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Commission of Inquiry Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel 14 June 2022
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Commission of Inquiry Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel 14 June 2022
- Exterior medium shot, Palais des Nations flag alley, a sunny day.
- Wide shot, journalists, podium and moderator in press briefing room, Palais des Nations.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry: “The root cause is clearly the occupation, and the occupation must end.”
- Medium wide shot, podium speakers seated to the right of the shot, journalists to the left.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry: “So we call this a perpetual occupation, and we say that's the core underlying root cause of ongoing violence displayed in terms of the force displacement, the threats of forced displacements, demolitions, settlement construction and expansions, settler violence and the blockade of Gaza. And as we all know, this has endured for decades, and there's a sense of despair and hopelessness within the Palestinian population, as well as in Israel and the Diaspora.”
- Medium shot, side shot of the podium speakers seated in the foreground, TV screen showing the speaker to rear.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry: “We are listening to all stakeholders of whatever political point of view and so on.”
- Medium shot, two participants taking notes in foreground, TV screen showing the speaker to rear.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry: “We are disappointed that Israel has not permitted us to visit Israel. To see for ourselves, to talk to victims, particularly of the Hamas rocket attacks, it's very important that we have a balanced report reflecting the situation of all victims. I constantly hear murmuring that we are very biased, and we only represent the one side, that’s the anti-Israel side. So, I cannot understand why they wouldn't let us in and interview appropriate witnesses.”
- Medium shot, side shot of the podium speakers, TV screen to rear.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Miloon Kothari, Member of Commission of Inquiry: “We are not looking only at individual events of human rights violations, but we are trying to establish patterns, patterns that are historical patterns that are very inimical to the occupation that are leading to these constant cycles of violence and conflict.”
- Medium shot, participants sitting and following the press conference.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Miloon Kothari, Member of Commission of Inquiry: “We are very concerned about this issue of double standards. And now it has sharply come out in the context of the crisis in Ukraine. And we are very clear that these are double standards, and the international community is rightly appalled in the face of aggression and occupation and has correctly moved to act swiftly and collectively and forcefully to ensure compliance with international law. But in the case of Israel and Palestine, there has been inaction for decades and it continues.”
- Medium wide shot, cameraperson taking photos besides cameras in foreground, participants listening to far.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry: “We want everyone to take this Commission seriously because it’s the first time it can look into political questions which you can't do under the Human Rights Council regular mandates. And we are all very keen to find solutions. We're not here just to say, how bad things are. People on the ground know it's bad.”
- Medium shot, journalists seated and listening to the speaker carefully.
- SOUNDBITE (English) — Chris Sidoti, Member of Commission of Inquiry: “There is a possibility in the next couple of years for the first time in a generation of new people and new ideas and new openings. I'm not naive. I'm not utopian. I don't say that this window is wide open. But I say that it's opened a little bit. And that places a grave responsibility on the international system and individual states to take advantage of what may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pressure for change, push for change, reopen possibilities that have been locked.”
- Wide shot, ground shot in the press conference room, podium speakers seated with TV screen on their left and right side.
Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel asks for greater access to address allegations of bias
Ending the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is essential to stopping the conflict and halting the persistent cycle of violence said the independent experts charged by the Human Rights Council with investigating the root causes of conflict, who today made a plea for better access to the people and locations most affected by the conflict.
“The root cause is clearly the occupation, and the occupation must end”, said the Commission’s chair, Ms. Navi Pillay, at a news conference in Geneva.
The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had presented the report to the Human Rights Council yesterday. “We call this a ‘perpetual occupation’ and we say that's the core underlying root cause of ongoing violence displayed in terms of the force displacement, the threats of forced displacements, demolitions, settlement construction and expansions, settler violence and the blockade of Gaza,” Ms. Pillay said.
“As we all know, this has endured for decades, and there's a sense of despair and hopelessness within the Palestinian population, as well as in Israel and the Diaspora,”
she added.
The report by the three-member commission has generated a lot of media interest but has also has been rejected by many supporters of Israel, who have complained of bias by the Commission.
“We are listening to all stakeholders of whatever political point of view”, said Ms. Pillay, in response to these allegations of bias.
The three-member panel said it regretted Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the Commission, and maintained that the allegations of bias could be addressed if only they were given access to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory in order to interview people and gather information.
“We are disappointed that Israel has not permitted us to visit Israel”, said Ms. Pillay. “To see for ourselves, to talk to victims, particularly of the Hamas rocket attacks, it's very important that we have a balanced report reflecting the situation of all victims. I constantly hear murmuring that we are very biased, and we only represent the one side, that’s the anti-Israel side. So, I cannot understand why they wouldn't let us in. and interview appropriate witnesses.”
The Commission released its 18-page report after conducting an assessment of recommendations made by previous Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-Finding-Missions, as well as other United Nations mechanisms and its own hearing.
According to Miloon Kothari, member of the Commission of Inquiry, “we are not looking only at individual events of human rights violations, but we are trying to establish patterns, patterns that are historical patterns that are very inimical to the occupation that are leading to these constant cycles of violence and conflict.”
The Commission undertook two missions to Geneva and one to Jordan, and held consultations with various stakeholders, including Israeli and Palestinian civil society organizations.
“We are very concerned about this issue of double standards”, said Mr. Kothari. “And now it has sharply come out in the context of the crisis in Ukraine. And we are very clear that these are double standards, and the international community is rightly appalled in the face of aggression and occupation and has correctly moved to act swiftly and collectively and forcefully to ensure compliance with international law”, he said. “But in the case of Israel and Palestine”, so Mr. Kothari, “there has been inaction for decades and it continues.”
The former South African jurist Navi Pillay stressed the importance of the future work of the Commission to look also for solutions. “We want everyone to take this Commission seriously because it’s the first time it can look into political questions which you can't do under the Human Rights Council regular mandates. And we are all very keen to find solutions. We're not here just to say, how bad things are. People on the ground know it's bad,” she said.
“There is a possibility in the next couple of years for the first time in a generation of new people and new ideas and new openings,” said Commission member Chris Sidoti, on a more hopeful note. “I'm not naive. I'm not utopian. I don't say that this window is wide open. But I say that it's opened a little bit. And that places a grave responsibility on the international system and individual states to take advantage of what may be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pressure for change, push for change, reopen possibilities that have been locked.”
-ends-
Teleprompter
Very good afternoon and thank you for joining us at this press conference with the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel.
The three Commissioners are with me, Miss Navi Pillay, the Chairperson of the three person Commission.
On my left is Chris Sidoti, a member of the Commission and Milan Kotari on the far of the table.
The Commissioners presented their first report to the Human Rights Council yesterday, and this was followed by an interactive discussion which concluded this morning.
As you know, we've shared with you the list rather the statement that was delivered yesterday, and the report itself was made public last week.
So the commissioners wanted to take this opportunity to meet with you.
And so we'll turn it over immediately to Miss Billet for her opening remarks and then to you for your questions.
Thank you.
Go ahead, please.
Well, thank you very much for being here.
Media is very, very important for the work of the Commission because we're very interested in receiving submissions from all over the world.
We do believe that the conflict in in the Middle East here involving Israel and Palestine has global consequences.
So once again, thank you for being here.
My colleagues are Miloon Kothari from India and Chris Sidoti from Australia and they will take most of the questions.
So as as the moderator has said, we've already delivered our report.
We sent it well ahead to in particular to Israel and Palestine.
And it's clear from that report that we were not engaging on issues that the certain NGO seem to have planned on.
What we did is, since the mandate is so expansive, we picked on the paragraph which requires us to analyse the similarities in the findings and recommendations of all United Nations fact finding missions and commissions of enquiry.
And this is what we did.
It's massive.
It's all the recommendations from 2018, and we included the treaty bodies and in further reports we're going to also be looking at Security Council recommendations, General Assembly and other UN bodies.
This is not done before where we take the collective, the sum total of recommendations that were made and then see whether any of them were implemented.
So that's a sorry tale that despite these **** profile recommendations made by experts and by member states, none of those recommendations were carried out by ISRO.
So that's the content of the first report, if you had an opportunity to see that.
And we of course, have an unlimited mandate.
We will be reporting to the General Assembly in October and the focus of our recommendation, as we looked at and assessed all the recommendations made so far, is that the root cause is clearly the occupation and the occupation must end.
There are very many consequences of this occupation.
We will be addressing them in detail in subsequent reports.
So unlike other commissions who just have the opportunity to file a single report and then their term is over, we are going to be continuing investigating this while we are here in Geneva.
We're going to be holding a round table of experts, Many, many of them are academics, Jewish academics coming from Israel to see us or they will be online.
Why do I mention that to say how we we are listening to all stakeholders of whatever political point of view and so on.
So we call this a perpetual occupation and we say that's the core underlying root cause of ongoing violence, you know, displayed in terms of the forced displacement, the threats of forced displacement, demolitions, settlement construction and expansions, settler violence and the blockade of Gaza.
And as we all know, this has endured for decades.
And there's a sense of despair and hopelessness within the Palestinian population as well as in Israel and the diaspora.
We're disappointed that Israel has not permitted us to to visit Israel to see for ourselves, to talk to victims, particularly of the Hamas rocket attacks.
It's very important that we have a balanced report reflecting the situation of all victims.
You know, I constantly hear murmuring that we're very biassed and we only represent the one side that's anti Israel side.
So I'm, I don't, I cannot understand why they wouldn't let us in and interview appropriate witnesses.
However, as as a compensation, as I said earlier, we're very much in touch with Israeli Jews and many of them came out to Jordan when we physically held interviews.
So that was a huge surprise to me.
Like that we had like almost 20 representatives of organisations who took the trouble to cross the borders and come to us.
And I think we commissioners feel, and I definitely notice the difference, that there is increased interest from the public on solving the situation in Israel and Palestine.
During the dialogue, the overwhelming majority of states supported the Mandate, supported our work, and we feel very encouraged by that.
However, there were some states, such as the United States that delivered a statement together with the support of 4 member states.
I know they said they had 22 states, but it's 4 member states of the Human Rights Council.
We expressed disappointment with that view and, and, and asked how do they explain the double standards of rushing to oppose what's happening in Ukraine, the invasion, annexation, setting up a a Commission of enquiry there and their reluctance to support the situation of human rights protections in Palestine.
We and we call that double standards as well.
And I hope that that message gets through.
So I will just stop there and see if my colleagues have any initial remarks, but we're very much interested in your questions.
Thank you.
Thank you, Donna.
Chris, we'll take questions and thank you very much.
Miss Pillai, over to you now for questions.
So turning to Zoom, we have a question from Laurent Sierra of Swiss News Agency.
If we can unmute Laurent, please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Rolando.
Thank you commissioners for the the press conference first.
So now you're going to lead your own investigation after having assessed all these previous recommendations.
So what would be the the topic and the components that you will start with in the investigation that you would like to to lead?
And then yesterday you complained about the fact that the funding that was planned for your mandate has been has been reduced or not all the funding was given.
Who do you attribute that to?
Thank you.
Well, thank you for those questions.
And you're quite right.
This is really a report of what other experts had said.
And, and, and we assess the implementation part.
So we have an expansive mandate and #1 is we will be doing our own investigations.
That's why we're very keen to conduct interviews with all stakeholders to see what the situation is like on the ground.
And we have set certain priorities.
Firstly, we have to deliver a report to the UNGA in October.
We'll be working on that and for that we are consulting a whole lot of experts on the occupation, how it could be ended.
You know, we're not state parties, they are the ones who have to work out solutions.
But we I should be in a position to make recommendations.
My colleagues will add to this.
You know, you could see the various issues raised by people, the effect on children, just the the effect of the rocket attacks on is on Israelis.
So various issues like that, this traditionally commissions of inquiry focus on an episode that just happened, such as now the killing of the journalist Shireen Ali Akeo.
And notice that we have not followed that pattern because very fortunately we have this very wide mandate to address the root causes and also to conduct our own investigations and to address justice and accountability, which is usually not the portfolio of human rights.
So we're very interested in in the part of the mandate that requires us to identify individuals who are responsible and to work with judicial institutions for possible prosecutions and to secure justice.
So all this is new.
We will gradually workout for each report what we are going to focus on with the funding that's reduced.
Yes.
You know, I originally thought the assessment made by OHCHR was small to begin with, which was 24 T staff members.
We got 18 and I don't know who does what in the UN Third Committee, but it seems some states have the power to reduce funding.
Once again, it seems there is lack of interest in supporting human rights issues when it involves Israel.
And yet the same members of the Third Committee granted huge amounts to the Triple I mechanisms or for Syria and for Myanmar.
We've raised these issues with member states because oh, it's just they who can address this issue.
So on these two questions, let me and to you, what did I say?
Third Committee, Sadhguru, 5th Committee.
So it's 5th Committee.
Sorry about that.
Yeah.
Good afternoon everyone.
On the, on the question of what are the issues we are going to address, you will have seen in our first report that we've identified a number of issues.
The in the we were very sort of pleased with the response for the last two days of the overwhelming number of states who in their own statements reinforced the issues that we had raised in our in our report.
And I want to just say that the report is not only based on what has preceded us, the Cois and the reports of the special rapporteurs and treaty bodies, but also testimonies that we have ourselves taken when we did a field visit to Amman.
And also we've done a series of online, secure online interviews with with civil society leaders, with academics and and others.
So the main issues that are coming out, which were reinforced over the last few days by a number of states, are the persistent discrimination against Palestinians, the construction of illegal settlements, forced evictions and demolitions that continue to drive the violence and the conflict.
And, and this is very important.
This particular issue we will be taking up because as you all have been following, there are ongoing evictions right now in in the West Bank, in Area C, in an area that Israel has designated as a firing zone in the area of Masafir Yata.
And there have been, what we would like to stress in our reports is that this is an incremental, deliberate policy of the State of Israel to have, you know, evictions periodically.
But it all adds up to a situation of perpetual occupation, which is what we have raised and you have seen in the reports of other mandate holders.
If I can just give you some statistics, just beginning this year, from the beginning of this year, there are 64 Palestinian owned structures that have been demolished, 130 Palestinians have been displaced.
There's there's been a range of, you know, property, property acquisitions and so on.
And I mean, all this data is available.
So I won't go into it, but so, so these are the kinds of issues that we will be raising.
But just to reinforce what the chair was saying, we, we are not looking only at individual events of human rights violations, but we are trying to establish patterns, patterns that are historical patterns that are, you know, in a way inimical to the, to the occupation that are, that are leading to this constant cycles of, of violence and, and conflict.
And we in our, in our forthcoming reports, hope to pick up, pick up on these themes.
I just wanted to also say that just on the point again that the Chair raised, which we reinforce in our closing remarks this morning at the Council, this we are very concerned about this issue of double standards.
And, and now it has sharply come out in the context of, of, of the crisis in, in Ukraine.
And we are very clear that these are these are double standards and, and the international community is rightly appalled in the face of aggression and occupation and has correctly moved to act swiftly and collectively and forcefully to ensure compliance with international law.
But in the case of Israel and Palestine, there has been inaction for decades and it continues.
And recent data has actually shown that the very countries who are supporting the, the, the work on the, the scrutiny of what's happening in Ukraine, you know, because of actions from Russia, have consistently supported commissions of inquiry over the last 20 years, all the inquiries that the Council has initiated, except for the ones on Israel and Palestine.
So we want to continue to stress this with the European Union, with the United States primarily it's the Western countries that are that have shown this duplicity and this complicity, if I can say.
And, and also I just wanted to add that one of the, one of the encouraging aspects for us has been the, the, we are greatly emboldened in our work by the tremendous support that we have received also from Jewish groups, civil society groups, academics, even parts of the media, former diplomats from from within Israel, some of whom we will be meeting next week when we have our round table to inform the content of our General Assembly report.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
We have a question now from Jean Zaracostas.
John.
Yes, good afternoon.
Nice to see familiar faces on the podium.
My question is, Sir, with what Madame Pillai just mentioned that you'll be looking at with a wide mandate for justice and accountability, Will it be like the Commission of inquiry on Syria where the evidence they collect, they forward to various national or international or multilateral judicial structures to follow through?
What is exactly the terms of reference?
And in your inquiry, will you also be interviewing officials in the UN system who are on the ground for many decades, interested in particular on access to health and attacks on health?
Thank you.
John, I think you've been around even longer than this conflict has.
The two questions.
Accountability is a, an important component of our mandate and in fact the way in which accountability is framed in the mandate, it's different from other commissions of enquiry.
This is one of the reasons why the resources issue has arisen for us.
We, we have to act a little bit like the investigative mechanisms on Syria and Myanmar in collecting information, storing it, ensuring its organisation and availability for accountability mechanisms, that is national and international courts operating in accordance with international standards of justice.
So we have this expanded mandate and and we will be taking note accountability side seriously.
We are already in touch for example with the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and later this week we'll be having a further meeting with with the office.
We hope to be similarly involved with other courts that are interested in accountability so far as Israel and Palestine are concerned that is an explicit part of our mandate.
And so the simple answer, yes, that is part of what we will be doing and we have already commenced that task and we'll be continuing it.
And the answer to the second question also is yes, we have met already with UN officials on the ground in the region and we'll continue to do so.
We have to form our own independent conclusions as the Chair has indicated, but certainly UN officials who are there, who are providing services, who are monitoring what is occurring for us, critical parts of the evidentiary base, they can tell us a great deal, not as victims obviously, but as as witnesses in many respects of direct issues, but also as people who have a a good analysis of the situation.
So we have already been in touch with them extensively and we will continue to do so.
Thank you very much.
Do we have further questions?
We have Nick ******* Bruce of the New York Times.
We can unmute.
Nick.
Please go ahead.
Nick.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
I was interested by Miss Pillay's comment that she seemed to feel, as a result of the discussion that you've had in Jordan, particularly, that there was more interest now in finding solutions in Israel.
I'm more interested in relate compared with what?
How do you measure or assess this trajectory?
And umm, you're going to be dogged with allegations of bias as you go forward.
One of the allegations is that, umm, you're only talking to organisations from Israel that are interested in condemning Israel.
Umm, I, I don't want to give that any particular substance, but I just wonder if you could push back a little bit at the, the, the accusations that this is an institutionally, uh, biassed, uh, mechanism and that it's, it's serving a specifically biassed agenda.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for your question, Nick.
I think many believe the longer they hear this allegation of bias that there must be some truth in it.
We are welcoming submissions from anyone, everyone ready to talk to anyone you in, in the council today.
There was a NGO input that they sent us 5 million submissions, so all of them would be pro Israel.
Shall I characterise them as such?
We've actually received 2.5 million and we have many constraints of course, with the lack of staff and so on, but all of that will be saved.
We will look into all that and if need be we will meet with the with the persons who made that submission.
In this case, it's one website that has sent 2.5 million submissions and it appears to be a record of all the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
So it's a long list of names, but I've not seen them personally.
So I say this with some caution and assure you that we will be looking at all of this.
Very much interested in the views of Israelis, of Jews, Palestine, Palestinians, Bedouins, or anyone who wishes to enlighten us on any matter.
You know, I have a previous record where I was the first **** Commissioner to go on an official mission to Israel invited by them.
So I made sure I went to Serodot, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, and, and, and talked, talked.
And so how afraid those children were because of these crashing rockets coming from the other side.
It's that kind of impartiality and independence that this Commission will bring to its work.
You know, all three of us would not have agreed to participate if we had been told by anyone that you can't do this or you can't do that.
So we don't come with any preconceived notions here.
But but you, if you look at the report we already filed, the assessment we made of all the recommendations made so far since 2018.
Those are factual findings and assessments by experts.
So really if they are all presumed to be biassed, Security Council that issued resolutions, Human Rights Council, all these member states, they are all biassed, then I would say I'm in distinguished company.
But seriously, we want everyone to take this Commission seriously because it's the first time it has.
It can look into political questions, which you can't do under the Human Rights Council regular mandates and we all are very keen to find solutions.
We're not here just to say how bad things are, people on the ground know it's bad.
We want contribution on ideas, on solutions and how we can persuade change.
Yeah.
And if I can just add on this point of bias, you know, we are, our work is based on international standards.
It's humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law.
It's based on truth that, you know, there's overwhelming evidence, the testimonies that we are taking.
And one way to remove this issue of bias would be for Israel to allow us entry into inside the Green Line, to allow us entry into the West Bank, for us to also make it easier for us to go to go into Gaza.
We, we want to interview and the the victims of the Hamas rockets.
We want to interview victims of that are there because of Palestinian violence.
But we have to be allowed to do that.
We cannot be kept away from these territories and areas.
And then there would be a, you know, an accusation of bias.
And, and here I want to say that the, the disappearance or the non appearance of Israel at the Human Rights Council for us is very disturbing because it's also shows a disrespect for the, for the council itself.
There are General Assembly resolutions that call on all members of the council to, to, to be present, to respond, even if they don't agree to a mandate.
It's the same problem with the United States.
They're issuing a joint statement against a mechanism that has been adopted by the Human Rights Council shows shows great disrespect for the human for the functioning of the Human Rights Council.
And they're a new member and and this is not this does not bode well for the credibility of the United States and they're going ahead further and getting as many signatures as possible to their statement, which was in any case considerably watered down.
We, we do not accept that we, we hope that all UN, all members of the Human Rights Council, respect the sanctity of the body and of the United Nations.
Thanks.
We have further questions, colleagues.
No, I don't see any other little yellow hands popping up.
Oh, there's another follow up from Nick.
Go ahead, Nick, please.
Well, yes, I'd just like to come back to this point that that Miss Paddy made about is finding Israelis who are more interested now in solutions.
And I, I didn't get a sense of, of how she feels Israelis are more interested now as opposed to before.
Umm, and I wonder if she could address that point and particularly, I mean, in, in reference to a report which has very much pinpointed, uh, the continuing occupation as the root cause of the violence.
Is she saying that there is now a growing evidence of opinion that says this occupation has to be brought to an end?
Thank you.
You know, I realised, Nick, that I hadn't responded to that.
It's not only because of my own experience as the former **** Commissioner that I say I see now.
I note an increased interest in participation, particularly by Israeli Jews.
Firstly, in the number of submissions we received, the good response we've received now when we asked for experts to participate in the round table.
I think there are very many academics in Israel who are publishing articles and books and maybe they're not able to ventilate their points of views within the country and they want to use the Commission to do so.
I I don't know yet who they are and what they're going to say.
So I have no idea whether they pro Israel or anti Israel.
I'm talking about the interest and and how much I welcome that they want to engage with the Commission.
From the submissions made, we can see very active litigation even by organisations that are not Palestinian organisations.
They there are, they are even now litigation litigating in Israel over the banning of these six NGOs who have been declared terrorist organisation and prohibited from functioning.
So I see this interesting tender isn't the divide between people who are unhappy with the situation in Israel, inside Israel as there is outside in the diaspora.
They seem to think there's a very huge divide here, that these two groups are antagonistic to one another.
They're not.
We spent I think 4 days in Jordan listening to well known NGOs, others, women's rights activists.
So they were talking about the consequences to all people in Israel, mainly Palestine, but all people.
And that's why I say I was so surprised that 20 representatives of organisations came at great risk to themselves.
Some obviously could not come.
They were not allowed to travel, some reported that they'd been followed and so on.
One person was actually detained at the border on the Israeli side and couldn't come to our meetings.
That told me the risks they face.
And yet they want to be able to tell their stories.
They want a voice in these reports that we are filing.
I don't have my colleagues have anything here.
I can add on that, Nick, you know, there's a sort of a tremendous outpouring now of material, as Navi is saying, from his, from leading academics, Israeli Jewish academics, historians.
We even see a change in the in the media.
You have probably followed all the articles in the Haaretz, many things that we read that we would never read in the United States Press of the analysis of what is going wrong.
You have so many more religious Jewish groups that are outspoken.
They're they're saying what whatever Israel as a state is doing is, is, is a terrible distortion of, of Zionism of the, you know, of the holy books of Judaism.
So, so there is, there is AI mean there is a kind of a groundswell developing.
We are not saying it's there yet, but I think it's the responsibility of the media all over the world to to investigate this and see, I mean, the the crisis of course in Israel is that that that part of the society which is, which is critical of Israeli occupation policies does not have much of A voice in the Knesset, in the parliament.
But these are issues that we are following and when we speak to them directly, which will be next week and in the coming months, we want to get to the bottom of that.
And as now we were saying, we would also like to participate.
Even though our work is very victim centred, we would also like to participate in, in whatever solutions or avenues for peace that may be developing.
But there's definitely a change I would say, we would say in the last few years.
Thank you.
I'd add just one point about the context in which what Navi and Maloun describes is occurring and and that is that we are just embarking on a period of possibility so far as this protracted conflict is concerned.
It it, it's been in a position a, a, a static position now for 20 years.
A generation has passed without really any significant progress at all in resolving this dispute.
But now we see instability increasing, continuing within the Israeli political leadership.
We see the inevitable inevitability of human life about to affect the change in the leadership of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, and the same dynamic inevitably occurring amongst many of the most senior leaders of Hamas.
There is a possibility in the next couple of years, for the first time in a generation of new people and new ideas and new openings.
I'm not naive, I'm not utopian.
I don't say that this window is wide open, but I say that it's open a little bit.
And that place is a grave responsibility on the international system and individual states to take advantage of what may be a once in a generation opportunity to pressure for change, push for change, reopen possibilities that have been locked now that may not come again for another generation if it doesn't succeed in the next few years.
And for me individually, the the importance of this Commission of inquiry is the opportunity to make a small contribution to opening that window of possibility a bit further.
Thank you all very much.
We have a another question from John Zaracostas.
Yes, it's a bit logistical.
I didn't catch the details.
You'll be meeting with the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC in Hague or in Geneva and the round table meetings will take place in Geneva or in the region.
Thank you.
Well, hi John.
The the Round Table will be in Geneva next week, Monday, Tuesday, and our meetings with the Office of the Prosecutor will be in The Hague, but we also hope to have round tables elsewhere as time goes.
This will be a methodology for us during the life of the COI.
OK.
Thank you once again.
Any further questions before we close?
I think in that case, we will close this press conference and take this opportunity to thank you all very much for joining us and to you, of course online for joining us for this important press conference.
Have a good afternoon.