Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei
Al-Jazeera / July 25, 2024
After the court’s landmark July 19 opinion on the occupation, the Israeli regime can no longer expect to avoid global condemnation by targeting and silencing UN experts.
In recent weeks, the Israeli regime has accelerated its attacks on the core institutions and valued representatives of the United Nations in an effort to conceal the truth about its countless international and humanitarian law violations in Gaza and the rest of the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
In addition to continuing with its longstanding policy of accusing the UN and its agencies of bias and even “complicity in terror” for criticizing its illegal occupation and supporting the internationally recognized rights of the longsuffering Palestinian people, the Zionist regime also launched a personal attack against the UN’s much respected Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, Francesca Albanese.
The regime and its supporters baselessly accused Special Rapporteur Albanese of anti-Israel bias, anti-Semitism and financial improprieties merely because she honourably fulfilled her duty, defended a vulnerable population, exposed Zionist atrocities in Gaza, and demanded that those blatantly violating the human rights of the Palestinians are held to account.
Throughout her mandate, which began in May 2022, the special rapporteur tirelessly highlighted the crimes the Israeli regime has long been committing in the territories it illegally occupies, defended the human rights of Palestinians, including their right to self-determination, and supported all her reports and statements with scientific data from the ground and credible legal arguments. She defined Israel as an apartheid state and in a March 2024 report said that Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza amounts to genocide. She also repeatedly emphasized the need for Palestine to be recognized as a sovereign state and Israel to be officially designated as an occupying regime for the human rights violations in Palestine to come to an end.
Her position has always been clear: Palestinians have been living under the Zionist regime’s illegal, violent occupation for more than 50 years, deprived of their freedom of movement and denied access to their most basic rights and natural resources. The international community must take immediate action to end the regime’s apartheid practices and ethnic cleansing. It should enforce international norms and urgently act to defend the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
Israel has been pointing to these stances when mounting its accusations of bias against Special Rapporteur Albanese. However, everything she has stated about Palestine is supported by leading international scholars, prominent NGOs, and recently, were explicitly approved by the International Court of Justice – the world’s highest judicial body.
Indeed, in its landmark advisory opinion issued on July 19, 2024, on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”, the World Court ruled that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”. And it further affirmed the rights of Palestinians who have endured decades of systematic human rights violations as a result of this unlawful occupation.
The court not only recognized the Israeli regime’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and persecution of a defenceless people as a clear threat to international peace and security but also officially acknowledged the fact that the Zionist regime is committing the crime of racial discrimination and apartheid against Palestinians.
The advisory opinion was also a vindication of the work many other UN officials and special rapporteurs have done on the occupation in the past and a rebuke of the Israeli regime’s attacks against them.
Indeed, Special Rapporteur Albanese is hardly the first UN official targeted, maligned and prevented from efficiently fulfilling their mandate by the Israeli regime for the “crime” of exposing Israeli atrocities and standing up for the rights of the Palestinian people.
The regime, for example, levelled accusations of anti-Israel bias at and persistently denied entry to Albanese’s predecessor, Michael Lynk, who was the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory between 2016-2022. Like Albanese, Lynk had equated illegal Israeli settlements to a war crime, accused Israel of apartheid practices against the Palestinians and called on economic sanctions on the Israeli regime. Richard Falk, who held the same role between 2008 and 2014 was also barred from entering the occupied territories for speaking the truth and exposing the regime’s unlawful practices. Makarim Wibisono, another former UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (2014-2016), meanwhile, was forced to resign from the position before completing his mandate due to Israeli pressure.
The regime’s efforts to evade scrutiny and accountability for its widespread human rights violations by targeting UN officials performing their duties was not limited to the targeting of special rapporteurs either. It also routinely denied access to UN fact-finding missions tasked with examining the human rights situation in the occupied territories.
In 2020, the Israeli regime refused to renew the visas of staff members of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and consequently expelled 15 international OHCHR staff members from the occupied territories.
After consequent requests for visas by the office were ignored for two years, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a statement in August 2022 condemning the regime’s behaviour. “Israel’s treatment of our staff is part of a wider and worrying trend to block human rights access to the occupied Palestinian territory,” she said. “This raises the question of what exactly the Israeli authorities are trying to hide.”
Looking at the Israeli regime’s long history of preventing the UN’s human rights officials from accessing the occupied territories, makes it clear that its ongoing accusations against UN agencies and Special Rapporteur Albanese are merely a continuation of a long term policy of inflicting costs on officials and experts exposing its crimes. The aim of this strategy is to evade punishment for blatant violations of international law and prevent the international community from rising against this criminal regime in support of the Palestinian people.
The ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion published on July 19, however, ensured that this strategy can no longer yield the intended results. After the World Court made its position on the issue clear, and declared the Israeli occupation unlawful and the regime’s treatment of Palestinians unacceptable, efforts to silence and intimidate UN special rapporteurs can no longer shield Israel’s criminal behaviour from international attention and condemnation.
It should be added that the ICJ, in its advisory opinion, has placed the responsibility for ending the Israeli regime’s flagrant violations of international law on the United Nations and all its member states. This is a serious wake-up call, especially for governments that have had made it their clear and open policy to defend the Zionist regime’s ongoing crimes, which the World Court clearly said must be stopped immediately. The countries that have not listened to Special Rapporteur Albanese and her predecessors in the past better start paying attention and act accordingly now that the ICJ has officially reached the same conclusions on Israel’s occupation as they did.
Indeed, all states and international organizations have a duty to react and express unequivocal condemnation in the face of a state’s blatant breach of international law and attacks on the UN and its representatives, like Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. The consequence of neglecting this important matter any longer, especially after the ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion, will be the further weakening of the credibility of the current supposedly rules-based world order.
Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei – full professor of law at Tehran University and Head of Iran’s Constitutional Council’s Research Institute
