International investigation into potential genocide in Gaza faces significant challenges due to perceived weaknesses within the United Nations Security Council

In a landmark report released on September 16, 2023, the United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

The commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, based its legal conclusion primarily on findings from reports it has published since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023. The report found that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

These acts included killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births. The commission did not invoke the fifth act named in the convention, "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group," as there was no evidence of such action "at this time."

Father Elias D. Mallon, special assistant to the president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association-Pontifical Mission (CNEWA), stated in an analysis posted September 17 that the practical impact of the Genocide Convention is limited by the United Nations' inability to enforce. He pointed out the 15-member U.N. Security Council's "serious weakness" due to the total and absolute right of veto held by each of its five permanent members, which can stop a resolution from being implemented.

The commission's chair, Navi Pillay, stated in the September 16 press release that "The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza." This statement follows Father Mallon's emphasis that Article III of the Genocide Convention lists punishable acts including attempts to commit genocide, conspiracy, direct and public incitement, and complicity.

The commission's report also noted that the events in Gaza since 2023 were "preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and repression under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population from their lands and its replacement." This statement echoes the cardinal's stance that the conditions must be exactly met in order to make such a statement, and that it is necessary to study.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, said several European priests and bishops who had signed a document describing the Gaza situation as genocide may have found elements to apply that definition. This statement comes after Father Mallon warned that the real test of the Genocide Convention is how to implement an effective and enforceable policy inhibiting one party from extinguishing another in the context of advances in artificial intelligence and modern weaponry.

The Catholic Near East Welfare Association-Pontifical Mission (CNEWA) was founded in 1926 by Pope Pius XI. CNEWA serves the church in the Middle East, India, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, and its mission has been expanded to assist all vulnerable peoples throughout the Middle East by successive popes.

The commission's report has sparked a global debate, with Samantha Power, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stating in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" that such post-convention atrocities have historically met with collective apathy on the part of the U.S. The report's findings and implications will undoubtedly shape international discussions and actions in the coming years.