The Legal and International Advocacy Committee and International Commission to support Palestinian rights calls upon the international community to shoulder their moral and legal responsibilities to stop the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and to protect civilians

Ref: 76/2019

Date: 14/11/2019

Timing: 11:00 local time

The Legal and International Advocacy Committee and International Commission to support Palestinian rights calls upon the international community to shoulder their moral and legal responsibilities to stop the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and to protect civilians

The Legal and International Advocacy Committee  and ICSPR of the Great Return and Siege Breaking Marches follows with great condemnation and concern the Israeli occupation forces escalation of its military operations in the Gaza Strip, which began at Tuesday dawn, 12 November 2019, by assassinating the citizen: Bahaa Abu al-Atta (42 years) Commander of the Eastern Province in Al-Quds Brigades “The armed wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine”, and his wife and injuring his children, in same time of targeting the house of the Islamic Jihad leader, Mr. Akram Al-Ajouri, in the Syrian capital Damascus, killing his son, these crimes was followed by the shelling of a number of civilian facilities, apartments and residential buildings by the Israeli Air Force, including the headquarters of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Gaza City.

Since the early hours of Tuesday dawn until the moment, the committee has followed with condemnation the policies, crimes and serious violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces over the past three days, which resulted in the martyrdom of (26) Palestinians, including a woman, three children, and the injury of some 111 citizens, including at least 46 children and 20 women. In addition to the destruction of a number of civilian facilities, apartments and agricultural land. Furthermore, the continuation of the aggression for the third day in a row, disrupted all schools and universities, and many governmental and civilian institutions, and thus disrupt the interests of citizens and affect their various rights. The Israeli occupation forces also continued to close the Kerem Shalom Crossing “east of Rafah”, which is the only commercial crossing in the Gaza Strip, and Beit Hanoun / Erez crossing for individuals, contrary to the obligations imposed by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War on the Occupation state as an Occupying Power.

The Legal and International Advocacy Committee and ICSPR considers that this escalation is a violation of international law and that the Israeli occupation authorities bear the consequences, and warns that the current military attacks are a prelude to a wider aggression that only the Palestinian citizen will pay dearly for, and warns of the silence on the Israeli crimes committed against the demonstrators, which constitutes a green light for the Israeli occupation forces to continue the bloodshed of civilians, and calls on the international community to act urgently to undermine Israeli plans based on the law of the jungle at the expense of the rule of law and justice. The Committee believes that the appropriate response to the current Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip, is working to build a Palestinian strategy based on the internationalization of the conflict and the restoration of national unity, and stresses that the continuation of the Israeli occupation forces to commit their crimes against the citizens of the Gaza Strip and their civilian properties would not have occurred without the policy of international silence, and that the continued targeting of Palestinian civilians in general, and the residents of the Gaza Strip in particular, is a war crime described and fully-fledged in accordance with the standards of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the Permanent International Criminal Court in The Hague. Therefore, the Legal and International Advocacy Committee demands the following:

• The Legal and International Advocacy Committee ICSPR condemns and deplores the cowardly assassination of Palestinian leader Bahaa Abu al-Atta and his wife, the destruction of his home and the injury of his children as a full-fledged war crime, it also condemns the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the targeting of civilians and civilian properties, and affirms that the continuation of the Israeli occupation to launch specific strikes on populated areas on the basis of mass retaliation constitutes grave breaches of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, amounting to war crimes. The committee confirms that all the justifications and claims of the occupation state that it is exercising its right to self-defense are false and illegal, as this right does not belong to the occupation state, but it is the right of the occupied territories by a resolution of the Security Council, a right for the national liberation movements to defend their people and their right to self-determination under Article 51 of the UN Charter and Protocol I annexed to the 1977 Geneva Convention.
• The Committee and ICSPR affirms that the Israeli occupation forces deliberately kill and injure civilians and destroy civilian properties, with disregard for the human rights system and international humanitarian law, which requires proportionality, discrimination and necessity, and considers the new measures of the siege as a form of collective punishment and reprisals by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian civilians, and the extrajudicial killing of the martyr Abu al-Atta and the rest of the martyrs came within the framework of the implementation of a systematic plan, and a political decision of the highest levels in the Israeli occupation state.
• The Committee and ICSPR condemns the United States’ statements and policies supporting the Israeli occupation, as well as the statements of some European countries that equate the victim and the executioner and calls on all governments in the world to stand with the victims of human rights violations, and give a primacy of humanitarian and legal considerations over political considerations of the international system.
• The Committee and ICSPR calls upon the United Nations, the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, parliamentary unions, all international human rights organizations and the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention to carry out their moral and legal responsibilities to stop the aggression and crimes of the occupation in the Gaza Strip.
• The Committee and ICSPR calls upon the international community “States and organizations” to urgently act to effectively counter Israeli-US campaigns to liquidate UNRWA in the Near East by ensuring the renewal of its mandate under Resolution 302.
• The Committee and ICSPR  calls on the international community to end decades of occupation as a precondition for the return of decent life of the Palestinian civilian population, until then, the unjust siege imposed on the Gaza Strip for 13 years must be lifted and end the suffering of more than 2 million people.
• The Committee and ICSPR renews its call for an extraordinary session of the Human Rights Council to ensure the formation of an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against and ICSPR  civilians during the current aggression on the Gaza Strip.
• The Committee affirms its follow-up to inform the ICC Prosecutor of the facts about these crimes, and reiterates its call on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to break down the overrated neutrality barriers and achieve justice for the victims, stop the impunity that encourages the occupation authorities to continue to commit their crimes and to open a criminal investigation into the alleged Israeli crimes in the Palestinian cause.
• The Committee and ICSPR calls on the Palestinian parties to meet in order to reflect, draw up, build and implement a national strategy based on the internationalization of the conflict and activate the paths of accountability and boycott of the occupation to ensure the narrowing of the space of impunity of the occupation leaders, and urges the Palestinian leadership to activate the use of the principle of international jurisdiction to prosecute occupation leaders and resort to the United Nations General Assembly to issue a resolution to protect the Palestinian people and boycott and impose sanctions on the occupation state, and refer the files of war crimes and crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court under Article 14, which will ensure that the leaders of the occupation do not go unpunished, activate the advisory opinion of the Court of Justice in The Hague, join the meaningful international organizations and agreements, and hold the countries of the world responsible for the Israeli occupation daily violations and crimes.
• The Legal and International Advocacy Committee and ICSPR demands the President and the Government to immediately stop the punitive measures against the Gaza Strip, and support the steadfastness of citizens, and calls on the national components of the Palestinian society to work hard to restore national unity on the basis of the implementation of the agreements of reconciliation and political partnership in order to ensure presidential and legislative elections, while ensuring the freedom and integrity of elections and respecting their results, in order to rebuild the institutions of the political system on a national democratic basis.
• The Committee and ICSPR affirms the right of our people to resist the occupation in all forms, and calls upon the international community, international organizations and solidarity movements with the Palestinian people, and the Palestinians in all gatherings to act at all legal, political, diplomatic, human rights and popular levels in order to provide international protection for Palestinians and stop the Israeli escalation, aggression, lift the siege, and protect the peaceful demonstrators in the return marches, and work to boycott and isolate the Israeli occupation state, stop the crimes of colonial settlement and racial discrimination and Judaizing Jerusalem and ensure renewing the mandate of UNRWA until implementing right of return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with resolution 194.