Press Releases

BADIL Resource Center issues a statement (below) calling for an arms embargo on Israel in response to the willful killings, intentional causing of serious injuries and excessive use of force employed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip over the past six weeks. Palestinians in Gaza have gathered near the border of the Strip to demand their right to return to their homes from which they were expelled by Zionist militias and Israeli forces in 1948. Since the ‘Great March of Return’ began on 30 March 2018, Israel has killed at least 109 Palestinians and injured more than 12,000 people, many of them critically. BADIL’s statement denounces Israel’s crimes and states that the actions of the international community so far have been largely ineffective and insufficient, calling on third party states to abide by their obligations and act to put real pressure on Israel to end its violations, including an arms embargo.

Statement by BADIL Resource Center

 

 

Despite the willful killings and excessive use of force targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s colonial and apartheid policies aimed at displacing and transferring Palestinians out of their homes, despite the creeping annexation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the international community has woefully failed to act. Rather, international bodies and states have remained silent, restricting their actions to cautious official announcements and/or biased responses, which constitute an umbrella of impunity for Israel's ongoing violations of international law.

 

In light of Israel's violations, breaches and crimes, the international community has failed to ensure the protection of the rights the Palestinian people are entitled to under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Not only has the international community failed to contextualize the situation as one characterized by a significant power imbalance between the occupied population and the occupying power, one in which the occupied population have a right to struggle for their rights and selfdetermination, but it has also failed to establish an independent committee to investigate Israeli breaches of its obligations as an occupier. In the face of systematic Israeli human rights violations and international crimes, the international community has taken no practical or effective measures to ensure Israeli compliance and accountability. Rather, it continues to passively witness the ongoing Nakba and ignore Palestinian demands for their right to return, which has been internationally recognized since 1948 in several international law instruments.

 

The time has come to declare all these symbolic condemnations as insufficient; it is time to act. In light of the willful killings of 58 Palestinians yesterday in the Gaza Strip, the international community has an obligation not only to condemn Israeli violations and unlawful practices, not only to refrain from providing any form of assistance to Israel, not only to condemn the US transfer of its embassy to Jerusalem, but also to impose sanctions on Israel to ensure its compliance to international law. At the very least, the international community must impose an arms embargo on Israel immediately, to put pressure on Israel to end its policy of willful killings and excessive use of force against unarmed Palestinians, and to protect the lives and physical safety of Palestinians under its effective control.

 

The time has come for the international solidarity movement to transform their initiatives into concrete actions that pressure states to end their support of and complicity with Israel.

 

The time has come for everyone to realize what the Palestinian people have known all along: that without accountability, without justice, and without return, there cannot be a durable solution and the Palestinian people will continue to struggle for the rights.