Gaza, Beersheba – 3 August 2025 – The Tribe of Abimelech Platform, acting on behalf of our indigenous Bedouin and refugee families in the occupied Palestinian Territory and the State of Israel, together with the Palestinian National Interest Committee, issues this formal and urgent demand for international legal assistance, arrest warrants, and prosecution of Mahmoud Abbas for aiding, abetting, and enabling genocide under international law. We invoke this demand in response to the unfolding crisis described by United Nations bodies and major human-rights organizations as involving atrocity crimes—including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—carried out against our people. The actions of Mahmoud Abbas mirror those for which other heads of state, including in Sudan, Bosnia, Serbia, and Ivory Coast, have been indicted or convicted by international tribunals. In light of these developments, we call for independent investigation and criminal prosecution of Mahmoud Abbas, members of his inner circle, and other non-elected PA actors responsible for mass atrocities committed against indigenous and refugee communities across Palestine.
Criminal Context
This section outlines specific campaigns and crimes in both the West Bank and Gaza in which Abbas’s regime directly participated or enabled atrocities. Between 2023 and 2025, the government of the State of Israel conducted a systematic military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, specifically targeting Palestinian refugee communities and indigenous Bedouin tribes. This campaign involved the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war; repeated airstrikes on our civilian homes, hospitals, universities, and shelters; hundreds of massacres resulting in the mass killing of civilians and entire families; and the widespread destruction of farmland, water systems, and essential infrastructure. Over 90% of Gaza’s predominantly refugee population was forcibly displaced.
In the West Bank
In the West Bank, more than 33,000 Palestinian refugees were forcibly displaced from UNRWA-registered refugee camps, primarily from communities with a documented history of opposition to Mahmoud Abbas’s regime, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams. Simultaneously, we witnessed the demolition of entire Bedouin villages, including the villages of Masafer Yatta and the Mleihat Bedouin community in the West Bank, and Ras Jrabah and Wadi al‑Khalil in the Naqab, where home demolitions increased by 400% in 2024 compared with 2022. These communities are protected under international law, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), yet these patterns of forced displacement illustrate systemic disregard for indigenous rights and the urgent need for legal protection.
Multiple UN investigations and leading human rights organizations have confirmed that these acts meet the legal definition of genocide. Critically, however, they were not carried out in isolation by the State of Israel alone. This military campaign of mass displacement and systematic destruction was actively enabled by coordination and domestic repression under Mahmoud Abbas’s regime, making him an integral part of a broader genocidal strategy and the basis for our urgent legal request for prosecution.
Forces of the State of Israel with direct ground support from Mahmoud Abbas's Preventive Security and General Intelligence forces bulldozed refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams, forcibly displacing more than 33,000 registered Palestinian refugees from the West Bank alone. These communities are overwhelmingly composed of refugee families and indigenous clan-based communities politically opposed to Mahmoud Abbas’s regime.
Mahmoud Abbas personally ordered a major security operation targeting the Jenin refugee camp. This operation was carried out by his Preventive Security, General Intelligence, National Security Forces, and Presidential Guard. His forces encircled Jenin Hospital, obstructed ambulances, stormed it, deployed snipers, and cut off water and electricity for over a month, all under his public directive. Snipers shot and killed civilians, including journalist Shatha al-Sabbagh. They forcibly turned civilian homes into military outposts, detained citizens, and physically abused activists filmed being forced to chant in praise of Abbas. After Abbas's forces withdrew, Israeli forces resumed the raid, during which his security units re-entered the camp alongside them. While Israeli units executed airstrikes and armored incursions, Abbas’s forces sealed off all humanitarian escape routes and fired live ammunition at civilians trying to flee, conducted mass detentions, and imposed sieges on densely populated refugee camps housing politically targeted Palestinian families. Widespread destruction of homes, medical infrastructure, electrical, communications and water systems were documented. These actions were coordinated political and military operations targeting populations identified by Abbas's regime as internal political adversaries and opponents of his rule.
In Gaza
In early 2025, Mahmoud Abbas ordered the suspension of the Palestinian Authority’s transfer of wages, fuel, and electricity payments to Gaza-based civil institutions, effectively paralyzing hospitals, sanitation systems, water infrastructure, and public health clinics at the height of humanitarian collapse.
At the same time, and despite widespread blame being placed solely on the State of Israel for its starvation campaign in Gaza, Mahmoud Abbas’s regime actively participated in obstructing and subverting the very humanitarian aid meant to prevent it. Abbas enabled the very militias accused of cooperating with Israeli forces to disrupt aid delivery. Multiple PA sources confirmed that such militia was supported logistically and financially through senior intelligence officials loyal to Abbas and staffed with former Preventive Security operatives. In November 2024 alone, this militia hijacked 98 out of 109 UN aid trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing, including shipments of flour, nutritional biscuits, and essential foodstuffs meant for starving civilians and children. These were deliberate strategies to deprive Gaza’s besieged refugee population already under active threat of genocide—of life-saving essentials, and are acts that meet the legal threshold for complicity in genocide under Article 6 of the Rome Statute.
Legal Classification of Crimes Committed by Mahmoud Abbas, His Family and High-Ranking Officials of the Palestinian Authority
The actions of Abbas’s security apparatus mirror the roles played by Serbian and Sudanese militias in internationally recognized genocides, where state-aligned enforcers executed the repression, displacement, and extermination of populations deemed politically undesirable. These communities were subjected to mass killing and displacement as a deliberate strategy of political cleansing, aimed at crushing internal dissent during an active genocidal campaign.
Under Articles 6 and 25 of the Rome Statute, Mahmoud Abbas bears direct legal responsibility for aiding and abetting genocide against the very population he claims to represent. His regime did not merely fail to act as is being stipulated by Western and Arab media; it functioned as a domestic co-enabler and facilitator of genocide, weaponizing the institutions of the Palestinian Authority to assist in the persecution and erasure of entire refugee and indigenous Bedouin communities. This is complicity of the highest order, and it must be prosecuted accordingly.
We formally accuse Mahmoud Abbas and his Inner Circle of:
We formally accuse Mahmoud Abbas and his Inner Circle of the following acts, which collectively constitute aiding, abetting, and enabling genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against both indigenous Bedouin and Palestinian refugee populations:
Coordinating and enabling joint military campaigns with occupying military forces carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, particularly through joint operations in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Gaza.
Using PA intelligence, General Intelligence, Preventive Security, and Presidential Guard to suppress political opposition, journalists, and activists, and attack refugee camp civilians under siege while mirroring the occupier's genocidal military tactics.
Obstructing or suspending life-saving services including salaries, medical transfers, fuel, electricity, and aid distribution, especially in Gaza during peak famine and bombing campaigns, with knowledge of the genocidal impact, directly contributing to severe famine, death, and the collapse of public health infrastructure
Preemptive repression of protests, mutual aid, emergency organizing, and shelter operations, effectively criminalizing resistance and exposing civilians to extermination.
Enabling and normalizing genocide through systematic denial, political paralysis, coordination with occupying powers, and silencing of community voices and survivor testimony.
Betrayal of the duty to protect: failing to provide meaningful humanitarian relief or physical protection to Palestinians under siege, and instead overseeing the abandonment of communities being displaced, bombed, or evicted.
Disproportionate privilege and elite impunity: living in foreign countries under dual citizenship, investing in luxury properties, and enjoying full security while indigenous and refugee communities are erased and slaughtered.
Use of foreign security funding and external training to build a domestic police force that functions not to protect the population, but to spy on, imprison, and break the will of those resisting genocide.
Political complicity in settler colonial erasure of Bedouin villages in the Naqab, including silence or approval of home demolitions, dispossession campaigns, and ethnic cleansing operations, especially against UNDRIP-recognized indigenous tribes.
Criminal omission and silence in the face of predictable, ongoing, and documented mass atrocities, in direct violation of international humanitarian law and indigenous rights frameworks.
These actions and omissions, carried out while in full knowledge of an ongoing genocide, constitute material support for genocide, aiding and abetting war crimes, and systematic betrayal of the right to self-determination as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
International Legal Precedents
This case is not exceptional. Other heads of state have been prosecuted under similar legal logic:
Omar al-Bashir (Sudan)
Indicted by the ICC for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Charged for deploying state forces and refusing to protect civilians.
Did not kill directly but enabled the genocide.
Radovan Karadžić (Bosnia)
Convicted by ICTY for genocide in Srebrenica.
Used state institutions to restrict aid, allow mass executions, and incite expulsions.
Slobodan Milošević (Serbia)
Charged for complicity and obstruction using his role to shield paramilitary atrocities.
His denial and propaganda enabled genocide.
Laurent Gbagbo (Ivory Coast)
Charged for failing to prevent mass killings and using state forces to crush protest.
Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya)
Though charges were dropped, he was accused of orchestrating violence through political networks and state apparatus.
These precedents confirm that heads of state and their enforcers can be held criminally liable not only for ordering genocide, but for enabling it, coordinating it, or remaining complicit through silence and deliberate inaction.
Legal Basis Under International Criminal Law
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court establishes individual criminal responsibility for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Article 6 incorporates the definition of genocide from the Genocide Convention:
Genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. These acts include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, or forcibly transferring children.
Article 25 imposes criminal liability on individuals who commit, aid, abet, order, solicit, or induce such crimes. It also criminalizes direct and public incitement to commit genocide and affirms that official position or rank does not exempt individuals from prosecution.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials and a Palestinian leader in Gaza for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This confirms the Court’s willingness to prosecute atrocity crimes regardless of political affiliation. The Tribe of Abimelech Platform asserts that the same legal mechanisms must apply to Mahmoud Abbas and high-ranking PA actors whose actions and omissions have facilitated genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Naqab.
Mahmoud Abbas's actions, coordinating with an occupying power in joint military operations during an active genocide, using armed force to suppress protests against that genocide, and obstructing survivors' access to aid or justice, represent not only a betrayal of our Palestinian family, but a systematic chain of actions with full knowledge of an ongoing genocide and direct complicity in international crimes. This includes his decision to suspend wages, fuel, and electricity supplies to civilian infrastructure in Gaza in 2025, a deliberate measure that directly contributes to humanitarian collapse.
Our Demands
Mahmoud Abbas and his wife Amina, a family that has rejected Palestinian citizenship and resides abroad in luxury, financed by funds embezzled from the Palestinian people.
(Photo credit: REUTERS)
Immediate Arrest Warrants
Issue international arrest warrants for Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abbas, Tareq Abbas, Hussein al‑Sheikh, Majed Faraj, Ziad Hab al‑Reeh, Nasser Al‑Burini, and Bahaa Balusha under ICC authority and universal jurisdiction, for their role in aiding, abetting, or facilitating genocide and crimes against humanity.Criminal Investigations
Open formal investigations into the individuals listed above under Articles 6, 25, and 27 of the Rome Statute, for direct complicity, coordinated repression, and systemic obstruction during an ongoing genocidal campaign.Survivor and Witness Protection
Guarantee protection and legal support for survivors and witnesses, especially Palestinian refugee families, Bedouin tribes, and political dissidents at risk of retaliation by the PA security apparatus.Financial Forensic Audit and Asset Freezes
Launch an independent financial investigation into the Abbas family and affiliated PA officials, including asset tracing, audits of bank accounts, shell corporations, and international real estate portfolios accumulated during the occupation and wartime period. Freeze assets where appropriate pending legal outcomes.
This is a call for prosecution. The law applies to all, even those hiding behind the illusion of national authority. Mahmoud Abbas is not a neutral figure. He is legally and operationally a partner in genocide. We demand immediate international action.
Coordination and Contact
The Tribe of Abimelech Platform and the Palestinian National Interest Committee will coordinate with the following bodies and institutions:
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
International Criminal Court
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
Participating legal clinics at accredited universities
For media inquiries or to offer assistance, please contact us at: https://abimelech.org/contact.
Members of the public who possess verifiable information about other individuals, properties or collaborative activities relevant to the alleged crimes are invited to provide evidence through the contact form. Such information may assist in building comprehensive legal cases and ensuring accountability.
This press release draws on publicly available evidence from the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and other reputable sources to accurately reflect the situation of indigenous Bedouin communities and the applicable international law.
