Palestine UN Conference – From Occupation to Justice: An Historic Opportunity for Palestinian Statehood

June 16, 2025

As the international community prepares for the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine (June 17-20, 2025), Justice For All urges all member states to seize this historic moment to deliver concrete justice for the Palestinian people and recognize a Palestinian state.

The conference’s eight working groups have developed actionable frameworks as a path forward that includes attention to security and regional security, economic viability, humanitarian action, legal pathways and accountability for war crimes. Based on these the General Assembly will propose that the Security Council adopt a resolution to formally recognize Palestinian statehood and outline steps for mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine.

Justice For All calls on the conference co-chairs, Saudi Arabia and France, to build on the working groups’ frameworks, transcend rhetoric and produce binding commitments to:

• Recognize Palestinian statehood.
• Protect fundamental rights.
• Implement without delay the working groups’ actionable recommendations.

In addition, we urge the following calls to action to the conference co-chairs:

1. Secure 15+ new recognitions from other countries during the conference. Unilateral recognition by individual states is not symbolic. It is a strategic necessity that creates irreversible political facts and strengthens Palestine’s legal claim under U.N. Charter Article 4 (Membership to the U.N.).
2. Isolate the 40 holdout states (mostly in Europe/North America) enabling occupation and blocking Palestinian statehood.
3. Use General Assembly pressure to overcome potential vetoes.
4. Request the Security Council immediately adopt the General Assembly’s integration roadmap for creating a Palestinian state by September 2025.
5. Establish sanctions for non-compliance with ICJ rulings.
6. Implement binding sacred site protections that include:
   1. An International Guardianship Council for Jerusalem’s holy sites. Since 2021 there has been an exponential surge in Al-Aqsa access restrictions by Israel.
   2. Guaranteed access corridors connecting religious centers.
   3. Special pilgrim visa programs for all Abrahamic faiths.
   4. Enforceable protection mechanisms with real consequences for violations. Israel’s complete obliteration of centuries-old mosques and churches in Gaza, alongside systematic targeting of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, show Israel’s deliberate assault on the multi-faith religious heritage that demands more than condemnation.

The stakes are high. As U.N. Secretary-General Guterres asked: “And for those that doubt about the two-State solution, I ask: What is the alternative? Is it a one-state solution in which either the Palestinians are expelled or forced to live in their land without rights?”

Justice For All urges the world that this conference mark the end of empty processes and the beginning of real justice. As Imam Malik Mujahid, President of Justice For All, said:

With 148 nations (77% of UN members) already recognizing Palestine, we demand commitments from at least 15 more states during this conference. The world must stop debating rights that international law has already affirmed. Justice delayed is justice denied—and for Palestinians, it has been denied for 76 years.

History will judge whether we acted and how.