PEN International calls for global arms embargo on Israel over 'Gaza genocide'

PEN International has called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel to prevent what it called the "ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza".

In a statement on Monday, the organisation expressed outrage at the international community's failure to hold Israel accountable for the daily killing of civilians and suffocating blockade, and called for immediate action to end the assault.

PEN International collected testimonies from Palestinian writers across the occupied territories, which it said demonstrate "concerted and systematic efforts by Israel to erase the Palestinian people and their cultural heritage".

The NGO is the latest in a growing number of international organisations to designate Israel's attack on Gaza as a genocidal campaign.

UN experts, rights monitors, aid agencies, and hundreds of legal specialists and genocide scholars have concluded that Israel's conduct is consistent with genocide. The International Court of Justice last year ruled that Palestinians face a plausible risk of genocide.  

The Israeli military's onslaught has killed at least 54,418 Palestinians over the past 20 months, with thousands of others believed to be trapped beneath the rubble.

More than three-quarters of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, including 90 percent of the territory's housing units, most of its schools and hospitals, and dozens of religious and historical sites.

Senior Israeli officials have in recent weeks spoken in genocidal terms about the intensifying attack on Gaza.

Extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared last month that the Israeli military is "destroying everything that's left of the Gaza Strip".

The government has vowed to seize the entire territory and displace Gaza's 2.2 million inhabitants to the south, ahead of what ministers refer to as their "voluntary" migration from their land.

Mina Thabet, MENA head at PEN International, said there is an "imminent risk" that Palestinian life in Gaza will be erased by the Israeli military.

"Writers, like many Gazan civilians, have been facing death and starvation on an unprecedented level, while most of Gaza’s infrastructure has been decimated, including schools, libraries, bookstores, and universities," he told The New Arab.

PEN International said the targeting of artists, writers and cultural sites is part of a "deliberate strategy to silence and erase the Palestinian people".

The organisation has documented the killing of at least 23 Palestinian writers in Gaza over the past 20 months, in addition to the 173 journalists and media workers known to have died. As of May, the UN had documented damage to 110 cultural sites.

"An arms embargo is a first step to stop the ongoing genocide against Palestinians and end complicity in one of the most egregious crimes against humanity," said Thabet.

"It should be followed by further steps to hold Israel accountable for grave human rights abuses and war crimes that have been taking place across the occupied Palestinian territories," he said.

Israel has continued to receive billions of dollars of weapons from its largest suppliers - the US and Germany - over the course of the war. The two countries together account for the vast majority of Israel's arms imports.

Several Western countries have suspended all arms imports, while others have implemented partial bans.

The UK in September halted some export licenses but has continued supplying component parts for Israel's fleet of F-35 jets.