On the Agenda

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

Israel’s airstrikes since the start of the war are an abject violation of the principles of international humanitarian law and constitute a war crime. The massive scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip is unprecedented. The horrifying death toll, which rises every day, is unfathomable: according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 7,000 people have been killed, including almost 3,000 minors, more than 1,700 women, and dozens of families who were killed together when their houses collapsed on them. More than 17,000 people have been injured…

Hamas must immediately release all the hostages, with no conditions. Until then, it must provide accurate information about them, ensure they are safe and protected, and treat them with humanity and dignity. Israel must act now to strike a deal to release the captives. Their lives are in danger and the state has a duty to do everything in its power to bring them back...

Since the war in Gaza began, violence against Palestinians has shot up in the West Bank. In just ten days, soldiers and settlers have killed 62 Palestinians and injured dozens. Israel has put up roadblocks throughout the West Bank, closed off main roads to Palestinians and significantly restricted their movement. Israel has also ramped up efforts to drive Palestinian communities and single-family farms out of their homes and land, cynically exploiting the war to promote its political agenda of taking over more land in the West Bank...

Targeting civilians is prohibited, no matter the circumstances, and no objective in the world can justify it: not the shocking crimes committed by Hamas in Israeli communities near the Gaza border, not an all-out war on terror, not the desire to replace the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. That is also why there is absolutely no justification for the war crimes Israel has been committing in the Gaza Strip for the past 12 days...