This speech was delivered by Lisa Shahin of the Arab Group of the Protection of Nature during the final info session of the Right to Resist: International People’s Tribunal on Palestine, happening on November 22-23 in Barcelona, Spain.

__

Dear friends and comrades,

Thank you for inviting me to speak today at this important moment as we prepare for the tribunal for Palestine next week.

Today, I want to speak about the current situation in Gaza after the ceasefire, the intensifying aggression across the West Bank, and why this tribunal is not only timely, but necessary.

We were told that a ceasefire would pause the killing, allow humanitarian relief to flow, and open the door to healing and reconstruction. Instead, what followed has been the continuation of genocide through new and restructured forms.

The ceasefire period has been punctured by recurrent violations, attacks, and suffocating restrictions that have kept Gaza in a permanent state of death and displacement. Independent monitors report near-daily violations of the agreement, including air and artillery strikes, shootings, arrests, and restrictions on movement, all of which have killed and injured Palestinians even after the ceasefire was declared.

Until November 10, the Israeli occupation had violated the agreement over 282 times.
260 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began — an average of 8 every day.
And these numbers, like the numbers of Palestinians martyred throughout the genocide, are severely underestimated. Gaza’s health system is destroyed; countless bodies remain under rubble; entire families cannot report their dead.

The occupation has also destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in areas under its control since the ceasefire proof that destruction did not end; it simply took on a different structure.

And food aid continues to be weaponized. People in Gaza tell us that the small trickle of trucks allowed in are carrying almost exclusively junk food, nothing that addresses the manmade famine. Fuel is still blocked. Seeds and agricultural inputs are still blocked. Everything needed for life and recovery is still blocked.

So despite repeated declarations that “the war is over”, we do not believe the colonial occupier or its backers.

This is not new.

We saw temporary truces in late 2023.

We saw the January 2025 ceasefire.

In each of these, the pattern repeated: the Israeli occupation violated agreements immediately and systematically.

And it is not only Gaza.

The occupation repeatedly breached ceasefire understandings with Lebanon as well, where civilians continue to be killed by bombardment. The occupation has deliberately targeted engineers, workers, and individuals capable of rebuilding Lebanon’s devastated infrastructure, a reminder that ecocide is part of the colonial warfare strategy.

We must also critically examine the “agreement” itself.

We need to ask: Who drafted this plan? Who does it serve? What does it legitimize?

Because the plan:

• Was crafted entirely without Palestinians, much like previous frameworks like the Oslo Accords, which entrenched occupation rather than ending it.
• It allows the occupation to retain control over about half of Gaza during the first stage, and declares massive “no-go zones” that fragment the Strip and restrict movement.
• Effectively finalizes the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural capacity, giving the occupation continued control over 58% of Gaza, including the fertile buffer zones critical for rebuilding food sovereignty. The yellow lines marking these zones have themselves become death traps, with Palestinians shot even where boundaries are unclear
• Uses the language of “economic development” and “technocratic committees” that echo Iraq: where destruction was followed by aggressive neoliberal restructuring to undermine sovereignty and keep the country dependent on foreign powers.
• Promises 600 trucks a day, but this is purely conditional, the occupation controls what enters, when, where and whether essential items like fuel, spare parts, seeds, and medical equipment are allowed.

So we must ask: Is this a ceasefire, or is this a restructured genocide?

We recognize the colonial playbook here: a plan drafted in complete isolation of Palestinians, much like the Oslo Accords, which only entrenched occupation and land grabs. What makes this plan any different?

At the same time, the West Bank is experiencing one of the most violent periods in its modern history.

Since the genocide in Gaza began:

• Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 200 children.
• 1,600 military raids have taken place, a 22% increase from previous years.
• 40,000 people have been displaced.

Settler colonial expansion has accelerated at an unprecedented pace:

• In 2025 alone, Israeli planning bodies have advanced over 25,000 settlement housing units.
• Since December 2022, over 50 new settlements have been announced.
• 24,258 dunums of West Bank land were declared “state land” in 2024, the highest since Oslo, with more confiscations ongoing in 2025.

Agricultural attacks are escalating:

• 52,300 trees destroyed or damaged since October 7.
• Hundreds of attacks during harvest seasons, including 2024 and 2025.
• Nearly 700 trees and vines destroyed in a single reporting period.
• Dozens of communities have lost tens of thousands of dunums of unharvested land.
• Water pumps, irrigation networks, and wells have been repeatedly sabotaged.
• At least 120 settler attacks against agricultural communities resulted in deaths or serious injuries.

This is not incidental. This is a deliberate strategy of dispossession, designed to fragment territory, uproot livelihoods, and eliminate the conditions for a Palestinian future.

So why does the tribunal matter now more than ever?

Because the genocide did not end, it simply mutated.

Because the international system has failed to stop it or hold perpetrators accountable.

When states, courts, and multilateral bodies stall or are politically blocked, people’s tribunals become a space where truth can be spoken freely and publicly.

In simple terms: This tribunal gives voice to those the world has failed. It brings together survivors, families, experts, and witnesses to build a record the world cannot ignore.

A tribunal:

• Builds the moral and political pressure needed to shift international opinion.
• Lays the groundwork for sanctions, legal referrals, and future prosecutions.
• Preserves evidence now while bombs, bulldozers, and displacement are actively erasing it.
• Becomes part of the historical record that future generations and legal bodies will rely on.

Allow me to end with this: Genocide does not end when the bombs stop. It ends when the world refuses to look away. This tribunal is our collective refusal.

We end today not with despair, but with clarity. The occupier wants a world where Palestinians go unheard, where agreements erase crimes, and where silence replaces accountability. This tribunal destroys that silence.

If states will not deliver justice, then people will. If institutions fail, memory will not.
And if the powerful refuse to be held accountable, then we will build the pressure, the evidence, and the global solidarity that will one day make accountability unavoidable.

This tribunal is not a symbol, it is a beginning. A beginning of a record that outlives governments, outlives propaganda, and outlives the machinery of genocide. A beginning of a collective insistence that Palestine’s truth be heard, honored, and carried forward.

We refuse to be silenced and we refuse to be erased.

Thank you.