"The illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank [PALESTINE] is one of the most well-established positions in international law, resting on four distinct pillars: GENEVA CONVENTIONS, UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS, ICJ RULINGS, & UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY... No serious legal scholar disputes this consensus. The settlements are illegal. The only remaining question is whether the international community will act on it." William Dalrymple of Empire: World History

@EmpirePodUK  

Empire: World History

 William Dalrymple

@DalrympleWill

 

The illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is one of the most well-established positions in international law, resting on four distinct pillars:

 

GENEVA CONVENTIONS Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) explicitly prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. Israel ratified the Convention in 1951. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the authoritative interpreter of humanitarian law, has consistently held that this provision applies directly to the settlements.

 

UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS The Security Council has repeatedly affirmed settlement illegality — including in binding resolutions the US did not veto: • Res. 446 (1979): settlements have "no legal validity" • Res. 465 (1980): calls on Israel to dismantle existing settlements • Res. 2334 (2016): passed 14-0 (US abstained), explicitly states settlements constitute "a flagrant violation of international law" and have "no legal validity"

 

ICJ RULINGS • Advisory Opinion on the Wall (2004): the Court found settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had been established in breach of international law, and that the wall built to protect them compounded that illegality • Advisory Opinion on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2024): the Court went further, ruling that Israel's continued presence in the OPT — including the settlement enterprise — is itself unlawful, and called on all states not to recognise or assist it

 

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY Countless UNGA resolutions have reaffirmed settlement illegality, including Res. 77/247 (2023), which requested the landmark 2024 ICJ opinion.

 

No serious legal scholar disputes this consensus. The settlements are illegal. The only remaining question is whether the international community will act on it.

      

https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/2066831885519528191 

 

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Israel’s attack on UNRWA is central to its genocide of the Palestinians: UNRWA’s mandate to provide for Palestinian refugees makes it a direct threat to the Israeli genocidal project.

A member of the Israeli forces walks past the rubble of a dismantled structure at the Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in East Jerusalem on January 20, 2026 [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

By Christopher Gunness

Director of the Myanmar Accountability Project.

5 Apr 2026

It is time for the United Nations to accept that Israel’s attack on its agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is an essential part of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. This is not an accusation coming from a critic of Israel. It is a clear, on-the-record statement from the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King, who, in January, invoked divine Jewish authority, proudly proclaiming, “God willing, we will expel, kill, eliminate, and destroy all UNRWA personnel.”

As an agency founded specifically to serve Palestinian refugees after the creation of Israel in 1948, UNRWA has been involved in almost every aspect of the lives of millions of Palestinians. Its programmes span primary health, community mental health initiatives, education, relief and social services, mother and child healthcare, and refugee camp improvement.

Moreover, UNRWA’s extensive and recently digitised archive contains property deeds and proof of land ownership, which can assist the Palestinians in securing compensation and the right of return, which many Israelis see as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

UNRWA’s very existence, as a reminder of the Palestinians’ entitlement to a full range of inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, has always made the physical and political destruction of the agency an imperative for successive Israeli governments. Numerous statements by Israeli officials attest to this, boastfully and as a matter of public record.

Israel’s decades-long campaign against UNRWA was ratcheted up exponentially when the latest phase of the genocide began in October 2023. That is because UNRWA’s function to promote long and healthy lives for the Palestinians was diametrically opposed to Israel’s genocidal goals, which, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, include the imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction in whole or in part.

In its provisional ruling in January 2024 in the genocide case brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel was not allowing the necessary humanitarian aid to enter Gaza... READ MORE https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/4/5/israels-attack-on-unrwa-is-central-to-its-genocide-of-the-palestinians

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“A lost moral compass opens a barbaric new era: after Israeli officials compete to take credit for the storming & destruction of a United Nations compound in occupied East Jerusalem, others call for the annihilation of an entire community of UNRWA staff. These statements from officials of a Member State cannot be tolerated by the Member States sworn to the UN Charter. These actions must be referred to the highest level & fought against.” Philippe Lazzarini

 UNRWA

@UNRWA

 

“A lost moral compass opens a barbaric new era: after Israeli officials compete to take credit for the storming & destruction of a United Nations compound in occupied East Jerusalem, others call for the annihilation of an entire community of UNRWA staff. 

 

These statements from officials of a Member State cannot be tolerated by the Member States sworn to the UN Charter. 

 

These actions must be referred to the highest level & fought against.” —

@UNLazzarini 

 

https://x.com/UNRWA/status/2013658117469278599 

  

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https://x.com/UNRWA/status/2013552403476267037 

 

 

@UNLazzarini

 

UNRWA

@UNRWA

@UN

Agency for #PalestineRefugees

 

https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa-commissioner-general-unprecedented-violation-un-premises 

UNRWA Commissioner-General: Unprecedented Violation of UN Premises and International Law in East Jerusalem

UNRWA B-Roll of the demolition can be  downloaded here.

•             For media use of video, mandatory on-screen credit “UNRWA”

•             For media use of photos, mandatory copyright “© 2026 UNRWA”

From Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General as posted on his official X account (previously known as Twitter) 

---

A new level of open and deliberate defiance of international law, including of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, by the State of Israel.

Early this morning, Israeli forces stormed the UNRWA Headquarters, a United Nations site, in East Jerusalem. 

Bulldozers entered the compound and began demolishing buildings inside it under the watch of lawmakers and a member of the government.

This constitutes an unprecedented attack against a United Nations agency and its premises.  

Like all UN Member States and countries committed to the international rule-based order, Israel is obliged to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises. 

This comes in the wake of other steps taken by Israeli authorities to erase the Palestine Refugee identity.

On January 12, Israeli forces stormed into an UNRWA health centre in East Jerusalem and ordered it to close. 

Water, power supplies to UNRWA facilities - including health and education buildings - are also scheduled to be cut in the coming weeks. 

This is a direct result of legislation passed by the Israeli parliament in December, which stepped up existing anti-UNRWA laws adopted in 2024. 

These actions, together with previous arson attacks and a large-scale disinformation campaign, fly in the face of the ruling in October by the International Court of Justice, which restated that Israel is obliged under international law to facilitate UNRWA’s operations, not hinder or prevent them. The court also stressed that Israel has no jurisdiction over East Jerusalem. 

There can be no exceptions.

This must be a wake-up call. 

What happens today to UNRWA will happen tomorrow to any other international organisation or diplomatic mission, whether in the Occupied Palestinian Territory or anywhere around the world. 

International law has come under increasing attack for too long and is risking irrelevancy in the absence of response by Member States.

 https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa-commissioner-general-unprecedented-violation-un-premises

 

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"These shameful tactics are part of the relentless campaign by Israeli authorities to unilaterally prevent UNRWA from executing its #UNGA mandate in occupied East Jerusalem, which does not fall under Israeli sovereignty. The application of Israeli law therein is illegal. In October 2025, the @CIJ_ICJ ruled that Israel is obliged to facilitate relief provided by UNRWA. And yet, the present actions represent the very opposite." Roland Friedrich

 Roland Friedrich

@GRFriedrich, Director of UNRWA Affairs for the West Bank, including East Jerusalem

 

The @UN footprint in occupied East Jerusalem is shrinking fast. 

 

Yesterday, in a disgraceful move, Israeli security personnel forcibly entered the UNRWA Jerusalem Health Centre, demanding the removal of UN signage. The Jerusalem Health Centre has been supported over decades by member states, many of whom have visited the premises. Later on the same day, a temporary closure order was issued against the Health Centre, closing it for the next thirty days. It may never open again.

 

 Simultaneously, @UNRWA has received notifications from utility providers of impending severance of electricity and water supplies to multiple facilities across #EastJerusalem. These buildings include schools, health centres, and other critical service points. 

 

It is not possible to operate humanitarian services without electricity and water.

Yesterday's developments follow the December 2025 amendments made to the anti-UNRWA Knesset laws. These shameful tactics are part of the relentless campaign by Israeli authorities to unilaterally prevent UNRWA from executing its #UNGA mandate in occupied East Jerusalem, which does not fall under Israeli sovereignty. The application of Israeli law therein is illegal. 

In October 2025, the @CIJ_ICJ ruled that Israel is obliged to facilitate relief provided by UNRWA. And yet, the present actions represent the very opposite. These amendments, if implemented, will signal the end of UNRWA’s decades-long operational presence in East Jerusalem.

https://x.com/GRFriedrich/status/2011123893335932983 

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“From tourism to education to business, Americans have profited enormously from the open global order that international law has enabled. Trump’s return to a world of power politics would mean a more circumscribed and impoverished America.” What would happen if every state acted like Donald Trump’s America? by Kenneth Roth

"As Washington tramples norms, alliances might give way to grudging partnerships, with allies slow-walking their commitments" 

In a might-makes-right world, US allies, not to mention the emerging powers of the global south, would begin to hedge their bets in dangerous ways 

 

Kenneth Roth  in The Guardian 

 

14 Jan 2026   

What is wrong with resurrecting the prerogative of major powers to claim a sphere of influence in which they dictate and others must follow? That idea informs the “Donroe Doctrine” behind the US invasion of Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump seems to believe that, as the world’s strongest military power, the United States should be allowed to invade other countries at will. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, says “the real world” is “governed by strength”, by “power”, so we should get used to it.

There is a beguiling simplicity to this abandonment of the norms long designed to govern the behavior of states big and small. China has touted it as the reality that its Asian neighbors must live with. Russia, a third-tier power by comparison but still a nuclear-armed regional heavyweight, has periodically treated the boundaries of post-Soviet states as mere suggestions. But do we really want to return to the law of the jungle in which the guy with the biggest stick calls the shots?

Trump’s distaste for any constraints on US power did not emerge in a vacuum. The US government has long considered international law to be what Lilliputians use to restrain Gulliver. That wariness lies behind, for example, Washington’s reluctance to accept international standards that most others view as benign, such as the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (articulating modern standards for warfare and ratified by 175 states), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the US is the only nation in the world not to have ratified it) or the Law of the Sea Treaty (171 state parties). Joining the international criminal court (ICC) is deemed beyond the pale.

To some extent, spheres of influence have long existed. The United States has dominated the western hemisphere, while China held significant sway in parts of Asia and Russia in the countries of the former Soviet Union. On occasion those big powers flexed their military muscles without regard to international law – the United States to invade Iraq, for example, Russia to seize chunks of Ukraine and Georgia, China to fence off much of the South China Sea. But these forays have been exceptions, justified with allusions to Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, Putin’s stated fear of Nato expansion or China’s historical territorial claims. Trump is proposing a more unabashed return to great-power spheres of influence enforced largely by coercion.

In the past, the US government at least nominally portrayed its dominance as aimed at upholding democracy and the rule of law. Despite the many exceptions, Washington spent enough time promoting a rights-based world order that its hegemonic role seemed more palatable. Under Trump, that is all history... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/14/trump-might-makes-right-world

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December 8th 2025 in Jerusalem: The United Nations flag was pulled down & replaced with an Israeli flag

Philippe Lazzarini

@UNLazzarini

Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the @UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem. 

 

Police motorcycles, as well as trucks & forklifts, were brought in & all communications were cut. 

 

Furniture, IT equipment & other property was seized. 

 

The @UN flag was pulled down & replaced with an Israeli flag. 

 

This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations Member State to protect & respect the inviolability of UN premises.  

 

Following months of harassment that included arson attacks in 2024, hateful demonstrations & intimidation, supported by a large-scale disinformation campaign, as well as anti-UNRWA legislation passed by the Israeli parliament in breach of its international obligations, UNRWA personnel were forced to vacate the compound at the beginning of this year.   

 

However, whatever action taken domestically, the compound retains its status as a UN premises, immune from any form of interference.  

 

Israel is party to the Convention on the Privileges & Immunities of the UN. The Convention makes UN premises inviolable - in other words, immune from search and/or seizure - and makes UN property and assets immune from legal process.  

 

The International Court of Justice has also underscored that Israel is obliged to cooperate with UNRWA & other UN agencies.   

 

There can be no exceptions. 

 

To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world.

 

https://x.com/UNLazzarini/status/1997985397440172110

 

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