The chairwoman of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Navi Pillay, accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza with the aim of “destroying the Palestinian people,” stressing that the fire ceases and the liberation The release of hostages and prisoners offers a sign of hope, but cannot reverse the devastation suffered.

“Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, entire communities have been wiped out, and Gaza has been rendered virtually uninhabitable,” Navi Pillay stated in her address to the Third Committee of the General Assembly.

The Chairwoman had submitted a legal analysis to the Committee last month, concluding that the State of Israel is responsible for committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, in contravention of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The report also documents human rights violations related to land and housing, as well as policies aimed at consolidating permanent military control over Gaza and altering its demographic composition.

“Israeli authorities have publicly endorsed plans to deport the population, build settlements, and annex the territory,” Pillay indicated.

Even prior to the ceasefire, The Independent International Commission of Inquiry (IOI) presented a report concluding that, since October 2023, Israeli authorities and the army have committed “four of the five genocidal acts” defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

Diplomacy, used to justify violence

The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967,She warned that the illegal actions and deliberate omissions of numerous states have armed, financed, and protected Israel's militarized apartheid,allowing its colonial project to become genocide. Following the publication of her latest report, Genocide in Gaza: A Collective Crime, Francesca Albanese noted that international diplomacy, intended to preserve peace, has been used to justify violence, dehumanizing Palestinians and legitimizing the Israeli narrative of “self-defense.” I have emphasized that the use of the veto in the Security Council, the delays in recognizing the State of Palestine, and the harassment of states that have appealed to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have contributed to this situation. "Calling for a ceasefire and a peace plan while allowing the occupation and killings to continue is not diplomacy; it is Orwellian double-speak that deprives Palestinians of their agency by imposing unjust and illegal conditions on them," he said. Albanese also denounced that military and commercial ties with Israel have fueled “the machinery of genocide.” I have noted that, in the last four years, the United States has supplied nearly two-thirds of Israel's arms imports, while dozens of other countries maintain exchanges of weapons and military technology.