UN committee calls for arms embargo and sanctions as Israel expands territorial reach

Panel describes alarming escalation over past year across Gaza, West Bank, Syrian Golan Heights and southern Lebanon

An Israeli flag flutters in the Jewish settlement of Beit Romano, surrounded by Palestinian buildings, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Hebron. AFP

A UN committee responsible for monitoring Israel’s conduct in the occupied territories urged member states on Monday to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on the country, warning that Israel’s expanding military and territorial reach was destabilising the region.

Presenting its annual report to the General Assembly, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories described an alarming escalation over the past year across Gaza, the occupied West Bank, the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.

In particular, senior Israeli officials have increasingly invoked a borderless or historical “Land of Israel” to justify military actions and settlement expansion well outside the country's internationally recognised territory.

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Such language, the committee warned, suggests a deliberate strategy to establish “Greater Israel”, a maximalist territorial vision extending across modern Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, the Golan Heights, parts of southern Lebanon and even the region between the Nile and the Euphrates.

“Israel’s constant claims to a borderless ‘Land of Israel’ are incompatible with a just and lasting peace,” the three-member body wrote. “Ensuring peace in the broader Middle East region requires that the leaders of Israel cease claiming rights to a geographically undefined land that has no existence in international law.”

The committee, established in 1968, accused Israeli authorities of granting settlers in the West Bank “carte blanche” to intimidate, displace and, in some cases, kill Palestinians under the protection of the Israeli army.

It cited the emergence of armed settler units, repeated village raids and the bulldozing of homes, adding that the absence of accountability had emboldened extremist groups.

Despite orders from the International Court of Justice and arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, the committee said Israel has been operating “with complete impunity”, supported by powerful allies and shielded from meaningful sanctions.

Particular concern was expressed over Israel’s use of artificial intelligence and cloud-based surveillance technologies in military targeting, citing testimony from civil society groups and a report in May this year titled “Algorithms of Death”, which alleged that automated systems played a central role in the high civilian death toll in Gaza.

Beyond the Palestinian territories, the report focused on Israel’s rapid expansion in the occupied Syrian Golan.

As Israel intensified air and ground operations in Lebanon late last year, it simultaneously imposed restrictive measures on Syrian residents in the Golan, many of which were lifted only after Israel took additional Syrian territory east of the region in December, the report stated.

On December 16, last year, the committee noted, Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to double the settler population there, allocating about $11 million for new infrastructure and authorising the construction of two new settlements capable of housing some 2,000 people.

Witnesses told the committee that Israel’s seizure of the UN-monitored buffer zone, an area with significant water reserves, could allow authorities to redirect water supplies to expanding settlements – a move that would have “catastrophic consequences” for Syrian villagers.

“It was also told that, under Israeli occupation, Syrians were subjected to house raids, contentious harassment and discriminatory policies and practices, particularly related to land and water allocation,” the report read.

The committee was told that the decision of Israel to increase and expand its control and the settlements in the previously and newly occupied areas in Syria was not unexpected, considering it was aligned with the vision of “Greater Israel”.