On the Agenda

Life in the Gaza Strip right now is an unimaginable nightmare, as the result of a deliberate Israeli policy. Millions of residents are dangerously overcrowded in inhuman conditions – without water, food, medicine or fuel – and hospitals that have collapsed. All of this under unprecedented and relentless Israeli bombings. The situation is deteriorating and aid organizations are almost incapable of helping. This reality isn’t the war’s biproduct, it’s the deliberate outcome of Israel’s policy – a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe.
Our analysis of the policy over the past two months:

On Saturday, 2 December 2023, Israel bombed the neighborhood of Shuja’iyeh in Gaza City, declaring the goal was to kill Wissam Farhat. According to initial reports, the strike killed dozens of people and destroyed scores of residential buildings. Hundreds of people are still buried under the rubble. A strike such as this is not and cannot be considered proportional. Israel is implementing a criminal bombing policy in Gaza, which mostly hurts civilians, not Hamas...

Since the war began, Israel has blatantly disregarded its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and is committing war crimes. In these circumstances, renewing the hostilities will almost certainly endanger the lives of civilians on an inconceivable scale, as Israel has proven it is not fighting against Hamas but against the entire population of Gaza, which consists of more than two million residents. The international community must clarify the red lines and prohibitions applying to Israel – regardless of the circumstances.

The Palestinians have no one left to defend them. Residents’ attempts at self-defense are met with more violence, arrests and even gunfire. The military and police are also trying to remove Israeli and international activists, who stay in the area to help the residents and have extensive documentation of the settlers’ actions In these circumstances, it seems only a matter of time before Israel succeeds in taking over the entire area. Apparently, it has abandoned any pretense of trying to protect Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills, and has decided to carry out the war crime of forcibly transferring them.

Not everyone in the Gaza Strip is Hamas. 2.2 million people live there - human beings with faces, names, and families, who are in desperate need of food, water, medicine, hospitals, electricity, and shelter just so they can somehow survive. Claiming humanitarian aid cannot be brought in the name of the need to fight Hamas implies an underlying assumption that, at least for now, these civilians can be ignored and left to starve, get sick, and die. This is as cruel as it is willfully blind to the humanitarian crisis unfolding right in front of our eyes.

Since the war broke out on 7 October 2023, the military has been imposing a curfew on 11 neighborhoods in Area H2 in Hebron. Stores and businesses have been shut down and thousands of people, amounting to about 750 families, are imprisoned at home. Only after two weeks of full curfew, on 21 October 2023, did the military pemit residents to leave home on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. There is no justification for keeping hundreds of people under a blanket movement ban, locked up at home for weeks on end...

Israel is killing more, and more, and more civilians. More than 10,000 people in Gaza have been killed, over half of them women and children. There cannot be any justification for such a horrific death toll. Entire streets have been reduced to rubble, with people trapped underneath. More than a million people have been turned into refugees, some killed while fleeing, others where they sought shelter from the bombings. Thousands are missing, their fate unknown...

There are currently thousands of sick and injured patients, medical staff, and tens of thousands of residents who fled their homes sheltering in the largest hospital in Gaza. According to Israel, Hamas is running a military base underneath it. If that is the case, Hamas is committing a war crime. However, bombing the site would cause horrifying harm to civilians and constitute a war crime in itself – violating the provisions of international humanitarian law, which Israel repeatedly professes to uphold...

Human rights and civil society NGOs in Israel call on the international community to act urgently to stop the state-backed wave of settler violence which has led to the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Since Hamas's atrocities of October 7th, settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities. At least 13 communities have been displaced. See list of communities