The Department of Human Rights and Civil Society in the Palestine Liberation Organization expresses its deep appreciation and pride in the courageous position taken by more than 2,200 lawyers in France. Their legal appeal, first published on June 8, 2025, on the website of L’Humanité newspaper and republished in the print edition on June 18, 2025, calls on the International Criminal Court to open an immediate and direct investigation and to prosecute Israeli war criminals for the heinous crimes committed against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
This statement represents a significant shift in the trajectory of international legal solidarity with the Palestinian cause. It clearly embodies the voice of law and human conscience in the face of ongoing impunity and constitutes an explicit challenge to the silence or complicity that has characterized the positions of many states and institutions toward these crimes.
Accordingly, we declare the following:
1. We consider this French legal appeal a bold and historic step that must be built upon and expanded internationally to form a unified international legal front against the system of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid imposed by Israel.
2. We call on all lawyers, bar associations, legal organizations, human rights institutions, and freedom advocates around the world to rally around this statement and adopt it as a starting point for a global legal movement toward accountability, justice, and the end of the culture of impunity.
3. We value and support the growing awareness within French legal circles and regard it as a sign of a qualitative shift in European and international public opinion toward the rights of the Palestinian people.
4. We express our full solidarity with the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Ms. Francesca Albanese, and reject all forms of American threats and intimidation directed at her. We consider the targeting of her person as proof of the truthfulness of her reports and the justice of her positions.
5. We call for the strengthening of ethical and legal international alliances and the expansion of solidarity with this statement, making it the language of the free and the voice of human conscience in the face of injustice and aggression.
6. We strongly condemn the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with full and unconditional support from the United States of America.
7. We affirm that recognition of the State of Palestine and the Palestinian people’s ability to exercise their right to self-determination is a national, political, moral, legal, and social imperative that cannot be ignored. It is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving justice, dignity, and stability in the region.
8. We call on the French Republic, as the land of human rights and a central international power, to be at the forefront of countries that officially recognize the State of Palestine and openly defend the legitimate Palestinian right to freedom, independence, and dignity.
We consider this statement from France a resounding legal and moral outcry on behalf of human conscience and the dignity of nations. It must serve as a foundation for a unified international movement, bringing together all defenders of international law and human rights, aimed at dismantling the Israeli system of occupation, colonialism, and apartheid, and restoring the credibility of international justice.
Freedom for Palestine… Justice for the victims… Accountability for the perpetrators.
Issued in: Jerusalem – Ramallah
Date: July 11, 2025
Department of Human Rights and Civil Society – Palestine Liberation Organization
