Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide in Gaza. That is the conclusion of a UN commission report. Since the release of the report last week, Palestine has finally been recognised as an independent state by the UK and a number of other countries. In his announcement at the weekend, Keir Starmer called the death and destruction in Gaza “utterly intolerable”. This recognition comes too late and is still conditional, but has the UK government indeed now stopped tolerating Israel’s devastation of Gaza? Has anything changed for the people there who are being starved and bombed? Far from it.
Even as the UN publishes the findings of its independent commission, and a flag is raised outside the Palestinian mission in London, mass displacement and killing continues to take place in Gaza City as Israel attacks. As a lawyer who has spent my life believing in the rule of law, this makes me wonder: will Gaza’s destruction also bring with it the death of international law?
From the very beginning, all one had to do was look at the words of Israel’s leaders to see that the intent to commit genocide was there. Israeli ministers and politicians promised that Gaza would be flattened, placed under siege and starved. The bombardments have been merciless and wide, targeting schools, homes and hospitals. And the majority of Israel’s victims are children and women. Maiming, starvation, lack of medical care and death have been people’s daily experiences in Gaza. Nobody has acted to stop it.
Palestinian suffering has been livestreamed for the world to watch. Israel has shown exactly what it is doing to trapped Palestinians. Despite the killing of many brave journalists, others have continued to show the reality: the genocide has been broadcast straight to your screen at home. Still, governments around the world haven’t stopped it.
Palestinian groups documenting the atrocities – including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), of which I am director, well as the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Palestinian rights organisation Al-Haq – have been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and sanctioned by the US Treasury for documenting legal evidence of the crimes being committed. Even the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese and international criminal court (ICC) officials – including chief prosecutor Karim Khan – are being threatened and sanctioned for speaking out about their findings. These findings match those in the PCHR’s newest report: that the intent to commit genocide was there from October 2023 onwards, evidenced by the testimony of the very survivors and victims that we should have been protecting.
The UN’s commission now joins the wide consensus that Palestinians in Gaza have been experiencing genocide. This is a welcome intervention. But it is also crucial to remember that the purpose of the genocide convention is in its full name: the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The philosophy for it was to be preventive and punitive – which means we are at a crossroads now. This genocide was not prevented, but it can still be stopped. Will this be enough for people to act? Or will the pounding of Gaza also turn the principles of international law into rubble?
I speak not just as a Palestinian, but as a lawyer who spent the last 48 years practising, and believing in the sanctity of, law. I devoted my life and expertise to this, because in my heart I felt there must be something to protect, and that the law would serve the most vulnerable people. But what we have been shown in governments’ inaction and complicity is an ugly reality. We may be looking at a new world where international law is selective and politicised.
A genocide in our time with this level of mass killing, destruction, pain and suffering shows how fragile the rule of law is. Arrest warrants issued by the ICC has not prevented a genocide. Yet another institution finding that Israel is committing genocide has not stopped it. The law can only exist if it is enforced and applied to all. The facts are there, the law is there. No one can claim they didn’t know. As a society, we cannot allow international law to die in Gaza by allowing Israel’s impunity.
As more institutions come to the same conclusions, I can only hope that more pressure is put on governments who are still aiding and providing arms to Israel. For these declarations and recognitions to offer any tangible hope to the people of Gaza, they must come with comprehensive action. The states who have been reluctant must follow Spain in taking a clear position by instigating an arms embargo. The cover and partnership offered by the UK and US to Israel for its genocide must stop.
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Let this report not be just another piece of work that gets added to the vault. Let there be a Palestine, and a people, left to recognise. Let all these words, statements and declarations help remind us all of what is at stake – not just for Gaza, but for the world’s shared values of the rule of law, democracy, human rights and dignity. Please, let it spark the world to action and stop this genocide.
Raji Sourani is the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the coordinator of the Palestinian legal team at the international criminal court (ICC) and a member of South Africa’s legal team in the genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ).
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