Source: Al-Haq

While the ongoing Israeli, US – backed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is entering its third year, the United States (US), rather than end its complicity with Israel, has imposed sanctions against Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) – the leading human rights organisations working on international criminal accountability for perpetrators of atrocity crimes in Palestine.

Since Israel’s breach and rejection of the ceasefire, and resumption of aerial bombardments on Gaza, Israel has escalated its mass killings (at least 50,810 Palestinians have been killed and 115,688 injured since 7 October 2023), mass forced displacements, and total destruction and annihilation of Gaza. Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza seeking their total erasure in what has been described as “the fastest starvation campaign in modern history”.

This week, our organisations mark a year of shame in which the international community failed to prevent, punish, or put an end to Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. A year full of mourning, grief, and despair, as the international community offers the Palestinian people nothing but empty words.

Our organisations thank South Africa for its leadership in taking the case and commend South Africa’s commitment “to end all acts of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people and to walk with them towards the realisation of their collective right to self-determination, for, as Nelson Mandela momentously declared, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.