UN investigator says Trump's plan to ‘relocate’ Gazans amounts to ‘ethnic cleansing’

US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza is “illegal” under international law and “amounts to ethnic cleansing”, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said yesterday.

“Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” Navi Pillay told Politico magazine.

“There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,” Pillay said.

Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the special court that tried the Rwandan genocide, also condemned Trump’s sanctions on the ICC, which has issued an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“International law applies equally, without double standards for a state’s friends,” Pillay said.

Pillay, the first non-white woman to serve on the bench of South Africa’s High Court, also told Politico she would support an ICC charge of apartheid against Israel.

A thief’s mentality: Trump, real estate and dreams of ethnic cleansing

“Apartheid is one of the manifestations of control there,” she said of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Countries around the world helped bring down apartheid in South Africa with sanctions against the regime, she noted, adding that governments should impose the same against Israel. Apartheid is a crime against humanity under the law governing the ICC.

“I don’t see [ICC Prosecutor] Karim Khan charging that crime. I was a judge on that court, I understand that it’s a bit complicated to charge a crime that has never been charged before … but if apartheid comes up, sure I will support it,” Pillay said, adding that her own commission plans to investigate Israel over the allegation of apartheid.

Last October, Pillay’s commission accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity through the targeted destruction of Gaza’s health system.

The commission is under the UN Human Rights Council, from which Israel withdrew on Wednesday over claims of “discrimination” and “anti-Semitism.”