“End the ethnic cleansing. End the apartheid. End this illegal, colonial occupation” – Letter from the State of Palestine (A/ES-10/1040-S/2025/449)

03 July 2025

Identical letters dated 3 July 2025 from the Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly and the President of the Security Council

Israel is escalating its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people, inflicting mass carnage, every day causing an average of 100 or more casualties. An entire people is being dehumanized and decimated before the eyes of the world, without recourse, without consequences.

Under the command of Israel’s Prime Minister, who for months has obstructed a ceasefire after his blatant decision to violate it, Israeli occupying forces are on a spree, bombing whatever is left of Gaza’s cities, towns and refugee camps, murdering children, women and men, assassinating doctors, journalists and humanitarians, impeding humanitarian aid, starving the population and forcibly displacing the population over and over again, leaving no one and nothing unscathed.

The incitement and vows of Israeli officials leave no doubt of the aims of this frenzied campaign: erasure of the indigenous people of Palestine and dismantlement of their society, home by home, school by school, hospital by hospital, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, family by family.

And, while the world continues to fail its solemn obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel is also being allowed to dismantle the international legal system established to protect humanity from such atrocities and protect civilians in armed conflict.

Every rule is being distorted, every principle debased, every law violated by Israel – from the Charter of the United Nations, to the obligations of Israel under international humanitarian law as the occupying Power, to its obligations under the Genocide Convention, to every resolution – as it illegitimately invokes a right to self-defence as cover for its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and annexation schemes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. And, still, no accountability, no consequences.

And so it carries on, despite global condemnation of its latest illegal scheme – the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – preventing United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations from accessing Gaza, insistent that no one aids the Palestinian people, no one protects them, no one saves them from starvation, insistent that only Israel can decide whether they live or die.

As widely reported, over 550 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating in late May 2025. That number has surpassed 600 Palestinians as every day brings more casualties, including today, when another 38 people were killed overnight while waiting near the so-called “aid distribution sites”, as Israeli soldiers and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation mercenaries deliberately fire on defenceless civilians approaching the sites seeking food.

Testimonies by Israeli soldiers in an investigative piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 27 June, entitled “It’s a killing field”, exposed directives ordering the Israeli occupying forces to fire on Palestinian civilians at these four sites, allowing them to shoot to kill. According to one soldier’s testimony:

It’s a killing field … Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars … Our form of communication is gunfire… We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces… I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.

Similarly, the piece revealed that private contractors are being paid about 5,000 shekels ($1,500) for every house in Gaza that they demolish. According to an Israeli soldier’s testimony:

They’re making a fortune. From their perspective, any moment where they don’t demolish houses is a loss of money, and the forces have to secure their work. The contractors … demolish wherever they want along the entire front … These are areas where Palestinians are allowed to be – we’re the ones who moved closer and decided [they] endangered us. So, for a contractor to make another 5,000 shekels and take down a house, it’s deemed acceptable to kill people who are only looking for food.

Palestinian civilians, including children, are literally being lured to their death by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. After walking for miles in the extreme heat while hungry, thirsty and exhausted, they are being targeted simply for coming to the aid sites in search of food and standing in line as they have been ordered to do by Israel, the occupying Power, whose grotesque degradation and humiliation of our people knows no bounds.

Moreover, those unable to trek to the four Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites in the south and centre of Gaza (compared to over 400 aid sites that had been operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other United Nations and international agencies across Gaza), especially women and children, including thousands of orphans, and elderly and disabled people, are being deprived of any assistance, left to starve and dehydrate owing to this dystopian plot.

As stressed by the Head of Office of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jonathan Whittall: “It is weaponized hunger. It is forced displacement. It’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive. All combined, it appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life from Gaza”.

That conclusion is echoed across the humanitarian community, including by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, who has stated as follows: “Palestinian lives have been so devalued. It is now the routine to shoot and kill desperate and starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries … Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime”.

There must be full accountability for all of these crimes, and this nefarious, inhumane scheme must be immediately stopped.

Far from respecting humanitarian principles and delivering life-saving aid, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has only led to more killing, devastation and forced displacement. It must be called out for what it is: a tool of the Israeli occupation intended to serve its illegal objectives, including to empty Gaza of Palestinians, as evidenced by Israeli officials’ repeated declarations and “evacuation orders”, by which Israel has designated 85 per cent of Gaza as military zones and pushed the population to the south, confining them to less than 15 per cent of the territory in the most appalling conditions, including starvation, with nowhere safe from attack.

On 1 July, over 200 non-governmental organizations issued a call, entitled “Gaza: starvation or gunfire – this is not a humanitarian response”,[1] urging immediate action to end that abomination, stating, inter alia:

Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families. The weeks following the launch of the Israeli distribution scheme have been some of the deadliest and most violent since October 2023

…

The humanitarian system is being deliberately and systematically dismantled by the Government of Israel’s blockade and restrictions, a blockade now being used to justify shutting down nearly all other aid operations in favour of a deadly, military-controlled alternative that neither protects civilians nor meets basic needs. These measures are designed to sustain a cycle of desperation, danger, and death.

As a result, according to hundreds of experts, Gaza’s already apocalyptic humanitarian conditions are “collapsing faster than at any point in the past 20 months” and the death toll from Israel’s killing and starvation machine continues to rise.

As at 2 July, the casualty toll stands at more than 57,012 Palestinians killed and over 134,592 Palestinians injured. This includes 6,454 people killed and 22,551 injured since Israel broke the ceasefire on 18 March 2025.

The confirmed list of the Palestinians killed by Israel, the occupying Power, in Gaza since 8 October 2023 includes 1,861 babies, aged 1 day to 1 year. The babies, along with the children murdered by Israel in Gaza, are listed in the first 357 pages of the document, which lists more than 18,000 children, with thousands still unaccounted for.

Doctors also continue to be assassinated by Israel. On 2 July, Dr. Marwan al‑Sultan, a renowned cardiologist and director of the Indonesian Hospital, became the latest victim of Israel’s brutality, murdered alongside his family after working non-stop for 635 days of this genocide to save lives. Dr. al-Sultan was the seventieth healthcare worker killed by Israel in the past 50 days, in addition to the more than 1,400 doctors, nurses and paramedics who have been murdered since October 2023 as Israel blatantly attempts to decimate Gaza’s health system and diminish the chances for survival of the population.

Journalists also continue to be targeted. Israel’s attack on 30 June on the Baqah Cafe with a 500-pound bomb killed at least 36 Palestinians and wounded dozens more. Among the casualties of this heinous attack were journalists, a film-maker, mothers and children.

Israel’s destruction of Palestinian life is of course not limited to Gaza, as the occupying Power and its rogue military and settler terrorist gangs continue attacks in the rest of Occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem.

A recent attack by over 100 settlers on the village of Kafr Malik resulted in the killing of three Palestinians in the village, injuries to other civilians, and the burning of homes and cars in the attack, as Israeli settlers continue their attacks explicitly aimed at terrorizing Palestinian villagers to leave their lands.

In this regard, Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta, which have struggled for years to remain on their land in the southern West Bank in the face of relentless harassment and attacks by the Israeli occupying forces and settlers, are facing imminent destruction. An Israeli military order issued on 18 June under false security pretexts is aimed at the demolition and displacement of 12 Palestinian villages in the area. The order requires that all Palestinian building requests in Masafer Yatta must be automatically rejected, and as the area has been designated a military training site. The approximately 2,500 Palestinian civilians living there are now threatened with forced transfer.

If implemented, this decision would finalize Israel’s long-term plans for the ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta and accelerate its colonization, which has been preceded by the establishment of so-called settler outposts, constant settler terror, attacks on property, denial of grazing for sheep herders, and home demolitions.

While thousands of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta and elsewhere in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, face imminent expulsion from their homes and lands by this illegal occupation, tens of thousands of Palestinians are already suffering the hardships of forced displacement in the West Bank, deprived of shelter and limited access to aid and basic services, including healthcare and education. More than 40,000 Palestinian civilians remain forcibly displaced five months after Israel’s mass destruction and ethnic cleansing of the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in the northern West Bank. The Israeli occupying forces have sealed off the camps and prevented refugee families from returning to their homes.[2]

As stressed by UNRWA Commissioner-General Lazzarini in his statement to the Advisory Commission of UNRWA,[3] which had to be held virtually due to the extreme instability in the region, “We are witnessing the implementation of a project, decades in the making, to separate Palestinians from Palestine … Annexation is well underway … So great is the desire to undermine the viability of a Palestinian State, and to strip Palestinians from their refugee status, that dismantling UNRWA has become an objective of the war in Gaza”.

Israel’s war of dehumanization and annihilation against the Palestinian people must be stopped, and its attacks on any who would seek to aid and protect them must be stopped.

There must be an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the rest of Occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem. There must be a halt to the weaponization of food, water, medicine and fuel so crucial for the survival of the population. The Israeli blockade on Gaza must be lifted and there must be unimpeded humanitarian access to enable the United Nations, including UNRWA, and all legitimate international humanitarian organizations to work immediately to save the millions of lives at risk.

The international community must act to halt Israel’s crime spree before any more innocent lives are taken and before the international legal order so painstakingly built over the past 80 years is further irreversibly damaged, to the detriment of all. This requires immediate and tangible action by all States to end the genocide. End the ethnic cleansing. End the apartheid. End this illegal, colonial occupation.

As stressed by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, in a call for accountability and an end to complicity on the issuance of her latest report, entitled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23), all countries “have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity… This is your obligation”. Only in this way, using the peaceful, legitimate tools afforded by international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and fulfilling obligations can an end to this impunity and inhumanity finally be realized.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 870 letters on the ongoing crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes the territory of the State of Palestine. These letters, dated from 29 September 2000 (A/55/432-S/2000/921) to 20 June 2025 (A/ES-10/1039-S/2025/400), constitute a basic record of the crimes being committed by Israel, the occupying Power, against the Palestinian people since September 2000. For all of these war crimes, acts of State terrorism and systematic human rights violations against our people, Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. This illegal colonial occupation and apartheid regime must end now.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the present letter distributed as a document of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly, under agenda item 5, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Riyad Mansour

Minister

Permanent Observer

          [1] Full statement available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-starvation-or-gunfire-not-humanitarian-response-0.

          [2] See https://prezly.msf.org.uk/five-months-of-forced-displacement-and-escalating-humanitarian-needs-amid-advancing-annexation-in-the-west-bank.

          [3] Full statement available at www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-philippe-lazzarini-unrwa-commissioner-general-meeting-0.