Today, our delegation — co-convened by the Progressive International, the National Lawyers Guild of the United States, and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers — concludes its investigation of Israel’s systematic violations of international law with a clear, concrete, and urgent call to governments across the globe: now is the time for a total energy, economic and arms embargo against Israel. Nothing less can detain the genocide of the Palestinian people and dismantle the architecture of apartheid in their Occupied Territories.

On 28 October 2024, an emergency international delegation landed in Palestine to amplify evidence of the Israeli regime’s systematic violations of international law since the start of its genocide in Gaza one year ago. The delegation brought together legal experts, human rights defenders, and parliamentary representatives to hear witness testimony, conduct site visits, and gather evidence of these violations of international law. Over the course of a week in the field, the delegation met a wide range of civil society organisations, political representatives, and local communities to compile a wide-ranging set of findings about the conditions of the Occupied Territories and their changes since October 2023.

The delegation found clear evidence of what Palestinian citizens and organisations have been telling the world for years: Israel relies on systematic violations of international law against the Palestinian people to advance its project of settler colonialism.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza — coupled with he systematic nature of the Israel’s abusive and illegal practices across the Occupied Territories— speak to a concerted effort to collectively punish, humiliate, dehumanize, and break the will of the Palestinian people.

The Israeli regime’s actions recall the worst historical abuses committed by colonial powers against indigenous populations seeking their liberation — from the concentration camps used by Britain against the national liberation movement in Kenya to the internment of millions of Algerians by France.

Any government providing arms, energy, economic, or diplomatic support to Israel is complicit in these crimes against humanity — and threatens the basic integrity of the international order.

The Israeli regime must urgently be subject to total isolation on all fronts — economic, military, cultural, political, and diplomatic — to lay the groundwork for the end of the genocide, and the dismantling of the colonial occupation in Palestine.

Download, read and share the full report from the delegation here.

Latest from the Movement

Two ships carrying weapons for Israel barred from Spain

On Monday, the Progressive International and the Palestine Youth Movement produced explosive new evidence that revealed tonnes of Israeli military cargo transiting through Spanish ports on Maersk ships — despite the suspension announced by its Government. The findings were covered in detail in the Spanish and US press and led to huge pressure on the Spanish government from civil society groups, like RESCOP, and from across the Spanish political left.

On Thursday, the Spanish government announced, via a story in El Pais, that it would bar two Maersk shipping containers, likely containing weapons for Israel, from docking as planned in the port of Algeciras. Both ships, the Maersk Denver and the Maersk Seletar, are in the Atlantic heading towards the straights of Gibraltar. Their replacement destination is currently unknown.

The PI, PYM and RESCOP have also raised the alarm about an empty Maersk container ship, the Nysted Maersk, which is heading to Algeciras from Casablanca. The groups have demanded the Spanish government bar the ship from use of its ports as it is believed it will pick up weapons from the port and take them to Israel.

Turkish Government usurps democratically-elected municipalities

This week the Turkish government continued its attacks on Kurdish democracy through the usurpation of the Mardin, Batman and Urfa Halfeti municipalities, which were governed by the opposition DEM party. The party wrote in a statement, published by the PI, that “besieging municipalities and undermining local governments, turning them into virtual police outposts, is a stark declaration that the democratic legitimacy of the current political regime has come to an end.”

BP, SOCAR, stop fuelling genocide

Energy Embargo for Palestine, Filistin İçin Bin Genç and Global Energy Embargo for Palestine are issuing a call to action to groups around the world to act and apply pressure on the actors complicit in fuelling the Israeli genocide via the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Israel receives around 30% of its oil from Azerbaijan via the BTC pipeline, which it has been using to power its war machine enacting a genocide in Gaza, that is being expanded into Lebanon. The oil fields and pipeline are majority owned by BP, and the second largest shareholder is SOCAR - the Azerbaijani national oil company. At the final stop of the BTC pipeline, the oil is shipped from Turkey to Israel.

The first phase of the campaign will take place through agitation around COP29, which is held in Baku, Azerbaijan Monday 11 November 2024 to Friday 22 November 2024. Find out more about the campaign and get involved here.

Over 50 states call for an arms embargo on Israel

On Monday, over 50 states called for an immediate arms embargo against Israel. The states, alongside UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, argued in an open letter that an embargo was "a legal, humanitarian and moral imperative to put an end to grave human suffering".

A Lucas Plan for the 21st Century

British think tank and PI member Common Wealth has produced a report on how to redirect productive capacity and skills from the UK military industry towards the development of green manufacturing. One of its proposals is to repurpose a naval shipyard in Belfast to make green infrastructure. Read more about the plan here.

The PI welcomes two new members

The Progressive International is thrilled to welcome two new members to its growing international front of over 100 organisations around the world. The two new members are the Union of Youth of Saguia el Hamra and Wadi al-Dhahab (UJSARIO) is the youth wing of the Polisario Front, the national liberation movement of the people of Western Sahara, and the National Students for Justice in Palestine, a US-based student movement, which has played a key role in opposing the genocide in Palestine on US campuses from Columbia to Cornell.

Tlaib and colleagues demand answer from Biden on US troops

US Congresspeople, led by Rashida Tlaib, wrote to President Biden last week to demand he provide a detailed account of the US military role in Israeli military actions in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and Syria.

They accuse the President of “ignoring the law” through US military direct participation in conflicts unauthorised by Congress.

Art of the Week: Claire Fontaine, Same war time zone, 2016-18 is an appropriation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Perfect Lovers (1987-90), where two clocks display the identical time, but gradually fall out of sync. In Claire Fontaine’s version, the time zones are credited to Jerusalem and Gaza: “cities whose inhabitants are enemies and never meet, live through radically different consequences of the same war.”

Claire Fontaine is an Italian-British feminist conceptual artist duo founded in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill. The duo uses the concept of the readymade to criticise "production.” Their name itself is a readymade reference to Duchamp’s famed ready-made urinal and a brand of French notebooks. Foreigners Everywhere, a seminal series of works by Claire Fontaine, is the title of this year's Venice Biennale, the 60th edition.