Gaza, 18 September 2025 – Today marks once year since the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed Resolution A/RES/ES-10/24 demanding Israel to end its unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territory of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, within a 12-months deadline. One year on, the international community has utterly failed to enforce its own call, enabling Israel to continue its unlawful occupation and to carry out genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Passed following the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) advisory opinion resolutely confirming the illegality of Israel's occupation of Palestinians territory  under international law, the UNGA resolution ordered Israel to: withdraw its armed forces from occupied Palestinian territory, which includes Gaza; immediately cease settlement activity and remove settlers from Palestinian land; dismantle sections of the occupation wall that pass through the West Bank; return stolen land and assets from 1967 onwards to Palestinians, including cultural property or that belonging to Palestinian institutions; uphold Palestinian refugees' right to return; and make reparations for the damage and hardship caused by Israel's decades-long unlawful occupation.

Israel was given a transitional period of one year to comply with these demands, which concluded today without any evidence from Israel that they ever intended to comply with the resolution. In fact, Israel's actions over the 12 months – including the intensification of genocide in Gaza, the continued denial of humanitarian aid to the point of famine, and alongside unprecedented levels of state-sponsored settler violence in the West Bank and moves to de jure and de facto annex further Palestinian land, including through the construction of the E1 settlement – indicate that Israel never intended to comply with or give any pretence of adhering to the UNGA's demands.

Al Mezan's Director, Issam Younis, stated his disappointment over the international community's inaction:

Last year, we warned that Israel would ignore this resolution if it was not followed by concrete action by the international community. Today, we witness the grim consequences the world's inaction after decades of occupation and apartheid almost two years of genocide: the IPC has declared a famine in Gaza, Israel is acting on their plan to takeover Gaza City, destroying entire neighbourhoods and forcibly displacing Palestinians, and the worsening human rights conditions for Palestinians living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

When the UNGA passed the resolution in September 2024, Palestinian civil society urged the international community to take immediate and effective measures to enforce the resolution, stating that "the time for symbolic gestures and rhetoric is over." Al Mezan and other Palestinian organizations warned that anything less than concrete action to pressure Israel into adhering to the UNGA's demands would result in Israel's non-compliance.

Mr. Younis stated further:

The failure of the international community to take action and ensure Israel's compliance with the UNGA's resolution is a regretful reminder that Palestinians remain abandoned by the current international legal order. States have a legal and moral obligation to suspend all activities that would prolong Israel's unlawful occupation, whether these are bilateral or multilateral activities through military, economic, and diplomatic ties.

In the year since the UNGA resolution, not to mention after almost two years of genocide, the near-total lack of action by the international community signals an abject failure to uphold the current international legal order. Since last year, only meagre attempts to recognize the State of Palestine have been made, even though these statements of recognition do not meet the level of non-symbolic action required to end Israel's genocide, the unlawful occupation, and the brutal apartheid regime controlling the lives of Palestinians across the occupied territory and in Israel.

Despite intensified calls by Palestinian civil society for the international community to take action, conditions in Gaza are becoming unimaginably worse. Recently, Israel began its campaign to raze Gaza City to the ground, leading to the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the city into uninhabitable areas in  central and southern Gaza. The recent report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel found that Israel is unequivocally committing a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. These conditions are leading to the forcible transfer of Palestinians en masse as they threats by Israel to leave their homes or be killed, the destruction of entire neighborhoods, an ongoing genocide, and famine.

Al Mezan reiterates that States' inaction in spite of their obligation to prevent Israel's genocide of Palestinians constitutes complicity, and further stresses that complicity in Israel's international crimes extends to the failure to uphold the UNGA's resolution from last year by not taking action. Al Mezan urges the international community to  finally end their complicity in Israel's international crimes by enforcing this resolution and upholding their obligations under the Genocide Convention.