Who will stop Israel’s illegal annexations of Palestinian land?

Paris, Ramallah, Gaza, July 5, 2024Israel is accelerating its illegal policy of annexing Palestinian land, reinforced by the impunity enjoyed by all crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). The June annexation alone makes 2024 the year in which Palestinians have lost the most land in more than three decades.

“World leaders need to wake up now because Israel is clearly intent on making Palestine and the Palestinian people disappear. Their passivity has gone from worrying to totally unacceptable. The two-state solution is hardly relevant with continued settlement expansion and land grabs, there is no ongoing process of justice, quite the opposite is happening..” said Issam Younis, General Manager of Al-Mezan.

FIDH and its Palestinian member organisations consider these latest acts of annexation and land grabbing to be war crimes. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from the occupied territory.”

In March 2024, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that the establishment and expansion of settlements amounted to Israel’s transfer of its own civilian population into the occupied territories. “Such transfers constitute a war crime that may give rise to individual criminal responsibility for those involved,” Turk said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council.

“For too long, politicians have turned a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people as a whole, including apartheid, forcible transfer, demographic engineering, pillage and murder, among other crimes. Israeli settlements violate international law, but States parties have done nothing to stop them and put an end to Israel’s crimes and violations..” said Diana Alzeer, FIDH Vice-President and representative of Al-Haq.

With all eyes on Gaza, the newly unveiled annexation plan provides new details of Israel’s strategy to transfer administrative powers from the Israeli military in the West Bank to the civilian authorities of the Israeli government. This confirms once again Israel’s disregard for international law.

FIDH and its Palestinian member organisations call on all States to make every effort to end Israeli colonialism and apartheid and work towards the realisation of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. FIDH and its Palestinian member organisations also call on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against those responsible for the colonisation and forced displacement of the Palestinian people.

Israel must be held accountable for its crimes and the international community must uphold the law without prejudice or discrimination against the Palestinian people. Third states must proactively end all trade agreements and transactions with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise and apply sanctions. The EU-Israel Association Agreement must be suspended.

In the context of the atrocities committed in Gaza, including genocide, all States must suspend all arms transfers to Israel in order to avoid complicity in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. FIDH recalls that nine months after the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, nearly two million Palestinians have been internally displaced one or more times, more than 37,900 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 14,500 children and 9,500 women, and more than 10,000 people have died under the rubble or are missing.