Date: 14 November 2023

The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) has released a briefing note, establishing that senior Israeli government and military leaders, amongst others, have incited genocide and may be carrying out genocidal acts against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It provides a background to the current aggression against Gaza and the relentless, indiscriminate attacks on the Palestinian civilian population therein. It further provides a non-exhaustive illustrative list of the inciting genocidal statements by Israeli officials. There have been significant warnings by United Nations (UN) independent human rights experts, as well as actions taken by Third States, including the removal of their diplomatic missions from Israel, some in response to the ongoing Israeli genocidal statements and acts. Together, these warnings and State actions put the international community of States on notice, that there is a very real risk that genocide is being, or may be committed against Palestinians in Gaza. Given the gravity of the crime of genocide, the most heinous crime in the international legal order, States are therefore under an international responsibility to ensure the “prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means”. Our organisations call on Third States and the international community to immediately engage its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people, including by taking concrete measures, legal actions and mechanisms under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter ‘Genocide Convention’) to hold Israel to account, to prevent genocide and put an immediate end to the ongoing atrocities.

In light of Israel’s of genocidal statements and acts against Palestinians in Gaza, our organisations call on:

• States to act in line with their obligations under the Genocide Convention, in the face of a serious risk that Israeli occupying forces are perpetrating genocidal conduct against Palestinians in Gaza, by unilaterally and collectively taking all feasible action to urgently and definitively ensure that Israel refrains from further incitement to genocide and from the perpetration of conduct prohibited under Article II of the Convention;
• The State of Palestine and Third States to issue proceedings before the  International Court of Justice on the responsibility of Israel for genocide in Gaza under Article IX of the Genocide Convention;
• State Parties to the Genocide Convention to call upon the competent organs of the UN (including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and the International Court of Justice) to take the necessary action under the UN Charter  to  prevent and suppress acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III of the Convention;
• States should take all available measures to avoid complicity in Israeli conduct through the provision of materials, arms, economic and diplomatic support to a regime responsible for ongoing and persistent widespread and systematic violence and abuse of the Palestinian population amounting to genocide;
• States to apply and impose economic sanctions, arms embargo, and other countermeasures until Israel adheres to its obligations under international law; and
• States to arrest and prosecute nationals or persons present on their territory or within their jurisdiction who have incited genocide or carried out genocidal acts against the Palestinian people.

Please find the full briefing note here: