Country: occupied Palestinian territory Source: Human Rights Watch Dear Foreign Minister,We write to you in advance of the United Nations (UN) High-Level Conference on the Two-State Solution and Peace in the Middle East, to be held from June 17–20, 2025, co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia. This conference represents a critical opportunity to move beyond repeated affirmations of support for human rights and international law, and toward concrete, time-bound measures to ensure their enforcement, and to end decades of impunity for egregious violations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.This Conference finds its roots in the landmark July 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territory. Based on applicable international law, the ruling found Israel’s decades-long occupation to be unlawful and in breach of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The Court found that Israel is responsible for apartheid and other serious abuses against the Palestinians, that its settlements are illegal and should be dismantled, and that the Palestinians are entitled to reparations.The Court set out numerous obligations on third states to ensure the implementation of its findings, including that they should not recognize any changes in the physical character or demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and should take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It concluded, as it has previously, that all states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention have the obligation to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law (IHL).Regrettably, the European Union (EU) and its member states have yet to comply with those obligations. While the EU has unanimously and repeatedly denounced the Israeli settlements as illegal, linked to serious abuses, and an “obstacle to a two-state solution”, the EU and its member states continue to trade and allow business with them.The EU policy of differentiation excludes, at least in theory, goods made in the settlements from the preferential tariff treatment granted to goods made in Israel by the EU-Israel Association Agreement. but that does not suffice to comply with international law requirement of ensuring a full ban on goods made in settlements. In February 2025, 163 human rights groups and trade unions urged the European Commission to introduce legislation to ban trade with settlements, based on the obligations laid out in the ICJ advisory opinion and noting that trade with settlements is inextricably linked to serious abuses against the Palestinians. The organizations have yet to receive a reply, and repeated requests for meetings to discuss the calls formulated in the letter have been dismissed.The Conference takes place in the context of hostilities in occupied Gaza marred by very serious, widespread breaches of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime, crimes against humanity, including extermination, forced displacement, apartheid and persecution, and acts of genocide. These crimes have been perpetrated also in violation of three binding rulings of the International Court of Justice, in a case brought by South Africa claiming Israel’s violation of the UN Genocide Convention. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defence minister and a Hamas official (subsequently withdrawn by the court following his death) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.As parties to the UN Genocide Convention, all EU states have an obligation to “employ all tools reasonably at their disposal” to prevent a genocide. That obligation is triggered not by a definitive determination that a genocide is occurring or has occurred, but at the time that a state learns, or should normally have learned, of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.That threshold has long been crossed in the context of Israel’s assault on Gaza, given its systematic destruction of homes, apartment buildings, orchards and fields, schools, hospitals, and water and sanitation facilities, as well as the use of starvation as a weapon of war. The ICJ’s issuance of provisional measures in the genocide case, which Israel has ignored, also serve to make the serious risk of genocide undeniable. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN human rights experts have also alerted states to the risk or occurrence of genocide in Gaza. On May 7, the High Commissioner said he was concerned "that Israel’s actions are aimed at inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza as a group."Once again, amid sharp divisions, the EU and member states have done too little to comply with that obligation. Some EU states continue to allow the transfer or transit of arms to Israel, despite abundant evidence pointing to the risk of complicity in atrocity crimes. Council conclusions have never qualified anything the Israeli authorities have done in Gaza as an IHL violation. Targeted sanctions have only been imposed on a few Israeli settlers in the West Bank – not state officials encouraging, aiding, and abetting their abuses, nor anyone implicated in ongoing atrocities in Gaza. The recent decision to launch a review of the EU-Israel Association is a step in the right direction, but is long overdue. It is essential that concrete measures follow, including the possible suspension of at least the trade pillar of the Agreement, which would reinstate tariffs.For too long, states have been minimizing Israel’s serious human rights abuses by treating them as temporary symptoms for which the two-state solution would be a miracle cure. Replicating these dynamics at the Conference, reaffirming rhetorical support for a two-state solution while announcing no concrete measure to halt the ongoing extermination of Palestinians and to ensure compliance with international law, would only perpetuate the impunity that has emboldened decades of serious violations – and would do nothing to halt them.The EU should also address abuses by the Palestinian Authority, which has long arbitrarily arrested critics and opponents and taunted, mistreated, beaten, and tortured detainees with impunity, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented. It has escalated its repression of dissent in recent months. And states should press Palestinian groups in Gaza to secure the release of the remaining civilians held hostage and on Israeli authorities to end the arbitrary detention of thousands of Palestinians, and the torture and ill-treatment of detainees.For all these reasons, we urge your government, in the lead up to and during the Conference, to:Unequivocally denounce and attribute ongoing and longstanding serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and commit to put an end to the impunity that fuels them;Announce concrete steps to ensure the full implementation of the obligations laid out in the July 2024 Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice, including, in particular:Fully ban all trade and business with Israel’s illegal settlements, and request the European Commission to introduce legislation for a EU-wide ban, in compliance with article 278 of the ICJ ruling;Support and make use of the UN database on businesses operating in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, taking all appropriate measures to end businesses’ complicity in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise;Adopt targeted sanctions against Israeli officials currently responsible for Israel’s illegal settlement policy, apartheid, and denial of justice for the Palestinians living under occupation;Support the establishment of an international mechanism for reparations and an international register of damage;Support the UN Secretary-General’s proposals for a mechanism to follow up on Israel’s violations of article 3 of the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits apartheid and racial segregation.Suspend all military exports and transit to Israel, including dual-use technologies, given the high risk of complicity in very serious IHL violations and also in consideration of the obligations to prevent genocide;Act upon the ongoing review of Israel’s compliance with article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and consider its suspension, in whole or in part, which would reinstate trade tariffs;Cut security assistance to abusive Palestinian Authority security forces, including the Intelligence Services, Preventative Security, the Joint Security Committee and the police;Express unequivocal support for the International Criminal Court, denounce all attacks against its independence and critical mandate, and commit to taking all necessary measures to protect the court and those cooperating with it, and to respect obligations to the ICC, including in carrying out all ICC arrest warrants, without exception.We look forward to a prompt reply, and hope that your government will swiftly take the measures necessary to comply with international law and to end complicity in abuses.Yours sincerely,Bruno Stagno UgarteChief Advocacy OfficerHuman Rights WatchClaudio Francavilla(Acting) EU DirectorHuman Rights Watch