OPINION - UN General Assembly's deadline on Palestine: What comes next?

• The author is a UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and a professor of law and development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

ISTANBUL

As the one-year deadline of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) [1] looms imminent on Sept. 17 for the full withdrawal of Israel from all illegal settlements in occupied Palestine, one must ask: what will, can and must be done if the deadline passes without any meaningful change to the catastrophic status quo? What will become of Palestinians, especially of those in Gaza, now subject to a brutal frontal assault on Gaza city, facing genocidal apocalypse? What will become of international order, global rule of law, and UN institutions facing their gravest crisis since their founding?

A landmark resolution

The resolution adopted [2] by the UNGA one year ago is itself a landmark document. Not only is it clear, detailed and specific about what actions must be taken by Israel, other states and the UN system; it is also the most detailed and robust action by the UNGA on the Palestinian situation since at least the 1980s. Indeed, during recent decades since the end of the Cold War, the GA’s engagement with the Palestinian question has been much less frequent and episodic compared to the decades preceding it. Therefore, the resolution adopted in 2024 was the landmark in the breadth, and the specificity of its demands:

• Israel to end its occupation of Palestine and withdraw its forces and illegal settlements to comply with the historic decision of the ICJ in 2024 within one year of the adoption of the resolution,
  
  
• Repeal all measures and laws that discriminate against Palestinians and that change the demographic composition of Palestine,
  
  
• Return land, make reparation and allow return of Palestinians,
  
  
• Immediately comply with ICJ’s provisional measures in the Genocide case to ensure protection of the people in Gaza,
  
  
• Not impede the exercise of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.

The resolution called on other states to impose sanctions, arms embargoes and trade embargoes against Israel and the products originating from occupied Palestine, hold their own nationals and other individuals to account for crimes, not to recognize any actions taken by Israel to alter the status, territory or people of Palestine, ensure compliance with international humanitarian law and end systemic discrimination in Palestine.

Israel's escalation and non-compliance

Unfortunately, virtually none of these demands have been met by Israel or by most other states: in fact, Israel’s non-compliance has only increased. The genocidal assault on Gaza has only intensified with its human toll now reaching historic proportions: 230,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or injured -- including thousands of children, many of whom were burned or crushed under rubble, while 2.1 million, almost the entire population of Gaza, are starving and are homeless.

While committing genocide in Gaza and completing its annexation of the West Bank, Israel has found it possible to attack six Arab countries, including Qatar, where it even attempted to kill peace negotiators. On the same day of the attack against Qatar, Israel signaled a new phase of its assault on Gaza, with a displacement order for some one million people to leave Gaza City, without necessary provision for their safety and security, while systematically destroying residential buildings and towers. Meanwhile, the Israeli government simultaneously approved the so-called E1 "Maale Adumim" project near East Jerusalem thus cutting the West Bank in half, with the Israeli prime minister openly declaring that this move was intended to fulfil the government’s promise to stop the creation of a Palestinian state.

These measures come on top of other extraordinary efforts to complete the permanent annexation of Palestinian land, farms and orchards. To give one recent example, the Israeli government recently informed its High Court, in a case [3] filed by the Israeli human rights NGO, HaMoked, that it intends to permanently ban the entry of Palestinian farmers into the so-called “seam zone” (the area between the separation wall and the green line), thus barring them access to their own lands. These incremental land grabbing measures are done without fanfare and become facts on the ground which complete Israel’s long project of annexation through occupation.

What states must do?

Collectively, these measures, and the entrenchment of Israeli rule over the whole of Palestine, raise a fundamental question: what will, can, and must be done by other states now on the eve of the one year deadline of the UNGA? And what will become of the international order, rule of law and the UN system?

States must immediately, both individually and collectively, impose sanctions and embargoes against Israel and enforce them within their own territories. They must formally insist to Switzerland, as the convening authority under the Geneva Conventions, for a Conference of States Parties to impose meaningful measures against Israel, its generals, soldiers and leaders. They must invoke their authority to act forcibly under the Uniting for Peace Resolution at the UNGA, and consider unseating Israel through the credentials process as the UNGA did in 1974 against apartheid South Africa. States must suspend all trade and investment with Israel, and boycott all events, including academic or sporting events where Israel participates, as was done with apartheid South Africa. Indeed, the global solidarity against apartheid South Africa tremendously buttressed the heroic resistance of the people of South Africa against apartheid which led to its collapse. There is no reason why the current racist regime in Israel, which has proved to be an enormous threat to world peace and security, and a gross violator of human rights, cannot be transformed in a similar manner. Without confronting Israel’s outlaw behavior, states are faced with the prospect of the breakdown of law and order in the international system, and the obsolescence of the UN itself.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.