Accountability through Sanctions to End the Ongoing Nakba
May 2026 marks 78 years of ongoing Nakba and 31 months of genocide in the Gaza Strip: ongoing Israeli crimes that are enabled and bankrolled by Western, colonial states, exposing the extent and depth of their complicity. The Israeli regime relentlessly advances its Decisive Plan characterized by: ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip; escalation of colonial expansion in the West Bank; and enforcement of the campaign aiming to eliminate the presence and protection of international agencies and organizations, including UNRWA. As the Israeli crimes of forced displacement and transfer, colonization, apartheid and even genocide are normalized, the protection gap facing Palestinian refugees widens further. The ongoing inaction and complicity of states are also responsible for the replication of the Israeli regime’s genocide model in Lebanon. While the global solidarity movement pushes for military, economic and political sanctions, the Palestinian people continue their struggle for liberation.
Due to the Israeli-perpetrated ongoing Nakba and ongoing inaction and complicity of states, Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are the largest and most protracted displaced population in the world. At 10.15 million, with 9.238 million refugees and 914,500 IDPs, this population makes up 66% of the Palestinian people.
The current rendition of the ongoing Nakba is manifested in the Israeli Decisive Plan. It aims to eliminate Palestinian self-determination and return through the imposition of Israeli domination, spatial apartheid, and forced displacement. In the West Bank, Palestinians are displaced, and their communities isolated by the closure apparatus, colonizers’ attacks, land confiscation, and suppression of all forms of resistance. Israeli spatial apartheid policies have been magnified in order to further fragment Palestinians and their land into macro and micro enclaves. Since 2023, more than 5,800 Palestinians have been displaced, and 45 communities have been completely depopulated in the West Bank and Jerusalem as a result of Israeli raids, colonizer attacks, and home demolitions. In addition, over 33,000 Palestinian refugees remain displaced from the emptied and enclaved refugee camps of Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin since January 2025, resulting from the “Iron Wall operation.” The Israeli closure apparatus is marked by over 925 movement obstacles, including at least 384 iron gates, the expansion of colonizer-only bypass roads and plans to construct 34 new colonies in 2026 across the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In Jerusalem and 1948 Palestine, the Israeli regime has accelerated its suppression of Palestinians, with surges in home demolitions, mass arrests, enclaving through discriminatory zoning and planning, and surveillance disguised as “security.”
In the Gaza Strip, nearly all 2.1 million Palestinians have been internally displaced at least six or seven times, and lack adequate shelters, healthcare and education. The ongoing Israeli blockade and restrictions on aid have depleted food, water, medicine and other essential items; inducing further malnutrition that will destroy an entire generation. Since the fake ceasefire, the Israeli regime has killed 854 Palestinians. As it continues to deliberately engineer malnutrition and a coercive environment, Palestinians are left with only three choices, as dictated in the Decisive Plan: surrender, flee or be killed. Furthermore, the imposition of the “yellow line” has imposed an enclave within an enclave, isolating Palestinians to approximately 42% of the Gaza Strip.
Under the pressure and influence of the Trump administration, UN Security Council Resolution 2803 incorporated Trump’s 20-point plan, contrary to international law and ultimately legitimizing the Israeli regime’s colonial aims, through the creation of the “Board of Peace” (BoP). The BoP - which inexplicably includes the Israeli regime itself – supposedly coordinates billion-dollar “reconstruction” pledges from third states. Not only has the BoP usurped the role of the UN and international organizations, it has yet to provide adequate aid to the Gaza Strip; and, since the war with Iran began, aid to the Gaza Strip has dropped 80 percent. Designed to absolve the Israeli regime from criticism, the BoP simultaneously prevents the UN and other states from intervening, and displaces legal and financial responsibility for the genocide while reframing reparations as donor-driven reconstruction. In doing so, the BoP consolidates control in external actors, sidelines Palestinians, and erodes their rights to self-determination and reparations. Resolution 2803 and Trump’s 20-point plan deny meaningful authority over governance, land, and resources while reproducing Israeli colonial domination under the guise of “reconstruction.”
Since the enforcement of its banning laws in January 2025, the Israeli regime has denied visas and permits to UNRWA, and demolished the Agency’s Jerusalem headquarters in January 2026. The Israeli regime continues to obstruct its aid and services, particularly in the Gaza Strip where UNRWA operations would save lives. Instead, there have been severe reductions in healthcare, education, and emergency services resulting from the failure of states’ to provide the Agency with the financial and political support it is due. Former Commissioner-General Lazzarini warned: “In the absence of a significant influx of new funding, the delivery of critical services to millions of Palestine Refugees across the region will be compromised.” By defunding and diverting their funding to other organizations, states are not only complicit in genocide but also failing to uphold Palestinian refugee rights and ensure their protection. By allowing the Israeli regime to continue its ban of a UN agency, states enable it to weaponize aid for its colonial and genocidal agenda.
Beyond the provision of aid and services, which are essential components of international protection, UNRWA has a crucial role in upholding the Palestinian right of return. The Agency is mandated to operate until the implementation of Article 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194: the right to reparations (including return, property restitution, compensation and non-repetition). Fundamentally and politically, the elimination of UNRWA is part of a broader Israeli campaign to eliminate the Palestinian right of return. States’ withdrawal of political and financial support to UNRWA further entrenches their complicity and violates their obligation to provide protection. States are not only obligated to support UNRWA, but they must also reject any frameworks that endorse its elimination, such as Trump’s 20-point plan, the BoP and the Israeli laws banning UNRWA. This includes the UN’s Strategic Assessment of UNRWA, which provides scenarios for its collapse. Importantly, states’ endorsement of colonial approaches and mechanisms serve to normalize Israeli crimes, and their entrenchment across historic Palestine and the region.
The application of the Israeli regime’s genocidal playbook to Lebanon is another example of this normalization and entrenchment. Allowing Israeli violations of another fake ceasefire has resulted in the displacement of over 1 million people under the guise of evacuation, the targeting of UN personnel and premises as well as humanitarians and journalists, and the destruction of entire villages and public and service infrastructure to prevent return and secure Israeli colonial expansion. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, including those that were forcibly displaced from Syria, have been displaced yet again. In line with the Decisive Plan, Israeli colonial expansion is to be extended beyond Palestine, into Lebanon but Syria, Jordan and Egypt in order to establish “Greater Israel.”
Support for the Israeli regime is also reflected in states’ policies at home: repressing, silencing, and criminalizing any and all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people. With the EU once again maintaining its economic agreement with the Israeli regime, and entrenching its complicity, it is more vital than ever that the solidarity movement escalate its direct actions to disrupt the status quo and impose material cost. Only through sustained and concerted pressure on states to end their complicity and impose military, political and economic sanctions on the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime will its crimes come to an end.
Accountability for ongoing Israeli crimes and states’ complicity begins with sanctions to dismantle the structures of Israeli domination and oppression. Imposing a comprehensive rights-based decolonization framework, that centers the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and return, is the only solution to the ongoing Nakba.
A statement by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and the Global Palestinian Refugee and IDP Network (GPRN).
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Signatories:
Photo: Protesters carry a banner reading "Stop genocide, sanctions now" during a pro-Palestinian rally in Brussels, Belgium on 7 September 2025. More than 200,000 people filled the streets of the Belgian capital to denounce Israel`s actions in Gaza. Source: Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images.
