Craig Mokhiber, a top U.N. human rights official who resigned over the weekend over the organization’s response to the Gaza war, called on the U.N. to apply the same standards to Israel as it did assessing human rights violations in other countries around the world. the world.
Mokhiber, who was director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote in his October 28 resignation letter that Israel’s military actions in Gaza were a “classic genocide” and accused the UN of “failing to act” once again. , referring to previous genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Myanmar.
Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer, had worked at the UN since 1992 and had previously worked as a human rights adviser in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories.
At least 8,805 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7 after the armed group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing at least 1,400 people and capturing more than 200 others.
“The current general massacre of the Palestinian people, rooted in a colonialist ethno-nationalist ideology, in continuation of decades of systematic persecution and purification, based entirely on their status as Arabs… leaves no doubt,” Mokhiber said in his letter to UN human rights chief Volker Turk.
Al Jazeera UN correspondent Gabriel Elizondo spoke with Mokhiber in New York.
He asked him about his assessment of the situation in Gaza and the chances of a two-state solution.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Al Jazeera: Why did you come to the conclusion that the situation in Gaza amounts to genocide?
Craig Mohkiber: Usually the most difficult aspect of proving genocide is intent, because there must be an intention to destroy in whole or in part a particular group. In this case, the intention of the Israeli leadership has been so explicitly and publicly declared – by the prime minister, by the president, by senior ministers, by military leaders – that it is an easy argument to make. It’s in the public domain.
It’s important that we start using the language that the law sets out, as you know, lately, all the major international human rights organizations, the Israeli human rights organizations , Palestinian human rights organizations, United Nations human rights mechanisms, independent mechanisms have found that the situation in Israel-Palestine amounts to the crime of apartheid.
The UN must get used to fighting these particular violations, just as we have done in other situations.
Al Jazeera: When we asked the secretary general and his office about genocide, he did not use the term. He says a previous secretary general said it was up to the courts to decide. Do you think the Secretary General should start using the term “genocide” when talking about what we are seeing in Gaza?
Mokhiber: If we can claim that we are witnessing war crimes, crimes against humanity, as we have often done, there is no reason to exclude, when we see very strong evidence, the possibility that genocide is being committed, and I think you’re going to hear that term increasingly associated with what we’re seeing in Gaza.
But institutions must of course take the necessary steps before they can make this declaration. Today, I am an independent citizen and I do not carry the institution on my shoulders. And I feel confident enough as a human rights lawyer to say that what I see happening in Gaza and beyond is genocide.
Al Jazeera: (US President) Joe Biden recently said that once this conflict is over, we need to return to a two-state solution. In your letter, you say that the mantra of a two-state solution has become, and I quote, an open joke in the halls of the United Nations where we sit right now. Is this really an open joke in the corridors of the United Nations?
Mokhiber: Yes, and it’s been a very long time, if you ask anyone in an official capacity about the two states, they will repeat this phrase over and over again as the official position of the United Nations. This is also the official position of the United States. But no one who follows these circumstances, either from a political perspective or from a human rights perspective, believes that a two-state solution is still possible.
There is nothing left for a Palestinian state that is sustainable, just or possible in any respect, and everyone knows it.
And second, this solution never solved the problem of basic human rights of Palestinians. So, for example, it would leave them as second-class citizens without full human rights within what is now Israel proper.
So when people aren’t talking about official talking points, we’re hearing more and more about a one-state solution.
And that means starting to stand for the principle of equal human rights instead of these old political slogans, it would mean a state in which we will have equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews, based on the human rights and based on the rule of law. This is what we ask for in every other circumstance in the world. And the question is: why isn’t the United Nations doing this in Israel and Palestine?