Press Releases

Open Letter to All UNGA Member States: Arms Embargoes and Sanctions to Stop Israel’s Genocide in Gaza and Aggression in Lebanon

As we approach one year of genocide in the Gaza Strip, Israel has extended its hostile and aggressive acts into Lebanon. This has been made possible by the participation of the United States of America and the complicity of Israel’s other colonial allies. This support for Israel by these powerful states does not exempt nor release other UN member states from acting separately and collectively to impose practical measures in the form of sanctions. Israel and its allies would have stopped the ongoing international crimes in Palestine and Lebanon if other states had acted in accordance with the UN Charter and international law and principles.

BADIL Resource Center and the Global Palestinian Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Network urge all UNGA Member States:

To halt Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, which includes the acts of willful killing, repeated mass forced displacement and transfer, deliberate starvation, the destruction of the healthcare system, and the deliberate infliction of disease, states are obligated to immediately implement two ways arms embargoes and to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions.
To stop Israel’s policies of suppression and fragmentation in the West Bank that include raids, sieges, targeted killings, mass arbitrary arrests and detention, forcible displacement, land confiscation and wanton and willful destruction of homes and infrastructure, states are obligated to immediately impose arms embargoes and sanctions.
To end Israel’s aggressive and hostile acts against Lebanon and its people, which includes mass killing, forcible displacement and destruction, and a wide range of threats to make Lebanon similar to Gaza, states are obligated to immediately implement arms embargoes and sanctions.
To preserve credibility of international law, its mechanisms and the UN system, states are obligated to protect Palestinian refugees and ensure that they receive the aid and services they are entitled to by enabling and safeguarding UNRWA’s mandate, presence and operations, in all its areas of operation, especially in the Gaza Strip.
To protect international bodies and values, to ensure the respect of the rule of law and the rulings of ICJ, especially provisional measures, states are obligated to immediately implement arms embargoes and sanctions.
To enforce the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and return, both of which are being denied by Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime, with the complicity of its colonial allies, states are obligated to immediately implement arms embargoes and sanctions.

In other words, the crimes and atrocities being committed by Israel leave no justification, excuse or alternative for states than to immediately impose arms embargoes and sanctions, as the minimum fulfillment of their obligations under international law.

Anything less is a form of participation and/or complicity in the innumerable Israeli crimes and atrocities being committed against the Palestinian and Lebanese Peoples.