NGO Action News – 31 July 2025

This newsletter informs about recent and upcoming activities of Civil Society Organizations working on the question of Palestine. The Committee and the Division for Palestinian Rights of the UN Secretariat provide the information “as is” without warranty of any kind, and do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, or reliability of the information contained in the websites linked in the newsletter.

Middle East

• On 5 August, Al Shabaka will organize the panel discussion “The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Aid as a Weapon”. According to the NGO, panelists will discuss how Israel has transformed humanitarian aid into a tool of control, coercion, and forced displacement through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
• On 29 July, Ir Amim informed that, after a four-year freeze, the Israeli government has resumed the advancement of the E1 settlement plan, a project to construct more than 3,400 housing units between the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and East Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank. The NGO stated that Israel was dismantling the West Bank into a collection of enclaves into which it aimed to push the Palestinian population.
• On 29 July, BADIL published the report “Colonial States’ Complicity in Gaza: Arming and Shielding Genocide.” According to the NGO, this working paper listed third States’ military and political support to Israel, in what the NGO considers to be their complicity in the commission of ongoing crimes and violations committed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023.
• On 28 July, B’Tselem published the report “Our Genocide”. The NGO stated that an examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, led to the conclusion that Israel was taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. On the same day, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel published a legal-medical analysis documenting what it considers to be the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, also calling it a “genocide”. Amnesty International stated that it considered these reports as milestones for accountability efforts in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
• On 26 July, Al Mezan issued the press release “Israel Continues to Spread Deliberate Famine as a Tool of Systematic Starvation in Gaza”. The NGO stated that, according to the UN World Food Programme, hunger in Gaza had reached catastrophic levels, with people dying due to the lack of humanitarian assistance, adding that malnutrition was escalating, affecting 90,000 women and children in desperate need of treatment.
• On 24 July, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights published the video “Shrapnel of the Soul”, featuring testimonies of Gaza women who have lost limbs during the current war. The NGO stated that Gaza’s women found themselves trapped between bombardments that claimed lives and tore bodies apart in an instant, and hunger, disease, and loss that slowly consumed their lives.
• On 23 July, Al-Haq published the article “Explainer on the International Criminal Court, Immunities and International Crime”. According to the NGO, this update outlined the status of Head of State immunity under international law generally and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) specifically, in light with the 21 November 2024 decision of Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and then Minister of Defence Gallant. The NGO stated further that the article examined how the law on immunities was often employed as a means of shielding perpetrators of international crimes from accountability.
• On 18 July, the Institute for Palestine Studies published the report “Jerusalem Quarterly, Spring 2025”, featuring a collection of essays and articles on the history and current situation of Palestine.

Africa, Asia and Europe

• On 29 July, Agence Média Palestine published an article (in French) on a report issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification concluding that there was growing evidence that famine, malnutrition, and widespread disease were leading to an increase in hunger-related deaths in Gaza. The report stated that the latest data showed that the famine threshold had been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.
• On 24 July, Amnesty International issued recommendations ahead of the “High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution” on 28-30 July. The NGO stated that the conference must build a platform for immediate and effective application of international law, including the erga omnes obligations to prevent and punish genocide, the obligations to prevent and punish apartheid and the implementation of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2024 to bring to an end Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory once and for all. Several other organizations, including Al-Haq and Human Rights Watch, published statements and articles on this conference as well.

North America

• On 29 July, New Jewish Narrative issued a statement warning of the rising threat of Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory after Israel’s Finance Minister declared that Israel was “closer than ever” to rebuilding settlements in Gaza. The NGO added that these comments followed a security cabinet meeting in which the possibility of Israel’s annexing of Gaza was reportedly discussed.
• On 25 July, the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) published the webinar “Humanizing and Historicizing the World in a Time of Genocide”. FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart spoke with UC Berkeley History Professor Ussama Makdisi, on the interconnections among Muslims, Christians, and Jewish communities in the Middle East, the importance of reading history, and the brutality of the situation in Gaza, among other topics. Furthermore, on 29 July, FMEP published the webinar “Destroying Palestinian Life in Gaza in a Systemic, Deliberate Way: “Our Genocide”, with Yuli Novak, Executive Director of B’Tselem, to discuss the NGO’s recent report.
• On 23 July, Jewish Voice for Peace published the article “Gaza is the ‘hungriest place on earth.’” The NGO stated that 1 in 10 Palestinian children in Gaza were suffering currently from acute malnutrition, and nearly 1 in 3 Palestinians were going days without food. In Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, doctors and nurses were passing out as a result of hunger and exhaustion, the article reads.

United Nations

• On 28 July, Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, held on 28-30 July in New York. The Secretary-General stated that Palestinian statehood was a right, not a reward, adding that the only realistic, just, and sustainable solution to the conflict was two States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security, within secure and recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both. He added that this conflict could not be managed, it must be resolved.
• On 29 July, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) alerted that Gaza was on the brink of a full-scale famine as two out of the three famine thresholds had now been breached in parts of the Gaza Strip, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF warning that time was running out to mount a full-scale humanitarian response.
• On 27 July, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher issued a statement welcoming Israel’s decision to support a one-week scale-up of aid, including lifting customs barriers on food, medicine and fuel from Egypt and the reported designation of secure routes for UN humanitarian convoys.
  Fletcher added that addressing this desperate situation needed sustained action, and fast, including quicker clearances for convoys going to the crossing and dispatching into Gaza.