The Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and Israel: To Speak of Genocide from a European Liberal Lens

This short piece is based on a talk given at a side event in the 56th session of the Human Rights Council titled ‘Commission of Inquiry Report on Gaza and the World’s Role in Addressing Genocide’. The intervention provides commentary on the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel’s report of the 27th of May 2024. The intervention takes the report as a starting point to reflect on the wider limitations of the liberal mainstream engagement with international law. It argues that the commission’s report fell short of the demands of truth-telling in times of atrocity in a settler colonial context. Liberal mainstream reading of international law is often portrayed as the only possible road. This portrayal is false in its undervaluation of rich histories of colonisation, global south-state practice, scholarship, and the demands of justice.