Ex-UN rapporteur Alfred de Zayas delivers message to Palestine conference in Istanbul

Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas sent a message to the international conference titled “From Genocide to the Establishment of the Palestinian State,” held in Istanbul on September 6.

The conference brought together leading experts from Palestine, Türkiye, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Denmark.

Speakers assessed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which they described as genocide, the challenges in Palestine’s statehood process, and the role of the international community. The conference emphasized the need to overcome internal divisions in Palestine and increase diplomatic pressure on Israel.

Alfred de Zayas’s message is as follows:

“On August 31, the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a resolution confirming that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and calling for international action to protect the rights of Palestinians.

The Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo held in May that Israel was committing genocide. On August 18, 2024, it issued a resolution in Istanbul calling on the international community to take concrete action to stop the genocide. Not only civilians but also journalists, medics, and staff members of UN agencies, including UNRWA, have been killed.

Richard Falk, the tribunal’s president, an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University and a former UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights (2008-2014), warned that failure to act would represent “a historic failure of humanity.” He urged world governments to bypass the UN Security Council and empower the General Assembly to authorize armed intervention without delay, emphasizing that decisive measures were needed to prevent further civilian casualties.

The International Court of Justice has held in its Advisory Opinion of July 19, 2024, that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal and that it must withdraw from these territories and pay compensation to the victims.

The UN General Assembly endorsed the ICJ ruling by an overwhelming majority and adopted a resolution on September 18, 2024, giving Israel 12 months to implement the Advisory Opinion.

Israel has not only ignored the Advisory Opinion and the GA resolution but has intensified the genocide on the civilian population of Gaza, the bombardment of schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches, and shown contempt for the orders issued by the ICJ in connection with the pending case South Africa v. Israel.

On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of War Yoav Gallant, which to this day have not been implemented.

The Trump Administration has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court to obstruct its work.

What does this mean for the authority and credibility of the United Nations? What does it entail for the obligations of all UN member states under the UN Charter and under the 1948 Genocide Convention?

This conference should adopt a resolution to be forwarded to Antonio Guterres and Volker Türk to be taken into account at the opening of the 80th session of the General Assembly. This resolution should endorse the reports of the UN Rapporteur on Palestine, professor Francesca Albanese, and demand the implementation by Israel of the Advisory Opinions of the ICJ of July 9, 2004, and July 19, 2024. It should invoke the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and endorse the humanitarian work of all UN agencies, including UNRWA and UNICEF, and support the SUMUD humanitarian flotilla.

The resolution and the outcome document of this conference must call for the adoption by the General Assembly of a Uniting for Peace Resolution calling on states to take joint and individual actions to stop the genocide on the basis of the obligation to prevent to which all parties of the Genocide Convention are bound.

If the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect means anything, it means saving Palestine.

The conference should urge the General Assembly to invoke Article 6 of the UN Charter, which provides for the expulsion of members. The article stipulates:

“A Member of the United Nations who has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”

No UN member state has ever violated more General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions than Israel; no member state has shown as much contempt for the UN and for international judicial institutions as Israel, with the complicity of the US. Both are in open rebellion against the UN Charter and international law.

In the immediate term, the General Assembly should withdraw the accreditation given to Israeli diplomats, as the GA withdrew the accreditation of the diplomats of the Apartheid regime in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. This would be symbolic and complete the isolation of Israel in the international community.

The General Assembly should call on all member states to break not only diplomatic relations but all commercial relations with the genocidal state.

In the long term, the General Assembly should adopt a resolution requesting an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice to rule on the issue of complicity in genocide.

The Geneva International Peace Research Institute submitted two legal briefs in 2024 to the International Criminal Court under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, asking the Prosecutor to start investigations into the criminal complicity of European institutions and individuals like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

A new multipolar world is emerging. The hope of humanity is no longer with the “collective West” but with the Global Majority in Africa and Asia. The crucial problem today is that the institutions created to defend our rights have been hijacked by Washington and Brussels and that they do not work for humanity but to maintain an unjust world order.

For that reason, I wrote my human rights trilogy: Building a Just World Order, Countering Mainstream Narratives, and The Human Rights Industry, with concrete, pragmatic, implementable recommendations, including my 25 Principles of International Order.”