The May 27th vote of the UN Human Rights Council to establish an ongoing commission of inquiry to report on rights violations in Israel, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip is very similar to the many commissions that have come before. Established with a majority vote in favor of Resolution A/HRC/S-30/L.1, this commission reaffirms state responsibilities to protect human rights and international humanitarian law as the bases for peace.
The UN and other international coalitions have launched dozens of previous similar commissions. Many have been prompted by an uptick in spectacular violence in the Gaza Strip. This latest commission comes in response to eleven days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, which began on May 10, killed at least 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people, with 13 people killed in Israel. Among other recent UN investigations was one in 2014 and another in 2009, known as the Goldstone Mission, which investigated the 2008–2009 fighting in the Gaza Strip that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead.
Although a UN commission on its own can do little to change Israel’s actions, within today’s shifting social and political dynamics, it can play a role in coalescing attention and mobilizing meaningful action to stop and reverse Israel’s settler-colonial project.
Unique to this most recent commission, however, is the context in which it has emerged, marked by a resurgence of international legal and activist efforts to challenge Israel’s systematic abuse and dispossession of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel, and the diaspora—including efforts among Jews. Although a UN commission on its own can do little to change Israel’s actions, within today’s shifting social and political dynamics, it can play a role in coalescing attention and mobilizing meaningful action to stop and reverse Israel’s settler-colonial project.
In specifying that this investigation should collect evidence of violations “to maximize the possibility of its admissibility in legal proceedings,” the text of this latest UN resolution points to one important new contextual factor. Namely, that the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided on February 5, 2021 that it has jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territory, allowing the Prosecutor to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity that have taken place in the occupied Palestinian territory.
In opening last week’s special session in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, referred to Israel’s attacks on Gaza this month as possibly constituting war crimes. Attention to possible war crimes also was central in the Goldstone Mission findings and the report of that commission focused on ending impunity. Although, as I note in my book, A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine, this marked a turning point in the international legal language used to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it did not lead to actions to end Israel’s impunity. Residents of the Gaza Strip continue to suffer life under restrictions and siege imposed since the 1990s and intensified in 2007, maintaining this sliver of land as an open air prison for the 1.8 million Palestinians who live there. If this latest commissions of inquiry does “identify, where possible, those responsible, with a view to ensuring that perpetrators of violations are held accountable,” the ICC may be able to make use of that evidence.
The groundswell of analysis identifying Israel as an apartheid state is a second crucial distinguishing element of the world into which this commission is being born. Issued in April 2021, the report by the international human rights NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW), condemned Israel for committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution. It is just the latest in a string of similar reports. In 2017, ESCWA, a UN body, issued a report on Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians. Many Palestinian organizations have been part of this chorus, too. In 2019, eight Palestinian, regional, and international organizations, including Al-Haq, BADIL, and Addameer submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, detailing Israel’s practices that constitute the crime of apartheid under international law. Like that of Human Rights Watch, the report in January 2021 by Israeli NGO B’Tselem suggests that international recognition of Israel as an apartheid state is going mainstream. Given that the new permanent Commission of Inquiry aims to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict” including “discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity,” we may be seeing more authoritative evidence of Israel’s crimes of apartheid leading to pressure on states to stop it.
Like what happened in response to South Africa’s apartheid regime, an international boycott movement has galvanized academics, activists, and artists in speaking out for freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians. BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, is a third distinctive feature of today’s context. BDS promotes public education about Palestinians’ conditions while pressuring Israeli institutions to end their complicity with state oppression of Palestinians, and demanding that Israeli government comply with international law.
Beyond BDS, new solidarity actions have been notable, especially in response to the violence in May, including the International Dockworkers Council-IDC support of the Palestinian General Strike, actions by Israeli and Palestinian workers refusing enmity, and protest marches around the globe. More persistent dynamics suggesting an upsurge of diverse support for Palestinians include a revival of Black internationalism, Black Lives Matter, and other Black progressive groups re-energizing Black-Palestinian solidarity, statements supporting Palestinian rights by influential Jewish figures, and young liberal Jews’ alienation from Zionism and sympathy with Palestinian causes.
What is not new is Israel’s ongoing refusal to engage with international legal processes such as the commission of inquiry and the ICC— and US efforts to shield Israel from scrutiny. The US often justifies its rejection of international legal investigation of Israel with the claim that it would threaten progress in resolving the conflict. There has been no progress on this front for a very long time. If people of conscience take up the opportunity afforded by the latest UN effort to grow public awareness of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, this might be that rarest of commissions that helps dislodge Israel-Palestine from the quagmire in which it has been stuck for so long.
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“Palestinians are forced ‘to live in constant uncertainty, making it difficult to perform simple tasks and make plans,’ according to B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights organization. ‘A Palestinian leaving home in the morning cannot know whether he or she is going to make it [to] work — on time or at all — or to keep a medical appointment, visit family or catch a movie. She might make it, or she might be delayed at a checkpoint for hours, detained and humiliated by soldiers. She may have to turn around and go back the way she came. She may get arrested.’
“Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in ‘Operation Guardian of the Walls’ — the Israeli military’s name for its most recent 11-day assault on Gaza — has led to renewed calls for BDS against the Israeli regime.”
On the the theme of making this time different:
This is the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre ) and there are several documentaries out there, one of which was shown on PBS ( https://www.npr.org/2021/05/30/1000923192/3-documentaries-you-should-watch-about-the-tulsa-race-massacre ).
To the best of my knowledge, no documentary on the Nakba has been shown on the MSM. Isn’t it time to collect signatures and start a campaign to air a documentary on this event?
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Outrage Over Israel’s Human Rights Violations Is Fueling the Global BDS Movement (truthout.org)
“Outrage Over Israel’s Human Rights Violations Is Fueling the Global BDS Movement” Truthout, May 24/21, by Marjorie Cohn.EXCERPT:
“Israeli police are now threatening to carry out mass arrests against Palestinian citizens of Israel — arrests intended to punish those who took part in sit-ins and other protests in solidarity with Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and Gaza.
“This latest attack on Palestinian rights comes just days after Israeli police once again attacked Palestinians at Al Aqsa Mosque, and after the Israeli military viciously bombed Gaza for 11 days, killing 248 Palestinians and wounding more than 1,900, destroying 16,800 Palestinian homes and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
“Outrage against Israel’s ongoing apartheid system and routine attacks on Palestinian rights and lives is mounting worldwide, setting the stage for a new burst of energy in the global movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli regime — a nonviolent movement in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality.
“Renewed calls for BDS have emerged in the reshaped new political moment following the ceasefire that began on May 20 after President Joe Biden, who has essentially continued Donald Trump’s policy of pandering to Israel, finally put his foot down following outrage by a critical mass of congressional Democrats and protests in the U.S. and around the world, and said he expected ‘significant de-escalation’ of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complied with Biden’s directive and agreed to the ceasefire with Hamas.
“Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) introduced legislation to prevent Biden from selling $735 million in weapons to Israel. That doesn’t count the $3.8 billion in military assistance the U.S. government provides Israel annually, which funds the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“In the occupied territories, Israel regulates the entries and departures of the Palestinians and controls the borders, airspace, shoreline and waters off the Gaza coast. Israel expels Palestinians from their homes and facilitates illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.” (cont’d)
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One of the most interesting things about this is that the ICC decided it had jurisdiction in Palestine:
On 5 February 2021, the ICC “decided, by majority, that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” Judges ruled that the court has jurisdiction, rejecting Israel’s argument to the contrary. The decision does not attempt to determine statehood or legal borders.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_investigation_in_Palestine#:~:text=In%20December%202014%2C%20the%20assembly,court%20or%20any%20other%20organization.
Twisting UK Law To Criminalize Dissent on Palestine by Craig Murray
https://original.antiwar.com/craig_murray/2021/06/03/twisting-uk-law-to-criminalize-dissent-on-palestine/