The United Nations commission of inquiry reported published earlier this week is a hugely damning indictment of the actions of the Israeli criminal apartheid regime in Gaza.
The report states that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza: killing members of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group (in this case, the Palestinians of Gaza); causing them serious bodily and mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group; and preventing births.
Since Israeli operations began in October 2023, at least 65,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza. The population has been and continues to be repeatedly displaced as a result of Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military operations. It is estimated that more than 90% of homes in the territory have been damaged or destroyed or otherwise rendered unliveable. Basic infrastructure around healthcare, water, sanitation, and hygiene systems have been deliberately destroyed by the Israelis. UN-backed food security experts have declared a famine in Gaza City.
The three-member expert panel was chaired by Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief who was president of the international tribunal on Rwanda’s genocide. The two other members are Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian expert on housing and land rights. They are not, as the Israeli government claimed following the publication of the report, basing their findings upon “Hamas lies”.
Adding insult to the injury and genocide being suffered by the people of Gaza, Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at a real estate conference in Tel Aviv, boasted that “there’s a business plan set by the most professional people there is and is on President Trump’s table and how this thing turns into a real estate bonanza”.
While the people of Gaza continue to suffer unprecedented levels of death and destruction, the Israeli and US governments are planning ways to profit from their murder, distress, and displacement. This is settler colonialism taken to a new level and must be condemned unequivocally by the international community.
Despite being the only party capable of bringing Israel’s onslaught to an immediate end – through a phone-call alone – it is abundantly clear that the US has no intention of doing so, and in fact remains opposed to any recognition of Palestinian statehood – contrary to the growing weight of international public opinion and the will of the vast majority of UN General Assembly member states in support of that initiative.
Even when Trump was directly asked by Robert Peston, at Thursday’s Chequers press conference for his second state visit to the UK, whether Hamas’ immediate release of all remaining Israeli hostages would be enough for him to “tell Netanyahu to stop”, he pointedly remained non-committal… “Well, it would certainly help,” uttered the president in response.
As Liberation has affirmed on countless previous occasions, there has never been any doubt under international law that there should exist a Palestinian state. However, right from the foundation of the state of Israel, this international agreement and understanding has been flouted by that state – which from the initial partition of Palestine in 1948 onwards, has sought to establish an exclusively Jewish entity across the territory designated for two states.
We further restate our position that the Palestinian people have an inalienable right to their own state on their own land and this should not be conditional in any way, shape, or form.
There needs to be an immediate ceasefire, and Israel must be compelled by the international community to allow the UN and international aid agencies access to relieve the starvation and suffering of the people of Gaza.
Liberation will continue to campaign, as it has from its very inception, for unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state based upon the UN resolutions on the issue.
In relation to the current cataclysmic situation, we will continue to call for a ceasefire, the complete withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, and the cessation of the theft of Palestinian land by so-called ‘settlers’ in the occupied West Bank.
Liberation will continue to press the British government to cease the supply of arms and revoke any licences which support the IDF in its suppression of the Palestinian people.
We believe these demands not only reflect the views of a growing number of parliamentarians, but increasingly the popular opinion of the British people – as expressed through the waves of protests and solidarity actions in the public sphere and on the streets across this country for almost two years now.
We urge the British government to listen and act in line with UN resolutions and international law, proceed with its recognition of the state of Palestine, and not be swayed at the eleventh hour, neither under pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv nor for reasons of political expediency.
