Prosecutors at International Tribunal on Palestine Accuse Israel of Ecocide

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

Organizers, human rights advocates, and legal experts from around the world convened in Barcelona in November 2025 for the International People’s Tribunal on Palestine. Over the course of a weekend on November 22 and 23, jurors and attendees heard from more than a dozen witnesses who testified to Israel’s calculated destruction of not only Gaza’s population but also its natural environment. Besides arguing that Israel, the U.S., and some European governments have committed genocide in Gaza, prosecutors told jurors that the environmental devastation in the enclave amounts to ecocide.

“Ecocide is committed to guarantee the objective of genocide,” Omar Nashabe, a scholar of international human rights law who testified as an expert at the tribunal, told Truthout. “You kill the people, you need to not allow them to go back to the land, so you destroy the land.”

The tribunal was hosted by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), International People’s Front, and People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty and held at The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. Ultimately, a panel of seven jurors, including prominent human rights lawyers from Europe, Lebanon, Algeria, Turkey, and India, found Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and war crimes, including the forced starvation of the Palestinian people. Jurors also ruled that the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Hungary, and the Netherlands are guilty of the same crimes, “having provided indispensable cooperation that materially enabled and politically protected” Israel as it carried out its attacks on Palestinians, according to the short-form findings presented at the tribunal.

The event came after more than two years of near-constant Israeli bombardment in Gaza, and as Israel continues its attacks there and in Lebanon. Israel has violated the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire, in effect since October 10, 2025, at least 497 times, killing more than 340 people, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. A United Nations Security Council resolution adopted on November 17, 2025, endorsing President Donald Trump’s plan for an international force that he will lead to oversee the continued occupation of Gaza, has drawn condemnation from legal experts and rights groups, who argue it violates Palestine’s right to self-determination and will fail to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence. Israel also bombed several villages in southern Lebanon last week; it struck Beirut on November 23, killing five and wounding 25.

When reading their verdict on November 23, jurors at the International People’s Tribunal described their role as legal experts and advocates for political action, but also as archivists, collecting evidence of crimes committed in Palestine that other legal institutions have failed or refused to address. “[Our] mandate is the determination of material truth in circumstances where traditional judicial mechanisms have failed to function or have been structurally prevented from doing so,” said Juror David Minoves Llucià, reading from the tribunal’s findings. “This body operates in a long tradition of civil society initiatives that emerge specifically to address accountability gaps within formal international institutions.”

The International Court of Justice found in January 2024 that it was plausible that Israel was already committing genocide in the enclave. Since then, some of the world’s most prominent human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have characterized Israel’s attacks as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The United Nations-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) even issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024, having found that they likely bore responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including using starvation as a weapon of warfare.

“Ecocide is committed to guarantee the objective of genocide.”

These mandates from international bodies have not been enforced and were even mocked and condemned by some, including President Trump, who imposed sanctions on ICC officials after the court announced it had issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. “We have seen the failure of the international system, the international legal system. It is up to the people now.” Azra Talat Sayeed, ILPS general secretary, told Truthout after the prosecution’s closing arguments on November 23. “The people of the North have a responsibility to build, come together, and understand that it is the people of the South who will need to meet this, and we need the support from the North.”

The International People’s Tribunal also went beyond the scope of international courts in prosecuting ecocide. Crimes like ecocide are recognized in the national laws of several countries, as well as across the European Union. The Rome Statute, which established the ICC, also recognizes an attack committed with the knowledge that it will cause “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment” as a war crime. The Rome Statute sets out the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. A growing movement of advocates and legal experts wants to make ecocide a fifth crime on that list.

“The International People’s Tribunal’s ecocide declaration could shift this idea of environmental harm and environmental damages to a crime, so reframe it as another form of criminal violence,” Mohammed Usrof, founder of the Palestine Institute for Climate Strategy, which endorsed the tribunal, told Truthout. “Recognition of ecocide could be transformational.”

“Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the land to destroy and raze it again, cutting irrigation networks, destroying water sources like agricultural ponds and wells, and shredding the remnants of the trees.”

Prosecutors at the International People’s Tribunal argued that there can be no question that Israel and other governments committed ecocide in Gaza. “The environmental destruction, such as ruining farms, olive groves, or contaminating land, is not a legitimate military target,” said Nashabe during his testimony on November 22. “Large-scale destruction [in Gaza] was used for intimidation, coercion, or demographic reshaping [by] making areas uninhabitable or less habitable than others — and the environmental cost was disproportionate.” Citing statistics from the United Nations Environment Program published in September 2025, Nashabe told the court that at least 97 percent of Gaza’s trees, 95 percent of its shrubland, and 82 percent of its annual crops have been destroyed during the conflict.

Other witnesses testified that Israeli forces have razed their fields, bombed their fishing boats, and destroyed critical infrastructure, such as irrigation and food storage facilities. “I have lived through several wars … but none with this level of brutality or criminality,” said one witness, who testified anonymously for fear of being targeted for speaking out. “This intense bombing by the occupation army’s aircraft led to the complete destruction of our land. The next day, Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the land to destroy and raze it again, cutting irrigation networks, destroying water sources like agricultural ponds and wells, and shredding the remnants of the trees.”

The tribunal in Barcelona and its findings are meant to serve as tools in the ongoing popular struggle for justice for Palestine and for other colonized and marginalized peoples across the world. Event organizers described the event as a quasi-judicial, political, and movement-building action. Prosecutors and jurors called on people of conscience everywhere to take action, particularly those in the Global North whose governments were named in the indictment, as well as those in the climate movement.

“Our responsibility now is to use that verdict to continue to create awareness, to continue to help develop the actions that are needed, to help the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] movement, and to help all these other solidarity movements,” said lead prosecutor Jan Fermon in his closing remarks. As a first action following the tribunal, organizers gathered on November 24 for a march to the Israeli consulate in Barcelona to deliver the verdict.

Fermon called it “one of the building stones of all these efforts around the world…to achieve accountability for what has been done, for the injustice and crimes that have been committed against the Palestinian people.”