Israel-Palestine Committee: Information and Historical Background on Israel-Palestine (March 2025)

Information and historical background to Israel-Palestine Conflict
(Update to the original Position Statement from 2013 )

Brooklyn for Peace is an organization devoted to peace built on justice, equality and human rights embodied in international law. We are heartbroken and devastated by the loss of lives and the destruction which we see ongoing in Gaza as well as in other areas of the world.

We believe that permanent peace in the Middle East can only be achieved by a historic compromise between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples in accordance with UN Resolutions and International Law. This peace must be based on a negotiated solution which includes the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands held since 1967, the end of the economic exploitation of Palestinian resources (especially land and water), equal rights, a shared Jerusalem, and justice for the Palestinian refugees in accordance with international principles.
We support the equal human rights and dignity of the Palestinian and Israeli people.

The continuing occupation with expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the siege of Gaza which has been an open-air prison, under siege since 2007, and the annexation of East Jerusalem, have contravened international law and deny Palestinians their fundamental human rights, including the right of self-determination. We are outraged and we condemn Israel’s plan for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.  Israel built the separation wall inside the 1967 borders of the West Bank. The wall was declared illegal under international law (advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), 7/19/2004.  It continues to lead to economic and social hardships for ordinary Palestinians. Israel has met non-violent protests against the wall with often lethal violence. This situation perpetuates the conflict, promotes violence, and fuels anti-American sentiment in the region, already at high levels because of US military, diplomatic, and economic support for Israeli policies at the expense of Palestinian rights.

We believe that Israel is an apartheid state, as defined by the U.N. Israeli government policy has maintained domination over Palestinians, and committed grave abuses against Palestinians in the Occupied Territory. The occupation of the West Bank has led to a social structure which constitutes apartheid, as defined by the U.N. Palestinians have unequal freedom of movement compared to Israelis, an unequal infrastructure, and unequal access to water and other public services. Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank on Palestinian land now house more than half a million Israelis and continue to expand, including recently through more real estate sales of these homes in the US, Canada, and other countries.

An additional 220,000 Jewish settlers reside in East Jerusalem.  Israel demolishes Palestinian homes and olive trees in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a way of driving Palestinians from the region. Attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers are common and often deadly. Israeli soldiers frequently turn a blind eye or actively abet the attackers. Israel flouts international law by keeping hundreds of Palestinian children in military custody for weeks or months without access to parents or lawyers. In addition, adults have been held for months, even years, without charge.

In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the controversial Nation-State law (upheld by the Supreme Court) that defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  Hebrew was Israel’s official language and Jewish settlement a national value.  The  law triggered the 1/12/2021 report by B’Tselem, Israel’s human rights organization, titled: “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: THIS IS APARTHEID”.  Similar reports were issued by Human Rights Watch (2021) and Amnesty International (2022).
Elections to the Knesset in November 2022 of ultra-religious nationalists bent on removing all Palestinians from the land were also significant, and led to increased settler attacks in the West Bank, foreshadowing the genocidal attacks and plan for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

However, since October 7, 2023, the date of the Hamas-led attack on Israel, Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people, their homes and their basic rights, have escalated out of all proportion to the attack on Israel. We call attention to the following notable developments:

1. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court, ruled on January 26, 2024, as plausible the South African claim that Israel has committed acts which violate the Geneva Convention, and that it is committing a genocide against the Palestinians. Other states must do everything in their power to fulfill their obligation to uphold the Geneva Convention and to prevent genocide. The US as a member of the UN is a party to the ICJ, although it flagrantly disregards its authority. Western governments, led initially by U.S. President Joe Biden, have supported Israel’s claim to self-defense.

The US is the major military and arms supplier to Israel making it complicit in the plausible genocide. U.S. heavy weaponry (including more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000 pound bombs, thousands of Hellfire missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs) has resulted in the extreme disproportionality of Palestinian deaths and injuries compared to Israelis. The destruction of infrastructure including water and sanitation systems, schools, universities, mosques, churches, hospitals and medical facilities, housing, can not be justified as legitimate self-defense by Israel after the October 7 attack.  Additionally, Israel uses starvation of civilians, which is a war crime, as a weapon of warfare in Gaza. .

2. Israel’s disregard of the ICJ’s recommendations led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes. Although the US does not recognize the authority of the ICC, there are 125 member states of the ICC who do recognize it, and are now required to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter their country.  President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC over its investigations of Israel is a direct attack on  international justice, and amounts to an effort to end punishment for war crimes.
3. On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal, and ordered that the settlements in those areas be dismantled. It obligated all states not to recognize as legitimate the decades-long occupation of those areas.
4. Major human rights organizations including Amnesty International (December 5, 2024) and Human Rights Watch (December 19, 2024) have responded in declaring the current actions of Israel in Gaza as “acts of genocide.” More than 250 humanitarian and human rights organizations have called for an end to arms transfers to Israel.
5. UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, (established in 1949 to help Palestinian refugees), has been banned by Israel from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories (Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem.) UNRWA oversees education, health care, relief and social services of the refugees. UNRWA is supported largely by voluntary contributions from the UN member states. US funding for UNRWA has been stopped since 2024.
6. Israel’s plan for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza War is to force them into the Sinai. President Trump also wants Gaza emptied of Palestinians, and has proposed that the US would own Gaza for a future ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. Jordan and Egypt have objected to this ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Additionally,  in February 2025, after three weeks of military operations in the West Bank by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) against four refugee camps including Jenin, Tulkarem, some 40,000 Palestinian refugees have been forced from their homes and will not be permitted to return.
7. Global civil society has responded with massive demonstrations in support of Palestinians, calling for an end to the genocide with a permanent ceasefire. The genocide has been watched online on social media, on “Democracy Now”, on Electronic Intifada, on Mondoweiss. Palestine has become pivotal to what is right and wrong in the world, what is good and evil in our world. In America and other Western nations, governments siding with Israel have responded violently to peaceful protests: universities most notably arresting hundreds, both students and faculty, curtailing free speech and academic freedom by labeling the  protests  anti-semitic and criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. Western mainstream media, for the most part, has been co-opted helping to provide cover for its government’s policies supporting Israel. The fact that Israel has barred international journalists from access to Gaza makes even more important the work of Palestinian journalists on the ground, and even more tragic the unacceptably high number of deaths of journalists (222 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed from October 7 2023 to December 26, 2024),

We mourn the tragic loss of life of both Palestinians and Israelis, and call for an immediate end to all armed attacks directed against civilians. However, because of the enormous disparity in armed might, with weapons supplied to Israel by the U.S., Palestinian victims of violence greatly outnumber Israeli victims. Data from Al Jazeera most recently updated on Feb. 5, 2025, report least 61,709 people killed, including 17,492 children, In the same time period, 1,139 people Israelis were killed, and 8730 were injured. See below for other examples.

As of mid-March 2025, we condemn Israel’s breach of the previously negotiated ceasefire with the resumption of the bombing of Gaza, resulting in hundreds of deaths, combined with the escalating deaths, home destruction and expulsion of Palestinian residents in various West Bank communities. We see this as a clear statement of Israel’s intent to drive Palestinians from their land and destroy their historic roots.

The United States has played a major part in the injustices committed against the Palestinians by providing unqualified diplomatic, political, economic, and military support to Israel. It is not up to the U.S. government, which has initiated enough violent conflicts of its own, to dictate solutions to the people of the Middle East. U.S. aid to Israel should be conditioned on ending violations of international law (such as removing West Bank settlements, recognition of human rights, and ending the violence.) We believe that the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel should be stopped immediately. 

The time is long past for our political leaders to reassess their failed policies towards this conflict, which have produced international isolation for Israel, and a continued erosion of living conditions for the Palestinians. We call on the United States to stop enabling Israeli policies and to withdraw the diplomatic and political support for those policies at the United Nations. In their place must be policies that fully respect the legitimate needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people for self-determination.  The United States should respect the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19, 2024 which declared that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem is illegal. .

Brooklyn For Peace is a diverse network of Brooklyn residents alarmed by the growing militarization of our society. We are committed to working towards the elimination of war and the social injustices that are its cause, in Israel / Palestine as well as elsewhere around the world. As such, we commit ourselves to: 

• Inform and educate the Brooklyn community about the fundamental issues in the conflict, take part in respectful debate on the issue, and mobilize local sentiment in opposition to the Israeli occupation, its apartheid system, and its genocidal war against Palestinians. We support a just peace, with equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and justice for Palestinian refugees. We reject policies which call for “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. We reject and will work against anti-semitism in all forms; however we reject the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Association) definition of any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The IHRA definition has been used to oppose the boycott, divestment, and and sanctions movement. It has been used on college and university campuses to accuse pro-Palestinian students and teachers of anti-semitism and subject them to disciplinary actions.
• Join with others who share our aims in demonstrations, forums, vigils, and other non-violent means of achieving justice and peace in the region. We endorse the use of BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions,) carefully targeted and clearly explained, to call attention to the urgency of the situation and help change the policies of the U.S. and Israeli governments.
• Lobby our congressional representatives to support a human rights-based and even-handed approach to a negotiated solution, including termination of U.S. military and economic aid that supports the Israeli occupation
• Participate in interfaith dialogues and other activities organized by groups seeking to promote mutual understanding, reconciliation and peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Brooklyn For Peace Israel-Palestine Committee
March 10, 2025