Israel Violates International Law With Impunity: UN Human Rights Experts
Israeli occupation forces in Syria, Dec. 2024. X/ @Anthea0108
December 11, 2024 Hour: 11:36 am
‘No sanctions have ever been imposed on Israel, and diplomatic and trade relations remain intact,’ said Albanese.
On Wednesday, United Nations human rights experts denounced how Israel is violating international humanitarian law by making an “extreme and exceptional interpretation” of it, while enjoying complete impunity amid the “paralysis” of an international community that has allowed it to act as it does.
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“Impunity is the key word to understand the escalation of the genocide perpetrated by Israel, which has never been held to the same standards as most members of the international community… No sanctions have ever been imposed on Israel, and diplomatic and trade relations remain intact,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
She stated that influential governments appear paralyzed and that many seem to have “normalized the occupation and repression of the Palestinian people,” after 14 months of an offensive in which Israeli occupation forces have killed over 44,000 Palestinians and injured more than 100,000 people.
For this reason, Albanese called for an immediate halt to the direct or indirect transfer of arms to Israel and for a review of its participation as a member of the United Nations.
Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism, an internationally recognized jurist and professor at prestigious universities, stated that Israel’s strategy has been to make “extreme and exceptional interpretations of international humanitarian law to provide a sort of veneer of legality to what they are doing” in Gaza and other countries it considers its enemies.
“They have broadened the definition of what a military target is so as to include people they call combatants… They have used artificial intelligence to bypass the usual precautions that need to be taken before launching attacks,” he explained.
Israel “has eliminated effective judicial oversight or access to lawyers for prolonged periods, imposed controls on the distribution of humanitarian aid that are not tolerated under a correct interpretation of humanitarian law, and authorized the displacement of civilians in ways that deviate from norms,” he added.
“This is something that is spreading, a kind of contagion that goes far beyond the occupied Palestinian territories,” said the UN rapporteur, citing attacks Israel has carried out in Lebanon, Iran, and Syria, both before and after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government.
“This is highly destructive to the international legal order… Germany and the U.S. provide 99 percent of the weapons exported to Israel. If they stopped doing this, the conflict would end overnight,” Saul stated, urging influential states to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to stop violating international norms.
Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, called on States to comply with the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, emphasizing that immunity does not offer protection in cases of international crimes.
Instead of proceeding in that sense, several countries have launched attacks and threats against the court, its prosecutor, and other officials, particularly from certain U.S. political sectors, she regretted, adding that “double standards must end.”
teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE