Geneva (Quds News Network)- The three members of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory who resigned earlier this month have reportedly said the decision is not linked to fears of sanctions by the US administration or any other external pressures. This followed reports that the resignation came amid a crackdown by the US on international investigators into its ally, Israel. According to several reports, citing a letter posted on a back-end Human Rights Council website, Navi Pillay, Chris Sidoti, and Miloon Kothari, who made up the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, submitted their resignation letters to the president of the UN’s Human Rights Council. The letters surfaced on Monday. Pillay, 83, the commission’s chair, said she was resigning “owing to age, medical issues and the weight of several other commitments” on July 8. Sidoti resigned a day later, saying Pillay’s retirement was “an appropriate time to re-constitute the commission,” and Kothari said the group had reached an “understanding” during the previous week. The commission will continue to exist once it appoints new members. Jurg Lauber, the head of the UN’s Human Rights Council, asked the council’s member states to propose new members by August 31. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, was set up in the wake of the 11-day Israeli bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip in May 2021 that killed at least 250 Palestinians. Through a resolution adopted in a May 27, 2021 session, the Human Rights Council decided to “urgently establish an ongoing, independent, international commission of inquiry” to investigate abuses in the occupied Palestinian territory as well as – for the first time – in Israel, from April 13, 2021, onwards. The resolution further requested the commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity”. The commission has an open-ended mandate to report to the Human Rights Council and to the General Assembly on an annual basis from June 2022 and September 2022, respectively. The commission’s members resigned as the Trump administration cracks down on international investigators into Israel. Most recently, the US imposed sanctions against UN rapporteur for Palestinian rights Francesca Albanese. The decision followed her calls for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate US and Israeli officials and companies involved in the occupation of Palestinian land and Gaza genocide. However, the commissioners said that their decisions were made internally, before the sanctions were put on Albanese. “The resignations are not linked in any way to anything outside whatsoever," Sidoti told MEE. “The retirement of the chair is an appropriate time to re-constitute the commission," he wrote in a 9 July letter. “For me, the reason is exactly what I said in my letter, that, when the chair retires and needs to be replaced, it is appropriate to look at the composition of the whole commission and, in resigning, I was enabling the president of the Human Rights Council to do that," he told MEE. Kothari confirmed to MEE that the resignations were a collective decision, taken days before the sanctions on Albanese were announced. "Our resignations, therefore, were not in any manner related to the sanctions," he said. “The resignations are strictly an internal matter and have absolutely nothing to do with any external event or pressure,” Todd Pitman, media adviser for the HRC’s investigative bodies, told MEE. Pitman said that Israel has obstructed the commission’s work by denying it entry into occupied Palestine and Israel, and that the commission has also faced hardships due to the financial crisis. Yet the experts have not been under any pressure to resign. “The commissioners fully stand by the findings of their reports and the work of the commission," he said. Pitman explained that the HRC’s president will soon call on member states to put forward new commission candidates, with the aim of making appointments on or around 3 November, when the resignations of Pillay and Sidoti take effect. The US move marks a sharp escalation in efforts to shield Israeli and American actors from international legal scrutiny, especially amid growing global outrage over the genocide in Gaza. Washington has rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction and continues to oppose investigations targeting its allies. Legal experts have warned that sanctioning UN officials for fulfilling their mandate sets a dangerous precedent. Rights groups condemned the move as an attack on international law and an attempt to intimidate watchdogs. The Trump administration also announced sanctions against ICC officials in June, naming four judges whom it accuses of taking “illegitimate and baseless actions” against the US and its allies, including Israel. Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia, according to a statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel. The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,” Rubio said. Both judges Bossa and Ibanez Carranza have been on the ICC bench since 2018. In 2020 they were involved in an appeals chamber decision that allowed the ICC prosecutor to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan. ICC judges also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant last November for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza genocide. Alapini Gansou and Hohler ruled to authorize the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, Rubio said. “These measures are a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 states parties from all corners of the globe,” the ICC said in response to the sanctions. “Targeting those working for accountability does nothing to help civilians trapped in conflict,” the statement continued. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the court’s work on Afghanistan. The measures also follow a January vote at the US House of Representatives to punish the ICC in protest over its Netanyahu arrest warrant. The US has already sanctioned the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, because of his role in pursuing the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.