'It Is Important to Call a Genocide a Genocide,’ Consider Suspending Israel’s Credential as UN Member State, Experts Tell Palestinian Rights Committee
It is important to call a genocide a genocide, UN experts told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today as they called on all States to examine their relationships and avoid being complicit in this crime being committed by Israel on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“If you go to a doctor because you have cancer and you are diagnosed with fever, you have a big problem — it's the same with the people who are being genocided,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967, during a briefing on the international legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, holding perpetrators of war crimes accountable, and for ending the unlawful occupation of Palestine.
Describing herself as “a reluctant chronicler of genocide,” Ms. Albanese said the international community must recognize what is happening in Gaza as a genocide and “understand the bigger design behind what's happening in Palestine today”. It is not simply war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Palestinians are experiencing — “they have experienced those through their entire life,” she said, but the current situation is different.
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”, she added. It is time to consider suspending Israel’s credential as a Member State. Acknowledging that this is a sensitive topic, she said: “None of you really has clean hands when it comes to human rights,” but no other country has maintained an unlawful occupation violating decades of UN resolutions as Israel has done, she said.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, said the Israeli leadership’s promise last year 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 36 hospitals remain, and they are partially functioning. 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 has created a vast need for this and has also made it unavailable. She reported arrests and detentions of health-care workers on duty, 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. To the Palestinians, she said, “I am ashamed and deeply sorry that the multilateral world has failed you.”
Also addressing the Committee was Chris Sidoti, the Commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, who noted that when journalists ask him to describe what is happening, he says, “I am just speechless.” Even “cold-hearted, hard-shelled diplomats” have told him how overwhelmed and sad they are, he said. Citing the Commission’s October 2022 report, he said it concluded that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory had become unlawful and 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, also noting the Court’s opinion, issued in July 2024, that Israel’s occupation was unlawful and must be ended immediately.
He said 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, adding that the Commission also provided information to the Government of South Africa in its case under the Genocide Convention before the International Court of Justice. He regretted that neither these efforts nor Council resolutions prevented a single death in Gaza.
Anisha Patel, Governing Council Member and Head of Content and Discourse Department, Law for Palestine, said Israel's settler colonial genocidal assault against the Palestinian people in Gaza is 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 identified matters released by Gaza’s Health Ministry in September were names of Palestinian children who had not yet reached the age of one. “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 for third States for failing to prevent and punish the genocide, she said the International Court of Justice affirmed that Member States can also be found complicit if they aid and abet Israel’s actions. “The most basic ask” is a complete embargo on the selling and transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment, she said, adding that this obligation arises not only from the Court’s advisory opinion but also from the Genocide Convention. The obligation of non-assistance also concerns areas of economic, diplomatic, cultural and academic relations. Third States are obliged to cease all financial, trade, investment and economic relations with Israel which support its unlawful occupation and apartheid.
Also speaking today was Diana Buttu, Member of the Board of Commissioners — Independent Commission for Human Rights of Palestine, who noted that it will take more than 18 years just to remove the rubble in Gaza. While almost 10 per cent of the Strip’s population has been killed, injured, or gone missing, 80 per cent has been subjected to some type of evacuation, with Israel treating Palestinians “like human pinballs”.
She highlighted “the axis of genocide”, which includes Israel, United States and some European States that are pushing for its continuation, supporting it or funding it, and denounced the international community’s failure to speak in one voice. 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.
In the ensuing discussion, delegates voiced profound frustration over the worsening of the war in Gaza and reiterated the call for immediate ceasefire, accountability and a long-term resolution to the Palestinian question. While some delegates called for a stop to the “collective murder” of Palestinians and for their support without hypocrisy and double standards, others underscored the importance of adherence to international law, including UN resolutions and opinions of the International Court of Justice. They also expressed solidarity with all UN entities and mechanisms that are working on Palestine-related issues, and urged for allocation of sufficient resources to buttress their mandates.
The representative of Malta took the floor to counter the assertion that the Security Council has not saved a single life. She emphasized that during her country’s term on the Council, it worked on four resolutions, one of which facilitated a seven-day pause that resulted in “lives being saved”. Expressing regret that this pause did not lead to a ceasefire, she underscored that the only effective way to resolve the conflict is through diplomacy. A speaker from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement highlighted the complicity of third States, institutions and corporations, adding that funding, trading and investing in Israel is tantamount to normalizing genocide.
At the beginning of the meeting, Cheikh Niang (Senegal), Committee Chair, commended the work of UN experts in investigating and documenting what has been happening. They have 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.
Feda Abdelhady-Nasser, Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, took the floor at the beginning and end of the meeting. She said that Palestinians in Gaza have endured “no chapter darker” than the past year, with tens of thousands of civilian deaths, 902 families entirely wiped out, thousands crushed to death under rubble and 2 million forcibly displaced and hunted down by the Israeli occupation forces. With northern Gaza turning into the epicenter of the onslaught, those left are facing starvation and must choose between ethnic cleansing and submission to colonial domination.
Israel is also “waging an open war on the UN”, she added as she questioned its continued UN membership. Despite committing these crimes, it has been shielded by the United States’ veto in the Security Council. She also highlighted its punitive measures against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), while at the same time, acknowledged 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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