Some 167 international organisations have called on states that supply the Israeli occupation forces with weapons and other forms of military assistance to abide by their legal duties and act firmly and urgently to prevent Israel from committing further international crimes and other serious violations of international law. This includes their duties to prevent the crime of genocide. The organisations said that “supplying weapons or military support to Israel may make exporting states complicit in its crimes”.
Since launching its large-scale retaliatory military offensive on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, as well as other unlawful attacks against civilian infrastructure, causing large numbers of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians, through the unlawful use of explosive weapons and white phosphorus.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the Israeli military attacks have killed more than 11,500 people, including 4,710 children and 3,160 women, in addition to 29,800 injured, 70% of them children and women, according to the latest official Palestinian statistics.
The Government Media Office in Gaza announced on Friday that, with the number of casualties increasing daily in the Strip, statistics departments have been unable to finalise an accurate and definitive count of those killed and wounded.
Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, including one million children, remain trapped in extremely harsh conditions and under continuous bombardment. There is no safe place in Gaza, and there is no adequate shelter, food, water, electricity or fuel. UN experts denounced “that the complete siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, accompanied by evacuation orders and the forced displacement of the population, constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and criminal law”. On 27 October, the UN General Assembly affirmed, in a resolution adopted at its emergency session, “the duty under international humanitarian law to ensure that civilians are not deprived of objects indispensable to their survival”.
Statements by officials of the occupation state indicated that “the emphasis of the operation is on damage and not on accuracy“, and they called for “wiping the Gaza Strip off the face of the earth“. In less than a week, the occupation forces dropped about 6,000 bombs, almost the same amount of bombs the United States dropped on Afghanistan over a year.
The statement said: “We are particularly concerned by reports of military attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including attacks on health workers, journalists, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, bakeries, communications infrastructure and areas declared for safe passage. Many of these acts may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law, including incitement to commit acts of genocide.”
On 19 October 2023, UN human rights experts said they were sounding the alarm that there is an ongoing campaign by Israel resulting in crimes against humanity in Gaza. They noted that, considering the statements made by Israeli political leaders and their allies, accompanied by military action in Gaza and the escalation of arrests and killings in the West Bank, there is a risk of genocide against the Palestinian people, stressing that there are no justifications or exceptions for such crimes. They expressed their dismay at the international community’s inaction in the face of incitement to war.
In addition to the violent bombardment Gaza is witnessing, the occupation forces have escalated their repressive campaigns and collective punishment against the Palestinian people on both sides of the Green Line. Between 7 October and 2:00 p.m. on 5 November 2023, Israeli occupation forces and settlers in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, killed 149 Palestinians, including 44 children. Furthermore, the Knesset’s National Security Committee continued “the government’s broader plan to arm Jewish Israeli civilians” by relaxing Israel’s gun controls and making an additional 400,000 Jewish Israelis eligible for a licence to carry weapons.
Continued Supply of Weapons to the Occupation
Amid these attacks, and despite the documentation and reporting of grave violations and crimes against the Palestinian population over the years, the supply of weapons and military support to Israel has continued from the United States, the largest single provider of military aid to Israel for decades, and from Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, states parties to the Arms Trade Treaty. At its 2021 special session on the grave human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, the UN Human Rights Council urged all states to refrain from transferring arms when they assess that there is a clear risk that such arms will be used to commit serious violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law.
The organisations expressed their concern about reports that some states, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, have decided in recent days to supply additional military equipment or to speed up the supply of military equipment to Israel, despite sufficient evidence of war crimes being committed in Gaza.
The signatories to the statement recalled that, under customary international law, as codified in the International Law Commission’s 2001 Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, a state that aids or assists another state in the commission of an internationally wrongful act is internationally responsible for doing so if: (a) that state does so with knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act; and (b) the act would be internationally wrongful if committed by that state (Article 16).
The statement also addressed international humanitarian law: Common Article (1) of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 places on states a permanent obligation “to respect and to ensure respect for” the protection of the Conventions in all circumstances. The International Committee of the Red Cross explains in its official commentary on Common Article (1) that the obligation set out in Article (1) requires, among other things, that “states refrain from transferring weapons if there is an expectation, based on facts or knowledge of past patterns, that the weapons would be used to violate the Conventions”.
The European Union Is Obliged to Stop Exporting Weapons to the Occupation
The signatories to the statement considered that European Union member states are also bound by the provisions of Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP of 8 December 2008, which defines common rules governing the control of exports of military technology and equipment, and must, among other things, “deny an export licence if there is a clear risk that the military technology or equipment to be exported might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law”.
Members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, including the United States, must also abide by the OSCE Principles Governing Conventional Arms Transfers (the OSCE Principles) in their arms export decisions. Principle (4) requires states “to promote, and to exercise, through an effective national control mechanism, due restraint in the transfer of conventional arms and related technology”. In order to implement this principle, states “will take into account” a number of factors when considering any proposed arms export. They are therefore required to avoid any transfers that would violate any or all of the OSCE criteria contained in the OSCE Principles.
The statement added: “It is clear that the continued supply of arms exports and military assistance to Israel constitutes a violation of all these obligations. Over the years, the unconditional and internationally unlawful military support for Israel has enabled, facilitated and entrenched Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole over the decades.”
Criminal Responsibility for Senior Officials
The statement explained that “failing to take any action that may make states parties complicit in internationally wrongful acts by aiding or abetting the commission of international crimes may lead to individual criminal responsibility for senior officials in these states for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity under Article 25 (3) (c) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Given the overwhelming evidence, states that provide weapons and other military assistance to Israel cannot claim to be unaware of the countless grave violations of international law that have been committed for decades. Providing military equipment and military support to Israel in the knowledge that it is likely to be used in grave violations of international law, including international crimes, invites charges of complicity.”
The statement continued: “As Israel continues to import weapons, with more than $4 billion a year from the United States and Germany alone, it has also established itself as a leader in the cybersecurity and surveillance industry and is among the world’s largest arms exporters, ranking tenth in 2022. Such technologies are often marketed as having been successfully tested on the Palestinian population in the context of Israel’s prolonged occupation, during which they were also often developed. Our organisations therefore call on states to end the import of weapons and surveillance technology from Israel and to denounce it.”
Imposing an Embargo on Arms Supplies to the Occupation and on Military Cooperation
The signatories to the statement called for immediate measures by states, saying that imposing a two-way embargo on arms supplies to the Israeli occupation is both a legal and a moral obligation. Pending this embargo, all states must immediately stop all transfers of military materiel and related services and assistance to Israel. States parties to the Arms Trade Treaty must immediately end current transfers to Israel of conventional arms, ammunition, parts and components referred to in Articles 2 (1), 3 and 4 of the Treaty and prohibit them in the future.
In addition to imposing a two-way embargo on arms transfers, the statement continued that states must refrain from concluding any military cooperation agreements, including military training and operational intelligence cooperation, that may implicate them in international crimes and other serious violations of international law.
The organisations also addressed their demands to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and other states that allow the continued supply of weapons and other forms of military support to Israel, calling on them to stop these supplies immediately in fulfilment of their duties under international law, and to immediately stop providing any materials, equipment or other goods that may be expected to be used in committing serious violations of international law, including war crimes. They also demanded that states importing weapons and surveillance technology from Israel immediately stop all such imports, and that transit states refuse the use of their ports and airports to transfer weapons to Israel.
