Palestinian activist Razan Zwetar spoke at the launch of the International People’s Tribunal for Palestine, detailing the uprooting of centuries-old olive trees, poisoned soil, and bombed food systems in Gaza.
“This is not only genocide, it’s also ecocide,” she said, describing an occupation that destroys not only lives but also the very land that sustains them.
On September 28, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) launched the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) for Palestine, a civil society initiative themed “Right to Resist: The Palestinian People vs. the Zionist Occupation and the US Government.”
The tribunal will convene in Barcelona, Spain on November 22-23, bringing together jurors, lawyers, and witnesses to present evidence of war crimes, genocide, and environmental destruction.
A peoples’ court
Unlike the International Criminal Court or United Nations Security Council, the IPT does not claim legal enforceability. Tribunal organizers refer to it as a “parallel political-legal platform” meant to document the social realities from testimonies of survivors, review documentary and photographic evidence, mobilize solidarity, pressure states, and formally issue a verdict to be presented to international bodies.
While governments often dismiss them as propaganda, history shows IPT’s power that lies in documentation and moral authority.
Veteran human rights lawyer Edre Olalia explained that the people’s tribunals have a long lineage, from the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam in 1967 to more recent tribunals on Latin American dictatorships, including the bloody war on drugs under the former Duterte administration in the Philippines.
“The IPT shall also memorialize the struggle of the Palestinian people and freedom-loving peoples of the world for the people’s historical record and shall serve as a moral inspiration for further political action. The IPT shall, of course, contribute to the accumulation. And snowballing resistance and protests worldwide,” Olalia emphasized.
The IPT explicitly names the United States as a co-accused, arguing that Washington’s military aid, diplomatic shielding, and direct complicity make it indispensable to sustaining the siege of Gaza.
“What we have now is a force that has been sponsored by the British, European, and US imperialist forces. And it is growing by the name of Israel, using resistance as a basis for violent occupation for fascist annexation to take over the people,” said Victor Garces of ILPS
Garces noted that the US state and military, in cahoots with Israel, create a Zionist war machine not only in Palestine but also in the Middle East.
“Since then, you have seen the war where the population has been directly displaced in Gaza and the West Bank. Nine out of 10 are victimized, 30% of them, children. 20% of women. This is a war. It’s an inhuman, cowardly war,” he said, pointing to the staggering numbers of more than 74,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023, including 21,000 children.
Genocide and ecocide
In Palestine, landscapes are not only scenery but repositories of culture and survival.
On September 16, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, citing four of the five acts defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, finding evidence of mass killings, starvation, life-destroying conditions, and prevention of births.
Amnesty International has also described Israel’s campaign as genocide and called for an immediate arms embargo. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch further highlighted the deliberate denial of water, fuel, and humanitarian aid as acts of extermination.
The IPT further stressed a crime elevating to ecocide, a systematic destruction of ecosystems, alongside genocide. Rights groups described this ecological assault as imposing a “death diet”.
“Ecocide is defined as the severe, systematic, widespread, and long-term deliberate destruction of the environment and natural resources wherever settler colonization takes root in a country,” Zwetar noted, pointing out its primary agenda to destroy, dismantle, or appropriate collective identities.
“It underscores the Palestinian concern. The Palestinian coexistence with the land, in life, and in resistance. The systematic uprooting of millions of olive trees and replacing indigenous flora with foreign species to further distort the region’s identity is an ongoing process initiated with the inception of the occupation and persisting to this day,” she added.
Olive trees and thyme, both cultivated and wild, form part of what Zwetar described as an “intricate system of life” in Palestine. As a Palestinian proverb says: “We will remain as long as the thyme and olive remain.”
Zwetar further emphasized that the occupation deliberately alters the natural landscape by annexing vast areas under the guise of natural reserves, describing how these reserves are weaponized as tools of displacement by cutting Palestinians off from the plants that once provided food, medicine, and spiritual sustenance.
In all of Israel’s 15 brutal wars on Gaza since 1947, people’s food systems were systematically devastated. Only this time, the aim is not for Palestinians to go hungry, but to die from hunger said Zwetar
She also lamented that Palestinians now turned to seasonal wild plants like khobeza, a spinach-like plant that sprouts after rains, just to survive even temporarily. Yet even this connection to the land has been criminalized that harvesting wild thyme, for instance, is prohibited.
“Palestinians have resorted to eating tree leaves, grass, and animal fodder, sometimes mixing it with soil. Women are unable to breastfeed due to malnutrition, and babies, the lucky ones, are fed formula with water contaminated by sewage toxins,” she stated.
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report declared a man-made famine in Gaza, Zwetar noted this recognition came nearly three years too late. By then, at least 442 people, including children, had already died from hunger and malnutrition.
All water resources are under the occupier’s control, Zwetar revealed, with Israel stealing over 80% of groundwater, prohibiting well construction, and destroying water harvesting tanks. While the Zionists steal Jordan River water, it forces both Jordanians and Palestinians to buy back the stolen resource.
“The most powerful governments in the world are not only silent, but complicit. To truly address our purpose today, we should not shy away from uncovering the root cause and the current driver behind the ongoing Palestinian tragedy,” said Zwetar.
Resistance and solidarity
The launch highlighted a rallying point for global solidarity. From students, artists’ collectives, and peasant organizations across the Philippines and Latin America, pledges of support are pouring in for the “great crusade for human rights.”
For organizers, the tribunal is as much about mobilizing mass support as it is about presenting evidence.
“The Palestinian issue is a benchmark in our struggle against imperialism,” Garces declared. “We need militant actions to continue to pressure governments, corporations, and our societies[…]We need, therefore, to create all ways to fight this fascist monster.”
In the Philippines, where activists are red-tagged and movements are criminalized under the Anti-Terror Law, progressive groups stated that the struggle against militarization and repression resonates deeply with Palestinians resisting occupation and siege as both are tied to the US imperial policy.
“History has taught us that there is always the right time for everything, even the right time for reckoning. I mean, closer to our hearts. Ferdinand Marcos Sr, who was a dictator. He was the lapdog of the Americans, but what happened to him? He went to Hawaii. He faced a damaged. And the victims were given compensation. It took some time, but there’s always the right time for everything, and I’m confident that if we cannot get it now, maybe not tomorrow. But ultimately, whether in the political, legal, diplomatic, and the mass movement front, we will achieve victory for the Palestinian people in all freedom-loving peoples of the world,” said Olalia.
