On October 7th, the world woke up to powerful and historic images of Palestinian freedom fighters breaking through the open air prison that is Gaza via land, sea and air. The unified Palestinian Resistance – consisting of all the different Palestinian political and resistance factions – is responding to the brutal siege of Gaza, 75 years of ongoing colonialism, and the continued settler colonial violence and dispossession that has been backed from its origins by western imperialism. From the early 20th century British mandate over Palestine to the US’ ongoing military, political and diplomatic support for the settler colony, imperialist powers have sought to ensure a permanent military occupation to support their aims of regional domination and capital accumulation. 

The International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism held 15 country hearings examining the impact of economic coercive measures on the lives of people in the Global South, including on the Gaza Strip.  Gaza is at the heart of the siege on Palestine and the Palestinian people as a whole. Our hearing on Gaza was among the most devastating. Several of our expert witnesses put their lives at risk providing their testimony while their civilian neighborhoods were being bombed. This tragic backdrop intensified when an expert witness shared his heart-wrenching experience of losing his entire family (including his wife and four of his children) to the Zionist bombardment of their residential building in May 2021. Based on their statement, the Tribunal findings were clear: sanctions, including the siege on Gaza, are a form of warfare and an integral tool of imperialist aggression designed to facilitate the theft of global south wealth and uphold racial hierarchy in the world system. In the case of Gaza specifically, the siege is key to Israel’s settler colonial project, and, together with other war crimes, amounts to a crime against humanity, as well as the crimes of apartheid and genocide.

Although sanctions, blockades and economic coercive measures are often held up as a more “humane” option to military intervention, the hearing on Gaza made clear that they can be just as deadly and are often implemented in tandem with other forms of warfare, sharing similar logics and effects. Gaza is subject to a particularly intensified form of coercive economic measures imposed upon this 365-square-kilometer area, home to over 2 million Palestinians, most of whom were displaced during the Nakba in 1947-48. They have been denied their right to return home ever since. These measures include the denial of travel, closing of crossings, closing of trade, subjection of trade to agreements by the occupation forces, naval blockade, banning of exports, prohibition of necessary items for home-building and electricity production, and international prohibitions and criminalization of dealing with the government of Palestinians in Gaza.  On more than five occasions in the past 15 years, Israel waged  aerial bombing campaigns targeting civilian neighborhoods, schools, infrastructure and media institutions. As with other forms of settler colonial violence imposed on the Palestinian people, and similar to the impact of sanctions on other global South states, the siege on Gaza has undermined the health, food sovereignty and ability of the people to access the basic essentials of life.

The hearing also made clear that these coercive economic measures, which stretch beyond Gaza to the entire Palestinian population, have contributed to the vilification and de-legimitisation of the Palestinian cause, in direct service of Israel’s claim that it is waging a defensive war against a “terrorist enemy”. The economic coercive measures include the listing of Palestinian political parties and resistance organizations by the United States and its partners as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” for their efforts to oppose apartheid and colonialism, as well as the listing of many more as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” These designations not only allow the criminalization of third parties for engaging with those who are actively opposing apartheid and other war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of genocide in Palestine, but also provide for the freezing of assets of such designated parties. Such designations, a form of persecution of those who resist, amount to aiding and abetting apartheid, attempted genocide and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part, according to the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention which defined genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. 

This criminalisation and de-legitimization of resistance, also mirrored within some factions of the so-called left in the global North, which fail to actively and unapologetically support armed anti-colonial resistance and the inherent right of colonized peoples to self-defense, is an imperialist strategy to block any form of meaningful resistance against and accountability for Israel’s long-standing war on the Palestinians as well as its allies. 

The violent arrest yesterday by the German government of 4 Palestinian activists from one of the Tribunal’s sponsoring organizations, Masar Badil (The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path movement ) is evidence of ongoing imperialist complicity in zionist crimes. This is reinforced by President Biden’s announcement of “all appropriate means of support“, potentially amounting to billions of dollars – on top of the annual $3.8 billion provided by the US to Israel. As the Biden administration worked on inflaming the situation further by sending troops to the Eastern Mediterranean, it promised as “an emergency military aid package”. The EU’s statement of “solidarity” and continued support for settler colonial violence was another clear expression for the support of Europe’s colonial legacy and racial injustice.. 

The People’s Tribunal stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for justice and to free the land and the human being. Palestinians have a moral and political as well as legal right to armed resistance and by the same standards are owed the right to return and reparations.

This right is enshrined in the UN Charter as well as the 1970 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2625 which explicitly endorsed a right to resist “subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation”. This right was further reinforced with UNGA Resolution 3246, which “Affirms the legitimacy of armed resistance by oppressed peoples in pursuit of the right to self-determination, and condemns governments which do not support that right.” 

As solidarity protests across the world can attest, the global majority support this right and understand the symbolic importance of the Palestinian national liberation struggle to the liberation of all oppressed peoples. None of us can truly be free until Palestine is Free.