Middle East (Parliament Politics Magazine) – A UN inquiry concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, but Father Elias Mallon warned Security Council weakness may block Genocide Convention action.
Pope Pius XI established CNEWA in 1926 to support the church in the Middle East, India, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. Since then, the organization’s mandate has been broadened by succeeding popes to include aiding all needy peoples in the Middle East.
“Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,”
according to a press release issued on September 16 by the U.N.’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which includes East Jerusalem and Israel.
Israel “categorically rejects distorted and false reports,” which it said “relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods,” according to a statement released by the country’s foreign ministry on September 16.
The commission cited the treaty to claim that those particular actions included “murdering, causing serious bodily or mental harm, intentionally imposing measures intended to prevent births, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part.”
Since the commission stated in its report that there was “no evidence” of “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” “at this time,” the fifth act listed in the convention was not applied.
Established in May 2021, the committee mostly relied on findings from reports it has released since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters invaded Israel, killing almost 1,200 Israelis and taking 251 captives. This information served as the basis for the commission’s legal judgment in the Middle East.
“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,”
said commission chair Navi Pillay in the Sept. 16 press release.
“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
The commission also said that “the events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation,” but were “were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population from their lands and its replacement.”
In an analysis published on CNEWA’s website on September 17, Franciscan Friar of the Atonement Father Mallon stated that although “there is no question” that the Genocide Convention is “crucial in the world today,” its “practical impact” is still “limited by one of the major weaknesses if not the major weakness of the United Nations in general: its inability to enforce.”
He pointed out that Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish jurist who lost 49 members of his own family in the Shoah (the preferred Hebrew term for the Holocaust), had first used the term “genocide” in 1944 to refer to what had previously been “a crime without a name,” as Winston Churchill, the prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, put it.
Lemkin’s creation of the legal term, along with the United Nations’ 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which 153 nations, including the U.S., have so far ratified “came at a point in human history where technology has made genocide easier and more murderously effective than ever before,” said Father Mallon.
“Weapons of mass destruction and modern technology make mass killings easier and less costly for the perpetrators,”
he wrote.
“If we are honest, the difference between a ‘surgical strike’ and genocide is at times little more than the size of the group the attacker wants ‘excised.’”
As the name suggests, the agreement “stresses prevention and punishment,” which Father Mallon emphasized as “a clear indication the convention does not go into effect only after the crime of genocide has been committed.”
He pointed out that in fact, in addition to the actual act of committing genocide, Article III of the treaty also mentions the attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide as crimes.
Yet while
“signatories to the convention are obliged to prosecute and punish genocide that is clearly defined in international law and treaty obligations,”
said Father Mallon,
“since the publication of the convention, there have, nevertheless, been egregious examples of what would be considered genocide, such as the Khmer Rouge in southeast Asia, multiple examples in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, including a growing consensus in the international community that what is happening in Gaza constitutes genocide.”
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, stated on September 11 that a number of European priests and bishops who had signed a petition calling the situation in Gaza genocide “probably found, in what is happening, elements to apply that definition.” Father Mallon cited this statement in his analysis.
“We — for the moment — have not done so yet,”
said the cardinal, adding,
“This remains to be seen. It is necessary to study; the conditions must be exactly met in order to make such a statement.”
However, according to Father Mallon, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have “the total and absolute right of veto,” which limits the 15-member body, which is “the only U.N. body that can legally use coercive force against a member state.”
“There is no mechanism to override such a veto,”
said Father Mallon.
“It is not unheard of for a 14-1 resolution being stopped in its tracks by such a veto.”
He warned,
“With the advances of artificial intelligence and modern weaponry, the real test of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is how to implement an effective and enforceable policy inhibiting one party from extinguishing another.”
What are the potential legal consequences for Israel under international law?
The United Nations inquiry determined Israel to be committing genocide in Gaza, which constitutes a serious violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. States are required to prevent and punish genocide. Israel may be held to account for genocide, which is one of the most serious crimes under international law.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, for purported war crimes and crimes against humanity in respect of their actions in Gaza, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, collective punishments, and blockades creating humanitarian catastrophes.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled Israel’s presence and settlement construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is illegal. Israel is obliged to cease the settlement construction and to provide reparations for the harm it causes.