Genocide, Displacement and Starvation in Gaza: The Urgent Need for a Permanent Ceasefire and Protection of Civilians – Letter from the State of Palestine (A/ES-10/1031-S/2025/249)

23 April 2025

Identical letters dated 23 April 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

The already apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza continues to worsen as Israel, the occupying Power, persists with its hermetic, punitive siege and wanton bombardment of all civilian areas.

Mass casualties, mass destruction, mass displacement and mass starvation continue to be inflicted in Gaza every single day by Israeli occupying forces, who likewise continue, in collusion with terrorist settlers, their murder and ethnic cleansing spree in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The lives of all human beings subjugated to this illegal, depraved occupation are in danger.

Men, women and children, elderly persons, disabled persons, youths, medics, journalists, humanitarians and healthcare workers continue to be killed and wounded in Israeli assaults on homes, hospitals, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) shelters and tent encampments. Israeli occupying forces massacred over 266 Palestinians in the past week alone. Estimates are that 1,900 people have been killed and 4,500 injured since Israel broke the ceasefire on 18 March.

The casualty toll in Gaza is fast approaching 52,000 Palestinians killed and over 117,000 injured, the majority of them children and women. In fact, reporting (see https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2025/04/gaza-increasing-israeli-evacuation-orders-lead-forcible-transfer) by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verifies that, in 36 recent Israeli attacks, all those killed were women and children. This includes strikes on tents sheltering displaced families, such as a 16 April strike on Mawasi that killed 10 Palestinians – 4 women, 5 children and 1 disabled person. Those innocents were literally burned alive, the horrific fate of countless Palestinians massacred by Israel since October 2023.

It is obvious that Israeli occupying forces, under instructions from the highest chains of command, are deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and Palestinian life. Israel makes no secret of its plans to wreak “destruction and devastation on them”, as openly vowed by its War Minister Katz, and no secret of its aims to eliminate them, whether by forcing them to leave their land or killing them by all means of lethal weaponry or by starvation and disease, threatening our people’s very existence in their homeland.

In a 16 April statement (see https://www.msf.org/gaza-has-become-mass-grave-palestinians-and-those-helping-them), Médecins Sans Frontières stressed: “As Israeli forces resume and expand their military offensive by air, ground and sea on the Gaza Strip, Palestine, forcibly displacing people and deliberately blocking essential aid, Palestinian lives are once again being systematically destroyed”.

Israel has even taken to bulldozing entire cemeteries in Gaza, desecrating graves and tormenting even the dead, as it attempts to erase Palestinians from the face of the earth. As recently warned by OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, there is serious concern “that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza”.

At the same time, Israel carries on with its inhumane siege and collective punishment, denying Gaza’s entire Palestinian population of food, water, medicine, fuel and other vital humanitarian supplies, including hygiene products for women and girls, and basic services, and continues to impose hundreds of checkpoints and suffocating movement restrictions across the West Bank.

For over 52 days, nothing has entered Gaza. Boasting about this total siege on Gaza, Israel’s Minister of War has made clear the punitive intent to continue depriving our people of the essentials of life, openly declaring that denial of humanitarian aid to Gaza is “Israel’s policy”, that “no humanitarian aid is about to enter Gaza” and that blocking aid to Gaza is one of Israel’s “pressure tools” of choice.

That food and water are knowingly withheld with no regard for civilian welfare, including that of 1 million children, exposes yet again Israel’s genocidal aims.

To this end, Israel has not only sealed all crossings into Gaza, with at least 9,000 pallets of aid stuck outside Gaza, but has intensified restrictions on United Nations and other international humanitarian organizations and its systematic denial of access permits. It has been reported that, of 43 international and Palestinian non-governmental organizations serving in Gaza, 95 per cent of them have either had to suspend or significantly reduce services since Israel broke the ceasefire. In a 17 April joint statement (see https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/let-us-do-our-jobs-major-aid-groups-in-gaza-warn-aid-system-is-collapsing/), the heads of 12 international aid organizations warned: “Survival itself is now slipping out of reach and the humanitarian system is at breaking point”.

Israel is literally trying to destroy every lifeline for the survival of our people. This includes its continual attacks on and delegitimization of UNRWA in order to prevent the delivery of its mandated services and humanitarian assistance to Palestine refugee families and displaced persons in need.

Following its illegal “legislative acts” against UNRWA, Israel continues with its hateful disinformation campaign and measures to force a halt to UNRWA operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Most recently, Israeli occupying forces raided six UNRWA schools in occupied East Jerusalem and demanded that they close within 30 days, disrupting the education of 800 children, who will be unable to finish the school year.

We must recall again that Israel, as the occupying Power, has no right to obstruct the mandate of UNRWA, and, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, in addition to countless General Assembly and Security Council resolutions and the provisional measures orders of the International Court of Justice, it is obligated to facilitate and cooperate with United Nations operations in the territory under its occupation and to respect the inviolability of United Nations premises and cease its attacks on personnel of the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations, including UNRWA, which has suffered the unprecedented loss of 290 staff members killed by Israel.

As it persists with its attacks on humanitarians, Israel also continues its systematic attacks on the health system in Gaza, intent on depriving Palestinians of life-saving care, further contributing to their demise and thus further exposing its genocidal intent. Among the most recent was Israel’s attack on Ahli Baptist Hospital on 13 April, Palm Sunday, which destroyed the emergency department and other buildings, rendering the Hospital completely out of service. That this attack against a Christian-administered hospital was perpetrated on a Christian holy day only underscores the malice of the occupying Power.

Such attacks are being carried out by Israel at precisely a time of rising civilian needs as the numbers of wounded and sick climb, including those suffering from malnutrition as a result of the famine it is deliberately inflicting. How can a situation in which a people are being intentionally deprived of medical care by an occupying Power, which at the same time is relentlessly bombing and starving them, be deemed anything but a genocide?

Israel’s assault on Palestinian life has also involved the continued forced displacement of Palestinian civilians and theft of Palestinian land, whether through confiscation of property, demolition of homes, expulsion of Palestinians and settlement expansion in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or the seizure and razing of vast areas in Gaza to expand its so-called “buffer zone”.

All of these illegal actions must be halted immediately. We recall: Israel is not the sovereign in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. It has no right to seize, colonize and annex Palestinian land – not for the establishment of settlements, industrial zones, military training areas or “buffer zones” – and no right to forcibly transfer Palestinian civilians, including by so-called “evacuation orders”, by which it has forcibly displaced over 420,000 people in Gaza yet again since 18 March, among the 1.9 million displaced continuously since October 2023. Additionally, Israel has forcibly displaced over 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps in the northern West Bank, alongside its methodical forced displacement of families from East Jerusalem and the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills, who are being constantly terrorized by the Israeli occupying forces and settler militias.

There is no legitimate justification for any of these actions, which constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention – war crimes – and amount to the blatant ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land.

As affirmed by the International Court of Justice in its July 2024 advisory opinion, Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and must be terminated. This is likewise the international consensus, with the overwhelming majority of Member States reaffirming the Court ruling and demanding an end to Israel’s illegal occupation, including the full withdrawal of its occupying forces and settlements from the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.

However, absent accountability, Israeli attacks, intimidation and coercive campaigns to displace the Palestinian people and strip them of their land and heritage continue unabated. This includes, inter alia, the ongoing incitement, provocations and assaults by the Israeli occupying forces and radical Israeli settlers and politicians on Jerusalem’s Christian and Muslim holy sites and worshippers.

Again this year, Israeli occupying forces attacked Christian pilgrims during Easter observances at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, violently harassing and beating worshippers and obstructing access to Jerusalem for holiday services, including by depriving thousands of Palestinians of the required permits to reach Jerusalem. At the same time, provocations are escalating vis-à-vis Aqsa Mosque/ Haram al-Sharif, with Israeli Ministers and other officials bragging about carrying out Jewish rituals there, in an ongoing attempt to impose the temporal and spatial division of this holy site, in direct and egregious violation of the historic and legal status quo, under which Aqsa Mosque/Haram al-Sharif is solely for Muslim prayer.

This illegal and dangerous situation cannot be allowed to go on. We reiterate: it is long past time for action to halt Israel’s aggression against the Palestinian people and to ensure accountability. Action is urgent to bring about a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the rest of Occupied Palestine, ensure that unfettered humanitarian aid and all necessary recovery supplies reach the Palestinian civilian population, resume the release of hostages and detainees and finally end this illegal colonial, apartheid, genocidal occupation.

Immediate collective action is needed to uphold international law, including obligations under the Geneva Conventions, human rights laws, United Nations resolutions and International Court of Justice rulings. There can be no exceptions. As stressed recently by the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric Egger: “No State, no party to a conflict … can be exempt from the obligation not to commit war crimes, not to commit genocide, not to commit ethnic cleansing …. These rules apply. They are universal”.

In this regard, we must recall the provisions of General Assembly resolution ES-‍10/24, including the call on all States, consistent with their obligations under international law, to take steps, inter alia, towards ceasing “the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment to Israel, the occupying Power, in all cases where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. We also recall in this connection the joint letter of 1 November 2024 (see https://www.un.org/unispal/document/joint-call-to-halt-arms-transfers-to-israel-signed-by-52-member-states-and-two-international-organizations-letter-from-turkiye-a-79-572-s-2024-802/) of over 50 States calling for an immediate halt to arms transfers to Israel and urging protection for the Palestinian people.

We urge all States to take concrete action now in respect of their legal, political, humanitarian and moral obligations to halt this genocide and protect the Palestinian people. Further delays only enable Israel to acquire more weapons to slaughter and maim innocent civilians, compounding the atrocities we are witnessing and adding to the deplorable toll of civilian casualties, including the most child amputees in the world, and allow it to wreak more irreparable trauma and loss on our people.

We recall again the words of the ICRC President, who, referring to the horrors inflicted on Gaza, warned: “It will haunt us for a long time because you cannot undo the suffering … that will last for generations”.

There can be no more excuses attempting to justify such gross impunity and inhumanity. Israel must be stopped now. Never again, for anyone.

The Palestinian leadership thus reiterates its call on all States to act now in line with international law and its abiding call on the Security Council to act in line with its Charter mandate and in conformity with its own decisions, as enshrined in its relevant resolutions, including resolutions 2735 (2024) and 2334 (2016).

Stopping this genocide and ending this illegal occupation and historic injustice are existential matters for preserving human life and our common humanity, for safeguarding the international legal order, for realizing the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights, including to self-determination and return, and for establishing peace and security for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, the Middle East and globally.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 864 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 10 April 2025 (A/ES-10/1030-S/2025/221), 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