U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza is illegal under international law and “amounts to ethnic cleansing,” the United Nations’ top investigator on human rights in Palestine told POLITICO.
“Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” Navi Pillay, chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told POLITICO in an interview.
“There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,” Pillay said.
Trump said last week he wants the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, send the Palestinians elsewhere, and redevelop the land as the “the Riviera of the Middle East.” He announced the plan alongside his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said it was “worth listening carefully to this idea.”
Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the special court that tried the Rwandan genocide, also condemned Trump’s sanctions on the ICC, which has issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes.
“International law applies equally, without double standards for a state’s friends,” Pillay said.
A group of almost 80 countries issued a joint statement in defense of the ICC on Friday, warning sanctions could force the closure of the court’s field offices and undermine its investigation.
Pillay — the first non-white woman to serve on the bench of South Africa’s High Court — also told POLITICO she would support an ICC charge of apartheid against Israel. “Apartheid is one of the manifestations of control there,” she said of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Countries around the world helped bring down apartheid in South Africa with sanctions against the regime, she noted, adding that governments should impose the same against Israel. Apartheid is a crime against humanity under the law governing the ICC.
“I don’t see [ICC prosecutor] Karim Khan charging that crime. I was a judge on that court, I understand that it’s a bit complicated to charge a crime that has never been charged before … but if apartheid comes up, sure I will support it,” Pillay said, adding that her own commission plans to investigate Israel over the allegation of apartheid.
Last October, Pillay’s commission accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity through the targeted destruction of Gaza’s health system. The commission is under the U.N. Human Rights Council, from which Israel withdrew on Wednesday over “discrimination” and “antisemitism.”
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