Now that Israel’s economy has turned genocidal, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has called on all states to immediately suspend all ties with Israel.
Albanese was one of the speakers at the inauguration of the “Emergency Conference,” jointly convened by Colombia and South Africa, co-chairs of the Hague Group.
Over 30 countries from around the world gathered in Bogotá, Colombia, for an unprecedented multilateral conference to discuss coordinated measures to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its illegal occupation of Palestine, and to support Palestinian self-determination.
The Hague Group was launched on 31 January with the aim of pursuing “coordinated legal and diplomatic measures” in defense of international law and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Hague Group initially began with nine member nations: Colombia, South Africa, Belize, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal.
Albanese said as a European, she said she felt a “wrenching sorrow inside me,” noting that the European Union has decided not to suspend its ties with Israel.
“Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid while the majority openly cheers and calls for more, remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom,” Albanese said.
She said it was not the law that has failed or faltered, but rather political will that has been abdicated.
SMread: Handala Sails for Gaza, Defying Blockade
Albanese called for support of the Hague Group as it represented not just a coalition but a “new moral center in world politics”.
She said each state should immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel as a whole, and do so as a matter of urgency.
“As I argue in my last report to the HRC, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation, and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its longstanding policies and economy of occupation,” she said.
“Now that economy has turned genocidal. There is no good Israel, bad Israel.”
Albanese has received widespread support globally following sanctions imposed by the United States as a result of her work documenting human rights abuses and strong calls for the end to Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Her most recent report to the Human Rights Council identifies forty-eight separate corporate actors along with their parent companies, subsidiaries, franchisees, licensees, and consortium partners spanning sectors such as weapons manufacturing, technology, finance, construction, and energy, that are profiteering from Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide in Gaza.
The report also revealed the names of companies supplying F-35s, drones, and targeting technology that enabled 85,000 tons of bombs to be dropped on Gaza- six times the amount dropped on Hiroshima, the UN revealed.
Albanese’s report calls for a full arms and trade embargo by member states and urges holding corporate entities accountable for human rights violations.
She will present expert testimony to the participating states, joining other UN Special Rapporteurs in briefings that will inform coordinated legal and diplomatic measures.
SMread: A Bosnian Genocide Survivor Tells Her Story
Speaking at the inauguration of the conference, South Africa’s Director-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Zane Dangor said the Hague Group was formed “with a view to hold all states accountable for breaches of international law and to protect the integrity of the international legal regime.”
“As the humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate, we are witnessing continued and urgent calls from the UN member states and the international community for a ceasefire in Gaza. This meeting is another urgent call for the genocide to end and for the international community to act collectively.”
Despite these calls, impunity continues unabated, Dangor added, saying that now was the time to end Israel’s institutional impunity, which it has enjoyed for over five decades.
“We seek to stop the bloodshed. We want an immediate ceasefire and we want negotiations towards a just peace. A just peace requires justice and this does require that international law must be respected,” Dangor said.
Ahead of the conference, Colombian President Gustavo Petro described the conference as an effort “to move from condemnation to collective action.”
Petro’s Vice Foreign Minister, Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir said: “The Palestinian genocide threatens our entire multilateral system.”
Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Riyad Mansour said: “As we meet today, two million Palestinians in Gaza – half of them children – are deliberately starved of food and water, bombed, denied medicine, and forcibly displaced. But there is no shortage of weapons flowing in to maintain the slaughter; no shortage of companies making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from the genocide and devastation.”
He said accountability alone is not enough for justice to prevail in Palestine.
“We must deconstruct the regime of illegal colonial occupation and apartheid to ensure that the current horrifying crimes do not repeat. The best and most assured way to protect the Palestinian people from more crimes is their freedom.”
The two-day conference which began on Tuesday at the Palacio San Carlos in downtown Bogotá will bring together delegates with renowned international experts, UN officials, and Palestinian organisations, before moving into a closed-door session to deliberate on concrete measures.
The conference will conclude on Wednesday with a mass demonstration in Plaza Bolívar in support of the newly formed Hague Group.
Image credit: Progressive International
