First, ending Israel’s genocide. Primero, fin del genocidio israelí.

A global wave of resistance to the US empire must begin with ending Israel’s genocide

“Palestine is really the center of the world.” – Angela Davis
        Published 20-01-2026
        Author info BDS National Committee

The US administration has unilaterally announced a so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza led by US President Trump in a statement that completely omitted any mention of Palestinians.

This board is packed with Israel-First politicians and billionaires and installs an Israel-biased former UN envoy who is controlled by the UAE despotic regime as the colonial viceroy of the illegally occupied Gaza Strip, supervising a “technocratic” Palestinian committee. 

The Palestinian BDS National Committee, the largest Palestinian civil society coalition leading the global BDS movement, condemns and rejects this thinly-veiled attempt to normalize Israel's ongoing genocide, rehabilitate its genocidal regime, and rescue it from its global isolation. The Indigenous Palestinian people will never give up our inalienable rights. 

The self-appointed US emperor’s ambitions go well beyond Gaza, as evidenced in his attack on Venezuela and ongoing attempt to take over its riches and his advanced plans to occupy Greenland. His reported desire to gradually replace the UN with his “Board of Peace” to “mediate” world conflicts and dictate policies to weaker nations, proves beyond speculation that the US-Israeli playbook for Gaza is meant to be globally applied.

These and other transgressions follow an effective “shock and awe” strategy, but beneath the surface they all indicate the beginning of the end of the US-dominated international system. 

As Palestinian civil society warned from the beginning of Israel’s livestreamed genocide, and as Colombian President Gustavo Petro puts it, “Gaza is only the first experiment to consider all of us disposable.” Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” which trashes international law, would not have been possible without the Gaza “experiment,” because “in a world where even genocide is not a red line, there are no red lines,” says former senior UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber. Israel’s genocide, armed and enabled by the US and other western powers, is normalizing this might-makes-right era with forms of extreme colonial violence. Any state, even among the increasingly pathetic colonial powers of Europe, that thought it was safe must think again.

The typically choreographed and by now ridiculous claim by Israel’s fascist government that Trump’s “Board of Peace” was not coordinated with it is convincing no one. This Board is part of the Netanyahu-Trump genocidal plan for an ostensibly “international” coalition to control Gaza on behalf of Israel’s regime, which despite its unspeakable crimes has ultimately failed to make the Palestinian people bow or surrender our rights.

The plan is to give Israel international backing to sustain a less visible, less intense form of genocide, with ongoing killings as well as systematic denial of adequate food, clean water, housing, health services, etc. Israel’s ultimate goal since the Nakba of 1948, after all, has always been the ethnic cleansing of as many Palestinians as possible. Every state or individual that participates in this “Board of Peace” must therefore be held accountable for complicity in genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation.

We reiterate what we said when this plan was first announced in October 2025:

“The inalienable rights of the Indigenous Palestinian people are inherent and stipulated in international law. They cannot be extinguished … or redefined by any deranged genocidaire wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), any self-styled emperor who should in a fairer world be tried by the ICC, or any regional despot or authoritarian regime. Dismantling Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and illegal military occupation is a necessary condition for the Palestinian people to exercise our rights, including self-determination and the right of Palestinian refugees to return home and receive reparations.” 

Building a global wave of resistance to US imperial designs is now an existential need for humanity, to save us all from the abyss of utter lawlessness, immense suffering, and possibly a nuclear war. This requires mass intersectional mobilization by grassroots and civil society movements worldwide, in order to push states to meaningfully resist this might-makes-right order.

But everyone must by now understand that the current phase of US imperialism – unprecedented in its utter shedding of all pretences of human rights, democracy, peace, etc. – builds on doctrines and mechanisms first tested on Palestinians, and it is emboldened by Israel’s genocidal "experiment" in Gaza and the “total impunity” with which it has perpetrated it. To stop the empire, Israel must first be stopped and held seriously accountable. 

The Global Majority needs to impose red lines on the US-Israeli genocidal axis as a necessary step to be able to uphold the rule of international law everywhere. This means ending Israel’s genocide and imposing serious lawful sanctions to help dismantle the root causes of genocide–Israel’s decades-old regime of apartheid and illegal occupation.

Particularly coalitions of states that have a mandate to fight colonialism and represent nations at the receiving end of the policies of the US-Israeli axis, such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the African Union, The Hague Group, etc. need to join forces and act now.

To this end, the BDS movement calls for pressure on all states to:

Affirm the primacy and universal applicability of international law: Uphold the rights to sovereignty and self-determination by taking a decisive stance against aggression and all international crimes and criminals. This demands redrawing red lines, ending the “Gaza experiment,” and setting an example in holding rogue states and lawless regimes of naked aggression, genocide or apartheid anywhere accountable. 

This must start with cutting military, economic, trade, diplomatic, and academic ties with apartheid Israel, as many UN human rights experts have called for, as Israel is the world’s most rogue regime. Since its inception, it has violated the UN Charter and more UN resolutions than any other state, has killed more UN staff and destroyed more UN facilities (including most recently UNRWA’s headquarter in occupied Jerusalem) than any other state in history, has literally shredded the UN Charter and is leading the systematic demolition – its area of expertise! – of international law.

Reject Trump’s boards of “peace,” protect and reform the UN and its institutions: Immediately activate the UN mechanisms to counter the might-makes-right era and decolonize the UN to make it more representative of the Global Majority and less beholden to – or vulnerable to coercion by – regimes that are deeply implicated in colonialism, neocolonialism, aggression, and atrocity crimes. 

Affirm the right of nations to reparations for the scourge of colonialism (including slavery): A fair and accurate accounting of the scope of reparations is needed in order to cancel national debts as partial repayment, wherever applicable, and making former/current colonial powers pay the necessary price for reconstruction and real, sovereign development in Palestine and across the Global South.  

We call for escalating all forms of BDS pressure and for forming the broadest possible intersectional coalitions to uphold the above. Saving humanity is obviously not the task of the Palestinians alone.

But as “Palestine has become the litmus test for human rights,” as South African jurist John Dugard has said, we are sounding the alarm: hold Israel accountable to stop the US empire and work towards justice and peace for all, or humanity at large loses everything.