At today`s HIC General Assembly, Members issued the following statement of solidarity with the Indigenous Palestinian People and demanded their government uphold their obligations to end complicity with Israel.
Global demand that States uphold their obligations to end complicity with Israel’s violation of Palestinians’ rights
The members of Habitat International Coalition, unite in this demand to end the genocide being carried out by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the longstanding apartheid occupation imposed across Palestine by Israeli forces. Over one year on from the beginning of its attacks on Gaza, Israel has killed some 45.000 Palestinians, as well as crushed and entombed another estimated 10,000 under the rubble. Indirect deaths due to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water, sanitation, agricultural and medical infrastructure and institutions are estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Israeli forces have forcibly displaced 1.9 million Gazans, most repeatedly, denying adequate humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians and leading to starvation levels that could reach 345,000 people suffering acute levels of starvation. Israeli settlers in Jerusalem and the West Bank have brutally attacked Palestinian inhabitants, their habitat and livelihoods under cover of the Israeli police and occupation army. Meanwhile, Israeli state institutions, including the Jewish National Fund, persist in forcibly evicting, demolishing and dispossessing Palestinian citizens in the southern Naqab region.
We welcome the UN General Assembly’s recent nonbinding resolutions demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, respect for the mandate of UNRWA, and proposing a mechanism to follow up on Israel’s apartheid practices. However, the international community of States has mostly stood as witness, without taking effective measures to bring about an end to the current situation. For such, we unite here to call on our respective States to carry out concrete actions toward a cease-fire in Gaza and the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
We demand that our representatives:
- Cease any direct or indirect import / export, or facilitate trade in weapons and matériel to Israel;
- Meet their legal obligation to end the illegal situation by imposing sanctions to Israel in response to the violations of international law, including peremptory norms;
- Demand a cease-fire in Palestine and the application of human rights obligations
- Respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, including the distribution of food, water and hygiene products through humanitarian channels, led by UNRWA.
As an international coalition of civil society organizations, we assert the power of international mobilization and solidarity where our governments have failed. We call on individuals also to loudly denounce and oppose Israel’s crimes and mobilize for Palestinian freedom also by joining the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. This call is issued by the joint deliberation of our Members reunited in-person in November 2024 and builds-upon previous manifestos and mobilizations by other civil society networks such as the one issued by ESCR-net and many others.
However, as a coalition focused on the promotion and protection of human rights related to habitat, in particular housing and land rights, we take this opportunity to call attention to the manner in which Israel has been systematically violating such rights of the Indigenous Palestinian People. These habitat rights amount to the very heart of the Zionist colonial project, including invasion, acquisition of territory through force and deception, violent depopulation and dispossession that Israeli settlers and Zionist institutions have carried-out over decades, arriving at the current situation in which Israel forces target the destruction of the Indigenous People’s homes, shelters and shelter seekers to advance the ongoing genocide. As denounced by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, “domicide” should be recognized as both a war crime and a crime against humanity, as in this clear case.
Under the firm belief that the fight for Palestinian liberation is at the core of the global fight for human rights, we stand in solidarity with the Indigenous Palestinian People in their struggle for self-determination, dignity, justice and reparations.
Habitat International Coalition, December 2024
