Chair Summary of the CEIRPP Briefing: “International legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine”

Briefing

“International legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine”

Convened by the
Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP)

United Nations Headquarters, New York
31 October 2024
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CHAIR SUMMARY

On 31 October 2024, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People organized the briefing “International legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine”.

The event featured presentations by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967, Francesca Albanese; and UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Tlaleng Mofokeng; as well as a Commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, Chris Sidoti. These briefings addressed their recent reports to the UN General Assembly and recent developments, including the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2024. The Committee also heard from representatives of the Independent Commission for Human Rights of Palestine, Diana Buttu; and the NGO “Law for Palestine”, Anisha Patel.

The arrangement of this event follows on the Bureau’s prior meetings with these UN counterparts in 2022 and 2023, and the shared objective of increased cooperation with the COI OPTEJI and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) towards highlighting violations of Palestinian rights and Israel’s disregard for international law and UN resolutions as part of the Committee’s efforts to raise awareness and mobilize accountability.

Further, in 2022 the Bureau had adopted a decision to request a briefing from COI OPTEJI and UN SR Albanese to the full Committee to help disseminate knowledge about their reports and findings. The latter have become even more relevant as the COI OPTEJI mandate allowed it to launch an investigation and proactively gather information as soon as the crisis in Gaza started on 7 October 2023, as well as evidence supporting allegations of genocide. The event also provided an opportunity for enhanced cooperation with civil society, one of the priorities of the Committee in carrying out its General Assembly mandate.

Since these consultations and developments, several significant reports and decisions have been issued, impacting the ongoing UN deliberations on the question of Palestine, including the events of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, and the onset of what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has described as a plausible genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

In March 2024, UN SR Albanese issued a report entitled “Anatomy of Genocide”, in which she concluded that there had been reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide had been met as a result of the actions of Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Additionally, in June 2024, the COI OPTEJI issued its first report on the dramatic developments since October 2023, concluding that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On 19 July 2024, the ICJ issued a seminal advisory opinion, pursuant to a request by the United Nations General Assembly on 30 December 2022, regarding, inter alia, the legal consequences arising from Israel’s ongoing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and related discriminatory measures. The Court unequivocally declared Israel’s occupation as unlawful and pronounced the responsibilities of Israel, all States and the United Nations for bringing an end to this unlawful situation as rapidly as possible. In a separate case, South Africa vs. Israel, the ICJ has thus far issued three sets of provisional measures orders (26 January 2024, 28 March 2024, 24 May 2024) regarding the latter’s violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in the Gaza Strip.

On 18 September, the General Assembly adopted resolution ES-10/24 “Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and from the illegality of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, which inter alia called on Israel to end its occupation within 12 months, on Member States to cease any support of Israel’s occupation, including in regards to settlement activities and the halt of arms transfers to Israel, and on the Secretary-General to provide within 3 months a report on the implementation the resolution, including any actions taken by Israel, other States and international organizations.

The meeting thus provided an opportunity to discuss the next collective steps and to use the expertise and information gathering of the invited speakers to inform action in the General Assembly.

The objectives of the meeting were:

1. Highlighting the responsibility of the United Nations and Third States in preventing genocide, protecting Palestinian civilians, including women and children, and holding the perpetrators accountable;
2. Highlighting the responsibility of the United Nations and Third States in ending the unlawful Israeli occupation and system of apartheid and racial segregation as determined by the ICJ advisory opinion;
3. Addressing the relevant reports of UN committees and special rapporteurs and their respective roles in urging and assisting Member States and the organization as a whole to take concrete actions to enforce UN resolutions, decisions and rulings and to uphold the Charter towards ensuring respect for human rights and promoting the realization of justice and peace; and
4. Discussing the necessary role of the United Nations and Third States in implementing the rulings of international courts in accordance with international law as it pertains to achieving a just solution to the Palestine question in all its aspects and to upholding the rule of law and credibility of the international legal order.

In his opening statement, the Chair of the Committee and Permanent Representative of Senegal to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Cheikh Niang, commended the work of UN experts in investigating and documenting what has been happening. They had sifted through vast amounts of documents and testimonies, gathered evidence and separated facts from misinformation. Their “efforts are vital, not only for telling the story of Gaza, but more importantly for ensuring accountability”, he said.

The Committee would continue to support accountability concerning all individuals and parties responsible for crimes against humanity, and ensuring all victims are recognized. Violations of international human rights law must be condemned regardless of who commits those breaches.

Against the background of the Gaza War Amb. Niang highlighted the prolonged failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and underscored that the two-state solution enshrined in UN resolutions remains the only viable framework for negotiations.

He outlined three key steps forward:

1. An immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining Israeli captives in Gaza and Palestinian detainees in Israel, and a massive scale up of humanitarian aid to Gaza had to be put in force;
2. General Assembly resolution ES-10/24, calling on UN member states to comply with the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, had to be fully implemented; and
3. Member States of the United Nations would have to safeguard the international system of rules-based multilateralism, for the sake of the people in Gaza, and the rest of Occupied Palestine in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the whole region.

In her remarks, the representative of the State of Palestine, Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Feda Abdelhady-Nasser, said that Palestinians in Gaza had endured “no chapter darker” than the past year, with tens of thousands of civilian deaths, almost a thousand families entirely wiped out, thousands crushed to death under rubble and two million forcibly displaced and hunted down by the Israeli occupation forces. With northern Gaza turning into the epicentre of the onslaught, those left are facing starvation and must now choose between ethnic cleansing and submission to colonial domination.

During the briefing session, Ms. Albanese addressed criticism of experts and representatives of Member States using the term “genocide”, saying that as “a reluctant chronicler of genocide,” she is convinced that the international community must follow the law and apply the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) to recognize what is happening in Gaza as a genocide as what Palestinians in Gaza are currently experiencing “is not simply war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

She added that under the fog of war, Israel has accelerated the forced displacement of the Palestinians that began decades ago, but “what’s happening today is much more severe because of the technology, the weaponry and the impunity”. It was time to consider suspending Israel’s credential as a Member State in the United Nations. Acknowledging that this is a sensitive topic, she said that while other countries also have violated human rights, none has maintained an unlawful occupation violating decades of UN resolutions as Israel has done.

Ms. Mofokeng said the Israeli leadership’s promise, announced in late 2024, to destroy Gaza has been fulfilled. “The Strip now is a wasteland of rubble and human remains” where survivors struggle to hold on to life and bodies are decomposing in the ruins of what used to be clinics and hospitals. Some 560 attacks have been reported on health facilities, which face shortages of power, medical supplies and personnel – only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning, depriving the population of desperately needed healthcare for the wounded and sick. Accusing Israel and its allies of “knowingly and intentionally imposing famine and dehydration”, she warned that these practices will stunt an entire generation.

Highlighting the urgency of psychological support, she said the prolonged violence had created a vast need while at the same making it unavailable. Healthcare workers on duty had been arrested and detained, with some allegedly showing signs of torture. “The destruction of health systems created by this genocide is incompatible with […] the right to physical and mental health,” she asserted. Addressing the Palestinian people she said, “I am ashamed and deeply sorry that the multilateral world has failed you.”

Mr. Sidoti noted that the situation had become so dire it defied description. Even “cold-hearted, hard-shelled diplomats” had told him how overwhelmed and sad they were. Citing the Commission’s October 2022 report, he described how it had concluded that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory had become unlawful and then recommended that the General Assembly refer the situation to the International Court of Justice. “To my shock, the Assembly acted on it almost immediately,” he said, and highlighted that the Court’s Advisory Opinion, issued in July 2024, had come to the same conclusion and ruled that Israel’s occupation was unlawful and must be ended immediately.

In addition, the Commission also has an accountability mandate, which provides information to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on a monthly basis. “We collect the information, we verify it, we form conclusions as to the significance of the information in relation to international crimes and we provide it to the Prosecutor,” he said, while action was then up to the Court. Further, he emphasized the responsibility of the Security Council to take decisive actions in the face of such overwhelming evidence.

Ms. Buttu highlighted that the destruction in Gaza was so massive, it would take more than 18 years just to remove the rubble. While almost ten per cent of the Gaza Strip’s population had been killed, injured, or was missing, over eighty per cent had been subjected to some type of evacuation, with Israel treating Palestinians “like human pinballs”.

She referred to an “axis of genocide”, which included Israel, United States and some European States that were pushing for or at least enabling the continuation of the Gaza War. She denounced the international community’s failure to speak in one voice against it. She drew attention to the cases of Israeli soldiers uploading the evidence of their crimes on social media, adding that no one has been prosecuted for these crimes. “Imagine what it is like to live in a society where this is considered to be okay,” she added.

Ms. Patel said that Israel’s genocidal assault against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which she called “settler-colonial”, was only the most violent manifestation of the 76-year-long Nakba inflicted upon the Palestinian people. “We are all too familiar with the haunting pleas from Palestinian journalists who are being brutally targeted as we speak for broadcasting their own destruction in real time,” she said, noting that the first 11 pages of the 649-page list of victims killed in the Israeli onslaught, which was released by Gaza’s Health Ministry in September, were names of Palestinian children who had not yet reached the age of one year. “But you all already know this,” she said, adding that the international community has ample documentation of Palestinian children “being blown to smithereens by 2,000-pound bombs”.

Outlining the legal consequences and responsibilities of third States for failing to prevent and punish genocide, she highlighted that the International Court of Justice had affirmed that Member States could also be found complicit if they had aided and abetted Israel’s actions. “The most basic ask” was a complete embargo on selling and transferring arms, munitions and related equipment, she said, adding that this obligation arose from the Court’s advisory opinion and the Genocide Convention. The non-assistance obligations also concern economic, diplomatic, cultural and academic relations. Third States were obliged to cease all financial, trade, investment and economic ties with Israel, which supported its unlawful occupation and apartheid.

In the ensuing discussion, representatives of Member States voiced profound frustration over the worsening of the Gaza War. They reiterated the call for an immediate ceasefire, accountability and a long-term resolution to the Palestinian question. While some called for a stop to the “collective murder” of Palestinians and their support without hypocrisy and double standards, others underscored the importance of adherence to international law, including UN resolutions and Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice. They also expressed solidarity with all UN entities and mechanisms working on Palestine-related issues and urged allocating sufficient resources to buttress their mandates.

In her closing remarks, Ambassador Abdelhady-Nasser (Palestine) stated that Israel was also “waging an open war on the UN” and questioned its continued UN membership. Despite committing all the crimes exposed during the briefings, Israel has been shielded by the United States’ veto in the Security Council. She also highlighted the punitive measures against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) while at the same time acknowledging the outpouring of solidarity from around the world. “The days have never been darker, but the prospects for justice have never been greater. Do not forsake the Palestinian people, do not take their resilience for granted, do not normalize genocide, do not become numb”, she said.

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***Note: This Summary attempts to provide an overall picture of the deliberations of the Conference. A detailed report, including specific questions that were addressed during the interactive discussions, will be published by the Division for Palestinian Rights in due course.

To learn more about Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council and the Question of Palestine, click here to visit the dedicated webpage.