I wrote this as Israel went to the polls. It could be weeks before any result because Israeli elections are extremely complicated and depend on coalitions. The one certainty is that little will change for the Palestinians. No candidates are interested in Palestinian self-determination, and all support the illegal settlements.

The West Bank was locked down to ensure free movement and security for Israelis to vote. That prevents the Palestinians from moving from their Israeli designated areas for school, work, medical aid, anything. Israel locks the West Bank down for various reasons at will.

The West Bank including East Jerusalem is occupied territory, illegal under international law. Various statements from Israeli politicians call for the Gazification of Palestinian areas of the West Bank (total destruction) and the Judaization of all the land including Israel itself where twenty percent of the population are Palestinian ‘citizens’ of Israel. Those ‘citizens’ already live under Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Law, which only gives the right of self-determination to Jews. Hardly democratic.

Even the BBC, which has been credibly accused of pro-Israeli bias, documents the illegal Israel settler terrorism, supported by the Israeli army (IDF), who also kill, maim, imprison, and demolish. Ethnic cleansing is an Israeli policy, not just that of rogue settlers.

There is something particularly visceral about the destruction of ancient olive groves and vineyards. The damage caused to land that Israelis claim to love, designed to make it so inhospitable to Palestinians that they leave can also be described as ecocide, destroying native flora and fauna.

I wrote a review of the film NAZA, whose title is Israeli shorthand for “collateral damage” (the number of non-combatants that can legitimately be killed for any suspect). So, one Naza can mean a baby and two hundred Naza can mean the population of a neighbourhood or tower block. It is now showing on general release and will be available for streaming by the Guardian in late November.

The film is about the dehumanization of a population. If people are not human and all propaganda just portrays them as a threat to Israel’s existence, then the idea that they can be exterminated is ‘understandable.’ Some may object to terms like ‘extermination’ and ‘genocide’ as reminiscent of the Nazis, yet my mother equated the treatment of Palestinians to her treatment at their hands well before she died in 2008. Long before October 7^th.

NAZA is also shocking for its juxtaposition of Tel Aviv opulence with the destruction in Gaza and the cold, calculating methods for killing Palestinians, and the purposeful erasure of Palestinian history and culture through the destruction of whole neighbourhoods and even seed banks, archives, libraries, municipal records, and cultural heritage sites.

Did you know that Israel does not allow basic commodities like toilet seats, tents, water purifiers, food items, cancer treatment, educational supplies, basic hygiene supplies, and much more into Gaza because they could all be considered ‘dual use’? Does that also make air and water ‘dual use’? Where does that end?

As Einat Temkin, an Israeli Jew who served in the IDF, pointed out in a recent Facebook post, ‘at least 31 human beings were killed by the IDF in Gaza in the past week, mostly civilians, including 7 children, without any consequences or accountability. By comparison, following the killing of two IDF soldiers by Palestinian resistance fighters near Hebron on Friday, the entire city is now under attack, with houses demolished, IDF forces invading and thousands of human beings forcibly displaced from their homes and dispossessed. The two Palestinian shooters responsible for killing the IDF soldiers – by international law considered legitimate military targets – were immediately eliminated.’

Responding to the escalation, leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called for “urgent action” from international actors “to prevent the forcible displacement of Palestinian civilians, collective punishment and extensive unlawful destruction in Hebron.”

Hand wringing, words of condemnation and threats are not enough. The world needs to stop Israel before it is too late.

Consider this: if Israel has nothing to hide and its behaviour is in any way legitimate, why does the government refuse all independent journalistic investigation into the events of October 7 and its actions since?

A recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese describes “mediacide”: the systematic destruction of the media’s ability to document and expose Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. The report examines how the killing and silencing of Palestinian journalists, Israeli censorship and propaganda, and biased international media coverage have not merely accompanied genocide but have facilitated its commission and obstructed accountability.

For this alone, Israel, not just its settlements, is culpable and should be sanctioned. You would think that we have already seen cruelty beyond any reason, yet we are still listening to Israeli justifications for anything and everything. It is time, beyond time, we demanded full open accountability.

* Miranda Pinch is a member of the Winchester local party and Communications Lead for the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine and has been a regular visitor to Palestine and Israel for many years. She is also part of the 'Holocaust survivors and descendants against the Gaza genocide' network.