is writing about ethnic cleansing and genocide this week:

https://x.com/melissachemam/status/1856816810470903943

& https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-11-12/ty-article-opinion/.premium/maybe-israel-is-committing-genocide-after-all/00000193-1c92-de99-a9bb-ddb357c70000

Same with the Guardian, this month... 

My thread: 

https://x.com/melissachemam/status/1856816810470903943

Why does it take so long to admit reality? and to intervene...?

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Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza

 

Mass Forced Displacement and Widespread Destruction
 

• Israeli authorities have caused massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times. Rather than ensuring civilians’ security, military “evacuation orders” have caused grave harm.
• Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, and halt weapons sales to Israel. The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity.

 

(Jerusalem, November 14, 2024) – Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report is being published at the time of an ongoing Israeli military campaign in northern Gaza that has most likely created a new wave of forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

“The Israeli government cannot claim to be keeping Palestinians safe when it kills them along escape routes, bombs so-called safe zones, and cuts off food, water, and sanitation,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has blatantly violated its obligation to ensure Palestinians can return home, razing virtually everything in large areas.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 39 displaced Palestinians in Gaza, analyzed Israel’s evacuation system, including 184 evacuation orders and satellite imagery confirming the widespread destruction, and verified videos and photographs of attacks on designated safe zones and evacuation routes.

The laws of armed conflict applicable in occupied territory permit displacement of civilians only exceptionally, for imperative military reasons or for the population’s security, and require safeguards and proper accommodation to receive displaced civilians. Israeli officials claim that, because Palestinian armed groups are fighting from among the civilian population, the military has lawfully evacuated civilians to attack the groups while limiting civilian harm. Human Rights Watch research shows this claim to be largely false.

There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, Human Rights Watch found. Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and often served only to spread fear and anxiety. Rather than ensure security for displaced civilians, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones.

Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time to allow evacuations, or at all. The orders did not consider the needs of people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave without assistance.

As the occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure adequate facilities to accommodate displaced civilians, but the authorities have blocked all but a small fraction of the necessary humanitarian aid, water, electricity, and fuel from reaching civilians in need in Gaza. Israeli attacks have damaged and destroyed resources that people need to stay alive, including hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries, and agricultural land.

Israel is also obliged to ensure the return of displaced people to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area have ceased. Instead, it has left swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s military has intentionally demolished or severely damaged civilian infrastructure, including controlled demolitions of homes, with the apparent aim of creating an extended “buffer zone” along Gaza’s perimeter with Israel and a corridor which will bifurcate Gaza. The destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.

Israel should respect the right of Palestinian civilians to return to the areas in Gaza from which it has displaced them. For almost eight decades, Israeli authorities have denied the right to return of the 80 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees and their descendants who were expelled or fled in 1948 from what is now Israel, in what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or the catastrophe. This ongoing violation looms over the experience of Palestinians in Gaza, with many of those interviewed speaking of living through a second Nakba.

From the first days of the hostilities, senior officials in the Israeli government and the war cabinet have declared their intent to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza, with government ministers stating that its territory will decrease, that blowing up and flattening Gaza is “beautiful,” and that land will be handed to settlers. In November 2023, Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity.

The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing.

Victims of serious abuses in Israel and Palestine have faced a wall of impunity for decades. Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an unlawful blockade for 17 years, which constitutes part of the continuous crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities have been committing against Palestinians.

Governments should publicly condemn Israel’s forced displacement of the civilian population in Gaza as a war crime and crime against humanity, and pressure it to immediately halt those crimes and comply with the International Court of Justice’s multiple binding orders and with the obligations laid out in its July advisory opinion.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity. Governments should also publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court’s work, officials, and those cooperating with the institution.

Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, including reviewing their bilateral agreements with Israel, to press the Israeli government to comply with its international obligations to protect civilians.

The United States, Germany, and other countries should immediately suspend weapons transfers and military assistance to Israel. Continuing to provide arms to Israel risks complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave human rights violations.

“No one can be in denial about the atrocity crimes the Israeli military is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” Hardman said. “Transfer of additional weapons and assistance to Israel by the United States, Germany, and others is a blank check for further atrocities and increasingly puts them at risk of complicity.”

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Fore more: 

‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,
https://www.hrw.org/preview-link/node/389665/c13b0ba9-251c-41ae-9937-561662b0c21a

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Israel/Palestine, please visit:
https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/north-africa/israel/palestine

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on refugee and migrant rights, please visit:
https://www.hrw.org/topic/refugees-and-migrants

 

MUST READ: 'America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power' - by Carole Cadwalladr

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/a-new-era-dawns-americas-tech-bros-now-strut-their-stuff-in-the-corridors-of-power

A new era dawns. America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power 

 -  Carole Cadwalladr

In hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse.

It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it – stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence – was now a rip in the fabric of reality. And the turbulence that Trump is about to unleash – alongside pain and cruelty and hardship – is possible because that’s where we already live: in information chaos.

It’s exactly eight years since we realised there were invisible undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of our world. Or perhaps I should talk for myself here. It was when I realised. A week before the 2016 US presidential election, I spotted a weird constellation of events and googled “tech disruption” + “democracy”, found not a single hit and pitched a piece to my editor.

It was published on 6 November 2016. In it, I quoted the “technology mudslide hypothesis” a concept invented by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, who coined the term “disruption” – a process endlessly fetishised in tech circles, in which a scrappy upstart such as Microsoft could overthrow a colossus like IBM.

Whoever wins, I wrote, this election represented “the Great Disruption. With Trump the Great Disruptor.” And, for good measure, I chucked in some questions: “Will democracy survive? Will Nato? Is a free and fair election possible in a post-truth world?”

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally earlier this year. Photograph: Chris Carlson/AP

That article was the beginning of my own Alice in Wonderland tumble down the rabbit hole. and I reread it with the sinking knowledge that this next presidential term may yet provide those answers. If it seems like I’m crowing, I wish. This isn’t a valedictory “I told you so”: it’s an eight-year anniversary reminder for us to wake up. And a serving of notice: the first stage of this process is now complete. And we have to understand what that means.

We’ve spent those eight years learning a new lexicon: “misinformation”, “disinformation”, “microtargeting”. We’ve learned about information warfare. As journalists, we, like FBI investigators, used evidence to show how social media was a vulnerable “threat surface” that bad actors such as Cambridge Analytica and the Kremlin could exploit. PhDs have been written on the weaponisation of social media. But none of this helps us now.

There’s already a judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponisation of the federal government” in Congress to investigate the “censorship industrial complex” – the idea that big tech is “censoring” Republican voices. For the past 18 months, it’s been subpoena-ing academics. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted that the next stage would be “prosecutions”. A friend of mine, an Ivy League professor on the list, texts to say the day will shortly come “where I will have to decide whether to stay or go”.

A post on Elon Musk’s X account. Photograph: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Trump’s list of enemies is not theoretical. It already exists. My friend is on it. In 2022, Trump announced a “day one” executive order instructing “the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime … and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified”. And my friends in other countries know exactly where this leads.

Another message arrives from Maria Ressa, the Nobel prize-winning Filipino journalist. In the Philippines, the government is modelled on the US one and she writes about what happened when President Duterte controlled all three branches of it. “It took six months after he took office for our institutions to crumble.” And then she was arrested.

What we did during the first wave of disruption, 2016-24, won’t work now. Can you “weaponise” social media when social media is the weapon? Remember the philosopher Marshall McLuhan – “the medium is the message”? Well the medium now is Musk. The world’s richest man bought a global communication platform and is now the shadow head of state of what was the world’s greatest superpower. That’s the message. Have you got it yet?

Trump is cholera. His hate, his lies, it’s an infection that’s in the drinking water now

Does the technology mudslide hypothesis now make sense? Of how a small innovation can eventually disrupt a legacy brand? That brand is truth. It’s evidence. It’s journalism. It’s science. It’s the Enlightenment. A niche concept you’ll find behind a paywall at the New York Times.

You have a subscription? Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news. Then come with me into the information sewers, where we will wade through the shit everyone else consumes. Trump is cholera. His hate, his lies – it’s an infection that’s in the drinking water now. Our information system is London’s stinking streets before the Victorian miracle of sanitation. We fixed that through engineering. But we haven’t fixed this. We had eight years to hold Silicon Valley to account. And we failed. Utterly.

Because this, now, isn’t politics in any sense we understand it. The young men who came out for Trump were voting for protein powder and deadlifting as much as they were for a 78-year-old convicted felon. They were voting for bitcoin and weighted squats. For YouTube shorts and Twitch streams. For podcast bros and crypto bros and tech bros and the bro of bros: Elon Musk.

Social media is mainstream media now. It’s where the majority of the world gets its news. Though who even cares about news? It’s where the world gets its memes and jokes and consumes its endlessly mutating trends. Forget “internet culture”. The internet is culture. And this is where this election was fought and won … long before a single person cast a ballot.

Steve Bannon was right. Politics is downstream from culture. Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, quoted his old boss to me in my first phone call with him. Elections are downstream from white men talking on platforms that white men built, juiced by invisible algorithms our broligarch overlords control. This is culture now.

The Observer’s reporting on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica belongs to the old world order. An order that ended on 6 November 2024. That was the first wave of algorithmic disruption which gave us Brexit and Trump’s first term, when our rule-based norms creaked but still applied.

Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. Photograph: Getty Images

The challenge now is to understand that this world has gone. Mark Zuckerberg has ditched his suit, grown out his Caesar haircut and bought a rapper-style gold chain. He’s said one of his biggest regrets is apologising too much. Because he – like others in Silicon Valley – has read the runes. PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, creeping around in the shadows, ensured his man, JD Vance, got on the presidential ticket. Musk wagered a Silicon Valley-style bet by going all in on Trump. Jeff Bezos, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon with just days to go, ensuringhis Washington Post didn’t endorse any candidate.

These bros know. They don’t fear journalists any more. Journalists will now learn to fear them. Because this is oligarchy now. This is the fusion of state and commercial power in a ruling elite. It’s not a coincidence that Musk spouts the Kremlin’s talking points and chats to Putin on the phone. The chaos of Russia in the 90s is the template; billions will be made, people will die, crimes will be committed.

Our challenge is to realise that the first cycle of disruption is complete. We’re through the looking glass. We’re all wading through the information sewers. Trump is a bacillus but the problem is the pipes. We can and must fix this.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

 

Latest post on my newsletter: 

Last call for the planet

As COP29 opens in oil-rich and dictatorial Azerbaijan, western media are focused on one major obstacle to these talks: Donald Trump. In real life, however, activists are still at work. Insight.

Melissa Chemam

Nov 10, 2024

Last call for the planet

Close to 70% of casualties in Israel’s assault on #Gaza are women and children, the UN Human Rights Office says

 The UN is calling it “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law”.

 

There must be “due reckoning” for horrific violations, possible atrocity crimes in Gaza – UN Human Rights Chief

08 November 2024

GENEVA - The UN Human Rights Office today published a report detailing the horrific reality that has unfolded for the people of Israel and Gaza since 7 October 2023, and said justice must be served with respect to the grave violations of international law that have been committed.

The detailed analysis of violations covers the six-month period from November 2023 to April 2024, and broadly examines the killing of civilians and breaches of international law that in many instances could amount to war crimes. If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, further to a State or organizational policy, these violations may constitute crimes against humanity, it adds. And if committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, they may also constitute genocide, the report warns.

“The International Court of Justice, in its series of orders on provisional measures, underscored the international obligations of Israel to prevent, protect against and punish acts of genocide and associated prohibited conduct,” it says.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk stressed the imperative for Israel fully and immediately to comply with those obligations. This is even more critical and urgent, given the totality of conduct set out in the report and taking into account most recent events, including Israel’s operations in North Gaza and its adoption of legislation affecting UNRWA’s activities, he said.

“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies and that, in the meantime, all relevant information and evidence are collected and preserved,” he said.

Türk recalled States’ obligations to act to prevent atrocity crimes, and urged them to support the work of accountability mechanisms, including the International Criminal Court, in relation to the current conflict; exercise universal jurisdiction to investigate and try crimes under international law in national courts, consistent with international standards; and comply with extradition requests pertaining to suspects of such crimes to countries where they would receive a fair trial.

The report points to repeated statements from Israeli officials positing the end of the conflict as contingent upon Gaza’s entire destruction and the exodus of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, it documents efforts to rationalize discrimination, hostility and violence towards, and even the elimination of, Palestinians.

The report shows how civilians have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial “complete siege” of Gaza by Israeli Forces, as well as the Israel Government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement. This conduct by Israeli Forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease, the reports says. Palestinian armed groups have also conducted hostilities in ways that have likely contributed to harm to civilians.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups also committed serious violations of international law on a wide scale, the report states, including attacks directed against Israeli and foreign civilians, killing and mistreatment of civilians, sexual violence, destruction of civilian objects, and taking of hostages. These acts could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, it says. Following 7 October, Hamas and other armed groups also celebrated the attacks of that day, which was deeply troubling and totally unacceptable.

“The rules of war, in force now for 160 years, were designed to limit and prevent human suffering in times of armed conflict,” said Türk. “Their wanton disregard has led to the current extremes of human suffering which we continue to see today. It seems inconceivable that the parties to the conflict refuse to apply universally accepted and binding norms developed to preserve the very bare minimum of humanity.”

The UN Human Rights Office has been verifying the personal details of those killed in Gaza by strikes, shelling and other conduct of hostilities. Of those fatalities, it has so far found close to 70 per cent to be children and women, indicating a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.

The continuation of these attacks, killing evenly across the population, “demonstrates an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare selected”, the report states.

The most represented of verified fatalities are children. The three categories of age most represented were children aged from 5 to 9 years old, children from 10 to 14 years old, and babies and children from 0 to 4 years old.

Of the verified fatalities, about 80 per cent were killed in residential buildings or similar housing, out of which 44 per cent were children and 26 per cent were women.

Monitoring by the UN Human Rights Office indicates that the high number of fatalities per attack was principally due to the Israeli Defense Forces’ use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas, although some of the fatalities may have been the result of errant projectiles from Palestinian armed groups dropping short.

The High Commissioner calls on Member States, consistent with their obligations under international law, to assess arms sales or transfers and provision of military, logistical or financial support to a party to the conflict, with a view to ending such support if this risks serious violations of international law.

The report also raises concerns with respect to forcible transfer, attacks on hospitals, in apparent systematic fashion, and journalists. It also points to the reported use of white phosphorus munitions.

“Our monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing, and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law – namely the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack,” Türk said. “Tragically, these documented patterns of violations continue unabated, over one year after the start of the war.”

“The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis,” said the High Commissioner. “The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”

Gaza: 'From Ground Zero' - Rashid Masharawi

 

So honoured to have met and interviewed Gaza-born Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi - founder of the Masharawi Fund for films and filmmakers in Gaza, and producer of the series of films 'From Ground Zero'.

Born out of a project to support displaced artists and filmmakers who have survived Israel’s nearly year-long assault, the series of 22 short films will represent Palestine at the Oscars in 2025!  

More soon. 

#FromGroundZero

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FROM GROUND ZERO Trailer | TIFF 2024

'La Pompe Afrique'

 

Adieu Paul Stephenson

 

Paul Stephenson, the Caribbean British pioneering civil rights leader who led the Bristol Bus Boycott in 1963, has died at the age of 87...

Paul Stephenson | A Journey to Justice

Latest interview on Gaza: with the UN's rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese

 

International report - podcast

UN rapporteur says Israel's war in Gaza is 'emptying the land completely'

Issued on: 01/11/2024

A year of war in Gaza has undermined international law and threatens to make the strip uninhabitable, according to the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. She tells RFI why she is making the case for Israel's offensive to be classified a genocide.

By: Melissa Chemam

More than 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing extremely critical levels of hunger, according to the UN. Seventy percent of crop fields and livelihoods have been destroyed during the Israeli military offensive. 

The war, which has claimed 42,000 lives in Gaza and left hundreds of thousands wounded, has also spread to the West Bank and Lebanon. Civilians as well as UN peacekeepers have been targeted by Israel's forces.

"I used the word 'catastrophe' for the first time back in October 2023," Albanese told RFI, "when Israel had killed 8,000, 6,000 people in the first weeks of the conflict and destroyed entire neighbourhoods, bakeries, churches, and targeted UN buildings and universities. "This is not the way wars are conducted."

For more and to listen:  https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/international-report/20241101-un-rapporteur-says-israel-s-war-in-gaza-is-emptying-the-land-completely 

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Albanese was speaking as she prepared to launch her latest report on the situation in Gaza and the other Palestinian territories, which she presented to the UN General Assembly earlier this week.

In it, she takes a long view of the current conflict, arguing that Israel's military actions form part of a systematic attempt to displace Palestinians that goes back decades – and which she calls a genocide. 

"Israel occupies that land, according to the International Court of Justice, unlawfully," Albanese said.

"So Israel unlawfully occupies a territory, oppressing its people, who of course retaliate. Then they wage a war against them. It doesn't work that way."

Washington and others argue that Israel has the right to defend itself – though Albanese questions whether its military operations are truly making it safer. 

"Is it protection?" she asked. "How is what Israel is doing going to make its citizens protected? This is the question. And the blindness at the political level is mind-blowing." 

By: Melissa Chemam

Algeria 1954-2024

'TOUSSAINT ROUGE' 

Seventy years after the start of the Algerian war on 1 Nov. 1954, relations with France are still strained

On the night of 31 October to 1 November 1954, a series of attacks occurred in different regions of colonial Algeria. Claimed by an organisation then unknown to the French intelligence services, calling itself FLN (for National Liberation Front), these attacks marked the beginning of the independence uprising, known 70 years later as the Algerian War.

Between midnight and 3am, different regions of the French colony Algeria were shaken by no fewer than 70 attacks, some of which deadly: 10 settlers lost their lives.

French authorities were taken by surprise... The colonial camp first maintained it was a "tribal uprising", probably "fomented in Cairo" by Pan-Arabists.

The attacks appeared coordinated, and the next day a high-level political manifesto appeared, the "Proclamation" of 1 November, with a call to local Muslim Algerians to enlist in the armed resistance.

The events revealed that groups among the Indigenous inhabitants of the territory were launching a popular and organised insurrection.

The responsibility for these attacks was soon claimed by the National Liberation Front (FLN), a new movement, but this was not taken seriously either by the political class or by the media right away.

Roots of anger

These bloody events were called in France the "Toussaint Rouge" (Red All Saints' Day).

They marked the beginning of the Algerian War, an expression that was not used in France until much later in the decolonial war, and only officially recognised in 1999.

There had been precedents to the attacks.

'Algerians' was by then a term reserved to the French and European settlers, now known as 'pieds noirs' (black feet).

But the natives had been expecting their demands for equality to be heard since at least the 1920s, after their involvement in the First World War.

According to the historian Charles-Robert Ageron, a specialist of colonial Algeria, this process even began at the beginning of the 20th century and was forged "in the dual movement of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary populism".

Actually, most historians have shown that, from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830, officers faced increased resistance from the Algerian population, later led by the famous Emir Abdelkader.

For another French historian, Bernard Droz, since the 1930s, the rise of the Muslim population, "the unspeakable misery of the rural masses", low wages and "family burden to underemployment or exodus", and the voice of a European counting ten times that of a Muslim, within the framework of the new status of Algeria voted in September 1947, elements for complaint were mounting.

In the space of five decades, Algerian demands evolved from assimilation to emancipation, including "political autonomy as a sovereign nation with the right of oversight of France", as demanded in his 1943 manifesto by Ferhat Abbas, a representative of moderate nationalism.

But in 1937, the Blum-Violette bill supposed to grant French citizenship to the Muslim elite, was rejected by the French in Algeria. 

The successive French governments didn't succeed either in giving Algerians a greater voice in local and metropolitan political bodies,

Assimilationist hopes finally died with the Second World War.

According to Ageron, "the defeat of France and the republican ideal in which many Algerians had long placed their hope" and "the impotence of the Vichy state in the face of Nazi Germany" strengthened the Algerians in "stronger nationalist demands."

At the end of the war, Muslim fighters expected rewards and treatment showing their equal courage to the French troops.

But they didn't get heard.

On 8 May 1945, the day of the celebration of the Allied victory, a peaceful demonstration in Setif degenerated into riots, when the French police intervened.

In the following days, protests spread to the countryside, leading to attacks on farms and a hundred deaths among Europeans.

The repression by the police, joined by newly formed European militias, was violent and merciless, often striking innocent villagers.

Protesters were arrested, tortured and some executed. The toll was very heavy: some historians speak of 45,000 dead.

Historians have often described these riots of May 1945 as a "failed insurrection".

The 1946 elections were plagued by massive electoral fraud, which finally convinced young Muslim activists, eager to deal with French imperialism as soon as possible, of the dead end of the electoral path.

Messali Hadj emerged as a strong political figure, with his organisation named the Algerian People's Party (PPA).

It became the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD) in 1946, and he, the first nationalist leader to unite the common Muslim people and members of the middle class around the ideals of democracy and egalitarianism.

The PPA's motto became: "Neither assimilation nor separation, but emancipation".

National liberation day

If 1 November 1954 remains in the memory of the French under the name of "Red All Saints' Day", for indigenous Algerians it is the day of the outbreak of the war of national liberation.

With its text, the liberation movement demands "the restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic and social, within the framework of the principles of Islam". 

But for French authorities, unlike the rest of the empire, already largely dismantled in Africa and Asia by 1954, “Algeria is France!”, in the words of the then Interior minister, François Mitterrand, who chose repression.

Among the victims of 1 November 1954 were two French Algerians, four soldiers, a police officer, a forest ranger, a pro-colonisation Algerian, and a young teacher, killed by mistake.

As France chose to repress, the war unfolded with its share of massacres and crimes committed by the French army, supported by 'Harkis', Muslim who chose to cooperate with the colonisers.  

The worst torture methods were applied under cover of French political authorities. 

The war would end up lasting for eight years until 1962, causing more than a million deaths, colonisers and colonised included.

With the signing of the Evian Accords on 18 March 1962, a ceasefire was finally imposed between the belligerents, and Algeria regained its independence, putting an end to 132 years of French colonisation.

Seventy years after the Toussaint Rouge, the wounds of the conflict have not healed however, and still cast a shadow over the relationship between Algiers and Paris.

The trauma of the war has continuously strained ties between the two countries, whether because of disputes around archives, immigration policies, or political disagreements. 

In July, Algeria even recalled its ambassador from Paris, when French president Emmanuel Macron openly supported Algiers' rival in the region, Morocco, in a dispute over the territory of Western Sahara.

To this day however, the legacy of the war and the battles around archives cause friction between French and Algerian authorities, while historians are still trying to mend the wounds by uncovering all its complexities.

 

France - Morocco - Algeria

 

While France's Macron visits Morocco, Algeria is looking to other partners

French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to Morocco is being closely followed in Algeria, where his position on Western Sahara is widely criticised.

With Macron's recent choice in favour of Morocco as its main partner in the Maghreb, the French president's visit to Rabat is being followed with a certain amount of suspicion in Algeria.

Algiers has cut its diplomatic relations with its western neighbour in 2021.

And in July this year, the authorities recalled their ambassador in Paris, after Macron publicly supported Morocco's sovereignty on Western Sahara.

This week, he reiterated his support directly to the King, on Moroccan soil. 

Algerian journalist Adlene Meddi said that Macron's attempt at a balanced Maghreb policy did not last long in the face of pressure from pro-Moroccan interest centres in France...

"France is sacrificing its relations with Algeria in a rather brutal and spectacular manner," he said, "and we are going to enter a new phase of crisis that will last much longer than other crises."

This opinion seems to be shared by the general public. 

Khalil Abdelmalek, a student of political sociology, believes that Paris is violating international law, as most Sarahwis and the UN recommend and expect a referendum on self-determination for the region.

"The French President deliberately ignores the aspirations of the Sahrawi people", the student said.

French support for Morocco reinforces the image of France as a state ready to sacrifice the principles of justice for its strategic interests, he and many other Algerians think.

This visit also comes at a time when Morocco is experiencing growing popular anger due to the high cost of living, unemployment, and a growing support from the royal family to Israel, while a large part of the population is pro-Palestinian.

New partnerships

The rift between Algeria and France is growing with Macron's obvious support to Rabat, but it has also endured for decades, more or less bitterly.

To mark a definite rupture, Algeria is now building new alliances, in the Maghreb with Libya and Tunisia, in an attempt to isolate Morocco in the region, and further in the Arab world.

Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune travelled to Egypt this week for his first foreign trip after his re-election last September.

After a two-day working stay in Cairo, he travelled to the Sultanate of Oman, for a three-day state visit. 

In these countries, the Algerian head of state seeks to consolidate bilateral relations and push them to a strategic level, which should allow Algeria to diversify its partners.

At a joint press conference on Monday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi assured his Algerian counterpart that Egyptian companies are ready to work on infrastructure projects in Algeria and build new cities, like those built around Cairo.

Investments will also take place in the energy sector. 

Contrary to France, Algeria is preparing to adopt the largest budget in its history for 2025, thanks to its increased oil revenues. 

The country also aims to increase its exports to over 25 billion euros, seeking to strengthen its economy by diversifying its industrial sectors.

With such means, Libya, Sudan and Palestine are also on the list of Algiers' privileged diplomatic partners, countries that are not close to Paris or Rabat.

However, experts of the region estimate that Paris has no interest in neglecting Algeria, as it remains an essential partner in terms of human resources, migration, and in France's position in the Sahel.

The French daily newspaper Le Monde even dedicated an opinion piece about the President's errors.

The Algerians also form the largest diaspora living in France, with over 1,600,000 people, ahead of Moroccans (1,060,000) and Portuguese (640,000).