An independent United Nations inquiry commission has concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, but a "serious weakness" in the UN's Security Council could prevent taking action in accord with the Genocide Convention, said Fr. Elias D. Mallon.

On Sept. 16, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, announced its new report found "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."

In a Sept. 16 statement, Israel's foreign ministry said that the nation "categorically rejects the distorted and false report," which it said "relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods," and called for the "immediate abolition" of the commission.

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Citing the convention, the commission said those specific acts were "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, established in May 2021, based its legal conclusion primarily on findings from reports it has published since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas forces invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 Israelis and abducting 251 hostages.

"The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza," said commission chair Navi Pillay. "It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention."

The commission also said that "the events in Gaza since 7 October 2023 have not occurred in isolation," but were "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." 

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But while "there is no question" that the Genocide Convention is "crucial in the world today," its "practical impact" remains "limited by one of the major weaknesses — if not the major weakness — of the United Nations in general: its inability to enforce," Mallon, a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement, said in an analysis posted Sept. 17 to CNEWA's website.

Mallon, the special assistant to the president of CNEWA, also underscored that the convention, as its name denotes, "stresses prevention and punishment," as "a clear indication the convention does not go into effect only after the crime of genocide has been committed." In fact, he pointed out, Article III of the convention lists as punishable acts not only the actual commission of genocide, but the very attempt to do so, as well as conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Yet while "signatories to the convention are obliged to prosecute and punish genocide that is clearly defined in international law and treaty obligations," said Mallon, "since the publication of the convention, there have, nevertheless, been egregious examples of what would be considered genocide, such as the Khmer Rouge in southeast Asia, multiple examples in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, including a growing consensus in the international community that what is happening in Gaza constitutes genocide."

Mallon quoted the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who said Sept. 11 that several European priests and bishops who had signed a document describing the Gaza situation as genocide "probably found, in what is happening, elements to apply that definition." 

"We — for the moment — have not done so yet," said the cardinal, adding, "This remains to be seen. It is necessary to study; the conditions must be exactly met in order to make such a statement."

Still, said Mallon, the 15-member U.N. Security Council — which is "the only UN body that can legally use coercive force against a member state" — is hobbled by a "serious weakness" among its five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.), each of whom have "the total and absolute right of veto."

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"There is no mechanism to override such a veto," said Mallon. "It is not unheard of for a 14-1 resolution being stopped in its tracks by such a veto."

He warned, "With the advances of artificial intelligence and modern weaponry, the real test of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is how to implement an effective and enforceable policy inhibiting one party from extinguishing another."