Over 30 states meet during Netanyahu's UN speech to weigh action against Israel

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday, 34 states convened under the banner of The Hague Group to coordinate legal, diplomatic and economic measures aimed at halting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Scores of diplomats also walked out of Netanyahu's speech in protest against his government's conduct in occupied Palestine and multiple attacks on countries in the Middle East and North Africa over the past two years.

The ministerial meeting, co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, brought together governments spanning Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. 

In addition to the co-chairs, states attending were: Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Comoros, Cuba, Djibouti, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The Hague Group is a bloc of eight states - Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa - launched on 31 January in the eponymous Dutch city with the stated goal of holding Israel accountable under international law.

But on Friday, it was the first time several states, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iceland, attended an event by the group, in a sign of mounting international pressure on Israel. 

In their closing remarks at the meeting, Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio and South Africa’s Minister of International Relations Ronald Lamola warned: “The choice before every government is clear: complicity or compliance. History will judge us not by the speeches we delivered, but by the actions we took.”

The group pledged to share enforcement tools and legal mechanisms to help governments adopt measures designed to sever Israel’s access to arms, finance and energy. 

The measures include pledges to:

• Prevent military and dual-use exports to Israel 
• Refuse Israeli weapons shipments at ports 
• Prevent vessels carrying weapons to Israel under their national flags 
• Review all public contracts to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation 
• Pursue justice for international crimes and support universal jurisdiction to hold perpetrators accountable 
• Halt military procurement from Israel 
• Divest public institutions from complicit companies 
• Institute an energy embargo 

The meeting coincided with the expiration of a 12-month deadline set by a UN resolution demanding that Israel comply with an International Court of Justice ruling to end its occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and that other states refrain from supporting or recognising the occupation. 

“The people of Palestine cannot wait, and The Hague Group will not rest until it has rallied the world to defend the international laws that protect them,” the co-chairs declared.

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Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, the group’s executive secretary, said Gaza had become “the litmus test of our lifetime”, insisting that condemnation alone was insufficient.

“The proposed measures are not optional, not radical, not novel. They are legal obligations, binding under the Genocide Convention, ICJ advisory opinions and UN resolutions,” she said.

Varsen Aghabekian, Palestine’s foreign minister, argued that the real substance of this year’s General Assembly summit lay not in speeches but in concrete action.

“It will be found in the actions that states will take to halt the genocide of our people and the illegal occupation of our land,” she said.

Palestine’s UN ambassador, Riyad Mansour, described The Hague Group as an “inflection point” in the pursuit of accountability.

He highlighted the Bogota Declaration, an earlier policy framework endorsed by the group in July, as the most coordinated enforcement effort yet seen at the national and international levels.

Israel 'must be stopped'

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira accused Israel of maintaining an unlawful blockade on humanitarian aid, warning that states failing to act could themselves face responsibility for complicity in genocide.

Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nuh Yilmaz said Israel’s military actions against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Qatar demonstrated that the crisis was now destabilising the wider region.

“Israel, as the exporter of war, must be stopped. Its privilege of impunity must be lifted,” he said.

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Qatar’s Minister of State Sultan bin Saad Al Muraikhi also delivered remarks, denouncing Israeli attacks on his country as a violation of sovereignty and international law.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, said Israel was conducting “the fastest and most vicious starvation campaign in modern history”. He called for broad-based sanctions, arguing that Israel’s economy had profited by an estimated $628bn from the occupation of Palestine between 2000 and 2020.

Gandikota-Nellutla argued that unilateral measures had left governments exposed to retaliation. “The only antidote to unilateral punishment from powerful states… is collective action,” she said.

The Hague Group sponsored a two-day emergency summit in Bogota in July, culminating in a joint declaration by states demanding international sanctions against Israel and legal accountability for what participants described as "grave violations of international law" in Gaza. 

Since then, many states have expressed support for the group's goals, without formally becoming members. These include Turkey, Spain and Ireland, which have declared their own sanctions against Israel in line with The Hague Group's pledges. 

The ongoing 80th session of the UN General Assembly has been dominated by damning speeches by world leaders criticising Israel for its genocide in Gaza and the relentless expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank in defiance of international law. 

Netanyahu's flight en route to the US on Thursday avoided most EU airspace for the first time, reportedly over fears that EU member states may arrest and surrender him to the International Criminal Court.