How the UN Can Act Decisively to End Genocide in Gaza
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel.
One year ago, the United Nations General Assembly demanded that Israel must end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories within 12 months.
The General Assembly voted, by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions, for a strong resolution that not only “demanded” an end to the occupation within a year, but called on all countries to refrain from trade involving Israeli settlements and from transfers of weapons “where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The General Assembly was meeting on September 18, 2024, in an Emergency Special Session, invoking the “Uniting For Peace” principle to act where the UN Security Council has failed to do so. The General Assembly had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation and the legal consequences arising from it, and the new resolution was triggered by the court’s ruling, on July 19, 2024 that the Israeli occupation is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
A year later, Israel has failed to comply with any of the demands of the 124 states. On the contrary. It has escalated its genocide in Gaza by cutting off nearly all food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance; launching relentless bombardments; expanding ground incursions; and displacing virtually the entire population. All over the world, people are calling on leaders and politicians to do whatever it takes to put a stop to this holocaust before it goes any further.
As world leaders gather again in New York for another UN General Assembly beginning on September 9, how will they respond to Israel’s ever-escalating genocide and continued occupation and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem? Grassroots political pressure is building on all of them to turn the strong words in ICJ rulings and UN resolutions into meaningful action to end what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the most flagrant genocide of our time.
Countries have taken individual actions to cut off trade with Israel and cancel weapons contracts. Turkey announced a total trade boycott on August 29, and closed its airspace to Israeli planes and its ports to Israeli ships. Twelve members of the Hague Group, formed to challenge Israeli impunity, have formally committed to banning arms transfers and blocking military-related shipments at their ports. Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the European Union to adopt sanctions on Israel, including suspending the EU-Israel trade deal.
But most of the 124 countries that voted to demand an end to the occupation have done very little to enforce those demands. If they fail to enforce them now, they will only confirm Israel’s presumption that its corrupt influence on US politics still ensures blanket impunity for systematic war crimes.
What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In response to this unconscionable state of affairs, Palestine’s UN representative has formally asked the UN to authorize an international military protection force for Gaza to help with the delivery of humanitarian aid and protect civilians. So has the largest coalition of Palestinian NGOs, PNGO, as well as pro-Palestine groups and leaders such as Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins. There’s a growing global movement calling for the UN General Assembly to take up this request in another Emergency Special Session when it meets this month. That would be well within the authority of the General Assembly in a case like this, where the Security Council has been hijacked by the US abuse of its veto power.
Whether or not this initiative for a protective force succeeds, the truth is that the governments of the world already have countless ways to support Palestine—they simply need to muster the political will to act. Israel is a small country that depends on imports from countries all over the world. It has diversified sources for many essential products, and, although the United States supplies 70% of its weapons imports, many other countries also supply weapons and critical parts of its infernal war machine. Israel’s dependence on complicated international supply chains is the weakest link in its presumption that it can thumb its nose at the world and kill with impunity.
If the large majority of countries that have already voted for an end to the occupation are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign, and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide and starvation of Gaza, and its occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, Israel’s position could quickly become unsustainable.
Two years into a genocide, it is shameful that the world’s governments haven’t already done this, and that their people have to plead, protest, and push them into action through a dense fog of spin and propaganda, while leaders mouth the right words yet keep doing the wrong things.
Many people compare the problem the world faces in Israel to the crisis over apartheid South Africa. The similarity lies not only in their racism, but also in the Western countries’ shameful complicity in their human rights abuses and lack of concern for the lives of their victims. It is surely no coincidence that the United States, with its own history of genocide, slavery, and apartheid, acted as the main diplomatic supporter and military supplier of apartheid South Africa, and now of Israel.
But it took over 30 years, from the first UN arms embargo and oil sanctions in 1963 to the final lifting of UN sanctions in 1994, before UN action helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was not until 1977 that the UN even made its arms embargo binding on all members. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the world cannot wait 30 years for its actions to have an impact. What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
One initiative that will be debated and voted on in the General Assembly is the one advanced by France and Saudi Arabia. In July they hosted a high-level UN conference on the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two State Solution.” But its agenda is weak, and it avoids any strong action to pressure Israel to end the genocide or the occupation.
The first steps the declaration calls for are a ceasefire in Gaza, the restoration of the Palestinian Authority’s control of Gaza, and then the deployment of an international military “stabilization” force. But Israel has already rejected the first two steps, and critics warn that a stabilization force would mean foreign troops deployed in Gaza, not to protect Palestinians from Israeli bombs and bulldozers, but to police them, contain resistance, and reinforce Israeli demands.
Moreover, the declaration contains no enforcement mechanism. Instead, it offers only carrots—promises of recognition, trade, and arms deals—while Israel pays no price for continuing its crimes.
And while the declaration could pave the way for more Western countries to join the 147 countries that already recognize Palestine as an independent state, without concrete pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation, such recognition risks being symbolic at best—and, at worst, may embolden Israel to accelerate its campaign of mass killing, settlement expansion, and annexation before the world can act.
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel, conditioned on ending the genocide in Gaza and the post-1967 occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The arms embargo and economic measures against Israel should be binding on all UN members, with the full support of the UN secretariat, which can provide staff to organize and supervise them, in coordination with UN members. China, the largest supplier of Israeli imports, and Turkey, which was the third largest before it cut off trade with Israel, should both be ready to take leadership roles in a UN boycott and arms embargo. The European Union collectively does even more trade with Israel than China, and has failed to unite against the genocide, but strong UN leadership could help Europe to overcome its divisions and join the campaign.
As for the United States, its role in this crisis, under former President Joe Biden and now under President Donald Trump, is to encourage Israel’s crimes, provide unlimited weapons, veto every Security Council resolution, and oppose every international attempt to end the slaughter. Even as majorities of ordinary Americans now side with the Palestinians and oppose US military support for Israel, the oligarchy that rules America is as guilty of genocide as Israel itself. As the world comes together to confront Israel’s crimes, it will also have to confront the reality that Israel is not acting alone, but in partnership with the United States of America.
Aggressors and bullies get their way by dividing their enemies and picking them off one at a time, as the world has seen the European colonial powers and now the United States do for centuries. What every aggressor or bully fears most is united opposition and resistance.
Israel and the US currently apply huge political pressure against countries and institutions that take action to boycott, sanction, or divest from Israel, as Norway has by its decision to divest its sovereign wealth fund from Caterpillar for supplying bulldozers to demolish homes in Palestine. In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
Recent UN General Assemblies have heard many speeches lamenting the UN’s failure to fulfill its most vital purpose, to ensure peace and security for all, and how the veto power of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council prevents the UN from tackling the world’s most serious problems. If, at this year’s UN General Assembly, the world can come together to confront the holocaust of our time in Gaza, this could mark the birth of a reenergized and newly united UN—one finally capable of fulfilling its intended role in building a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
