ICAHD Director Jeff Halper was invited to speak at the Gaza Tribunal Final Session in Istanbul 23-26 October. His address to participants and members of the jury on the first day was titled ‘Crimes against Palestinian people: ‘Indicting Zionist Settler Colonialism’ and formed part of the Tribunal’s focus on the Root Causes of genocide drawing on expert opinion on the Nakba as a legal concept, capitalism and structural dynamics behind the genocide, apartheid as a denial of self-determination and Zionist Settler Colonisation and Racism.
Also in attendance at the Tribunal were ICAHD UK’s director Linda Ramsden and executive member, Sue Ball. They promoted the work of ICAHD, spoke with journalists, were interviewed for international tv and shot short videos especially for ICAHD members and supporters.
Here is a selection:
Ramzy Baroud
Wesam Amer
Sena Polat
Osama Alostta
Natalia Al Qawaami
The President of the Gaza Tribunal was Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur who spent years documenting Israeli abuses in the occupied territories. ICAHD was shocked to learn that Richard Falk, 95, and his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, were detained and questioned for more than four hours at Toronto Pearson airport on Thursday 13 November (report from Al Jazeera).
On the 17 November the U.N. Security Council adopted Trump’s Peace Plan for Gaza which provides a legal U.N. Mandate for the Trump’s administration’s vision of how to move past ‘the cease-fire’ and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war. The U.S. resolution calls for an International Stabilisation Force to enter, demilitarise and govern Gaza. The proposal also calls for a ‘Board of Peace’, though it does not clarify the composition of the board or clarify under whose authority the stabilisation forces would operate. There are many uncertainties in play as Israeli strikes continue in Gaza and settler violence erupts across the West Bank. A commentator spoke to Mondoweiss ‘It is a renewal of the Israeli occupation. The UN is rewarding us (Palestinians) with a new occupation’.