This past week brought hopeful reports about the achievement of a preliminary ceasefire agreement in Gaza. Yet, even as Palestinians in Gaza celebrate their survival Israeli forces continue to kill civilians, including shooting at Gazans trying to return to their homes and bombing residential buildings.
The National Lawyers Guild joins the international community in urgently seeking an end to the genocide, and note that any such ceasefire does not mitigate, reduce or alter the obligations of third states to the Palestinian people, nor does it negate their mandate to end genocide and to hold its perpetrators accountable. Furthermore, the National Lawyers Guild acknowledges that Israel has explicitly violated prior ceasefire agreements; such agreements have unfortunately been short-lived and preceded the commission of further atrocities against Palestinians including blocking the entry of humanitarian aid and food, implementing electrical blackouts, and resuming airstrikes of hospitals and residential areas in Gaza.
As we marked two years of overt and intensified genocide in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, the National Lawyers Guild emphasizes the need for international action and meaningful accountability for Israeli and U.S. genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity is more urgent than ever before.
Israel’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are enabled, supported and funded by the United States, Britain, Canada, European Union countries, and other Western powers. It would be impossible for that genocide to continue if not for this support, which provides not only diplomatic cover, but active military support, arms trade and intelligence cooperation, in aid of the genocidal military campaign being carried out by Israeli forces. In particular, the United States has directed billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel as well as providing extensive military cooperation and intelligence sharing. In fact, the U.S. has now declared it will be sending 200 troops to Israel to establish a center to coordinate ceasefire activities, continuing to provide direction and support to the Israeli military.
In addition, the United States established the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which played a key role in the use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli occupation, and further perpetuating the genocide. This has come hand in hand with widespread government repression, sanctions and “terror” designations, police and ICE assaults and arrests of activists, and Congressional committees investigating those who organize, act and speak out against genocide – itself a key part of aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide in Palestine, particularly in Gaza.
The United States has never been an advocate for peace in Palestine or throughout the region. It has instead been a consistently dangerous, warmongering force that not only co-directed Israeli genocide in Gaza but launched repeated and illegitimate military aggressions against Iran and Yemen. The National Lawyers Guild is well aware that the United States and the Trump administration are not trustworthy guarantors of a ceasefire. It is more critical than ever that we step up our work to hold the U.S. and its officials accountable for their ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people, and that we engage in legal support and full mobilization for the growing grassroots movement against genocide in Gaza and for Palestinian liberation, both in resisting state repression and using domestic and international courts to hold U.S. and Israeli officials accountable.
On October 7, 2025, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee (NLG), joined Tax Payers Against Genoicde (TAG) and Palestinian-American petitioners in filing an international legal complaint against the U.S. government for participation in the genocide in Gaza. The complaint was filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the official human rights body in the Western Hemisphere established by the Organization of American States (OAS). This is the only legal complaint in the world that directly takes on the U.S. government– including both the Biden and Trump Administrations, as well as Congress– for its role in the genocide.
The Israeli genocide in Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip, which accompanies nearly 8 decades of ongoing, slow and deliberate policies of genocide through systematic physical and cultural targeting, is today a compass for humanity and at the center of the struggle for a just and democratic international order. The international isolation of Israel is greater than ever before. As we write, in the past days, millions of people have taken to the streets of cities around the world to demand an end to the genocide after two years of ongoing slaughter. The most recent illegal attack on humanitarian ships in international waters – the violent attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla and the Thousand Madleens Flotilla, the kidnapping of its nearly 500 passengers, and their detention and mistreatment in abusive conditions, following drone strikes on two civilian aid boats in a Tunisian port – illustrates both the high level of popular outrage against the genocide as well as Israeli impunity in carrying out its war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We must be clear: A colonial project and apartheid regime such as Israel’s has no place in the 21st century, nor in any century. They must be fought by all legitimate means, and the colonial state of Israel must be dismantled. Until that time, we support the IADL call to expel Israel from the United Nations, or at least its credentials should be suspended by the General Assembly, as was done to exclude apartheid South Africa in defiance of a U.S. veto in the Security Council. We demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, reparations to the Palestinian people from the U.S. and all other responsible parties, and full legal accountability for all officials and agents involved in the perpetration of genocide.
