Address to the community of states
In addition to the systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip and the slaughter of its population,
starvation and the destruction of medical facilities are contributing to the ongoing genocidal
war. The State of Israel has decided that no Palestinians should remain on their land.
With a feeling of devastation and invaded by an immeasurable shame with regard to
universality, we have been witnessing the first phase of ethnic cleansing of the enclave,
extended to the West Bank announced. Will you let the President of the United States turn Gaza
into a “Riviera”?
The Palestinian people are being subjected to genocide, a war of extermination in the sense in
which Raphaël Lemkin defined it: “an act of genocide directed against a national group as an
entity, and the acts in question are directed against individuals, not as individuals, but as
members of their national group”i.
Whereas the United Nations Charter recognizes the right of an attacked state to defend itself
(article 51), does this right apply to a power exercising an illegal occupation? This is debatable.
But, in any event, no state has the right to use disproportionate force, as the colonizing state is
currently doing. The proportionality principle implies that an action must not be more
devastating than the damage already suffered. Yet, in its response, the State of Israel has chosen
blind violence, violating the principle of proportionality by not respecting any balance between
the objective of rescuing the hostages and the means employed. The real objective is to
exterminate as many Palestinians as possible.
If the notion of principle provides requirements for optimising values and interests, while norms
and rules are often presented as ontological, logical or methodological in nature, doesn't the
principle of proportionality take precedence over other rules and norms? Isn't it even more so
when a prime minister claims that Hamas must be eradicated, and in return receives the support
of a large part of the international community, and in particular its Western supporters, who,
like him, stand against "barbarism"? In these conditions, it is easy for him to decide on the
proportionality quota.
Who is more barbaric? Those who fight against an illegal colonial occupation and for their
inalienable right to self-determination, even if they commit criminal acts in this process, or
those who, for the sake of revenge and especially to accomplish far-right expansionist designs,
seek to eliminate an entire people from their land? Those who help a state to perpetrate genocide
or war crimes on a large scale and in a planned and systematic way? Those who turn a blind
eye, pretending not to know, as bodies pile up under the rubble, or not to see in the depths of
children's eyes the inhumanity of a world claiming to cherish democracy and human rights?
Why, in the face of this disaster for humanity, do some countries, with no qualms whatsoever,
help the State of Israel by providing it with military or financial aid?
You cannot ignore the fact that by helping or assisting this country in the name of its right to
defend itself, by recognizing its right to defend itself while it is the occupying power, these
countries are engaging their states’ international responsibility, and making themselves
accomplices to illegal occupation, colonization, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, and even with regard to Bedouins in the territory under Israeli jurisdiction,
not to mention the war crimes committed for over 78 years, which, despite numerous Security
Council and General Assembly resolutions, violate the whole range of human rights as well as
the rights of civilian populations in wartime as guaranteed by the 4th Geneva Convention.
Next August, on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of this Convention, will you be asserting
that it represents a major step forward in the protection of civilian populations, when the Israeli
occupation army is systematically destroying schools, hospitals, shelters and UNRWA centres,
and when the meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, scheduled
for March 7, was cancelled at the last minute due to the deplorable position of the Swiss
government and Europe?
Is it necessary to remind you that a third state need not participate directly in an internationally
wrongful act in order to share responsibility for it – as the United States is co-responsible for
the genocidal war waged by its Israeli ally? All a state has to do is provide voluntary assistance
to the realization of an unlawful act or to the prolongation in time of this act, and this applies
to all states favouring, among other things, contracts for their companies to sell components or
weapons to the Israeli stateii.
It should be noted that, in the case of the Palestinian people and in relation to Israel's
internationally illicit act, obligations considered “essential” for the “whole international
community” are at stake. In 1970, the International Court of Justice famously ruled that “an
essential distinction must be drawn between the obligations of States towards the international
community as a whole and those towards another State ... By their very nature, the first concern
all States. Given the importance of the rights in question, all States can be considered as having
a legal interest in the protection of those rights; the obligations in question are obligations erga
omnes »iii.
It goes without saying that one of the direct consequences of an internationally unlawful act is
that all subjects of international law are under an obligation to make reparation. Reparation,
consisting in the obligation to erase the consequences of the internationally illicit act, appears
above all as a mechanism for sanctioning the violation of international law.
Why are you rushing so enthusiastically to aid invaded Ukraine, while Palestine has been
abandoned, isolated, walled in, bruised and ethnically “cleansed” for over 78 years, without
arousing any real indignation on your part?
The international community’s dignity requires it to support the South African state for having
recalled the intangible principles of jus cogens (peremptory norm) and to stand up against the
attacks and threats that this country is the target of, particularly those from the new US
administration.
How do you respond to the fact that the provisional measures of the International Court of
Justiceiv have not been respected, and even less implemented? In the name of universality, in
the name of what is human, are you willing to endorse even more famine, more mass
destruction, more population displacement?
Are you not there, as members of the international community, to counter the fact that political
power relations do not prevail over the jus cogens norms of international law and international
humanitarian law that were set up to regulate the use of force and protect civilian populations?
We, the People of Nations, demand that you, the States, as members of the international
community representing the People of Nations, work urgently to put in place safeguards to
prevent the dismantlement of international law, as well as the tearing apart of the regulation of
power relations, so that international social relationships and international relations are not
shaped by the dominant role of the United States, whose drift to the far right is today the main
danger hanging over the planet.
Be human, if you still can: you have the power to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinian people!
The future of our world depends on the future of Palestine!
SIGN AND MAKE SIGN
ic.intl.responsibility.palestine@gmail.com
Mireille Fanon Mendes France
On the behalf of the Frantz Fanon Foundation
https://fondation-frantzfanon.com/
https://centenaire.fondation-frantzfanon.com/
Gilbert Achcar
Emeritus Professor of International Relations, SOAS, University of London
i Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress,
Washington, Carnegie Endowment for International peace, 1944, p. 79
ii Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide: https://afsc. org/companies-2023-attack-gaza
iii CIJ, Arrêt Barcelona Traction, Recueil, 1970, § 33. « Erga omnes » means « in relation to everyone ».
iv https://news.un.org/fr/story/2024/03/1144476
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