Letter from the State of Palestine: Urgent call to the Security Council to halt Israel’s planned escalation and destruction in Gaza (A/ES-10/1042-S/2025/506)

08 August 2025

Identical letters dated 8 August 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

Defying the global calls for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to the destruction of Palestinian life and existence in Gaza, Israel presses on with its genocidal war, killing, mutilating and starving Palestinian children, women and men and threatening to inflict even more death and devastation.

Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister and cabinet of criminal extremists have just decided to expand military attacks and once again invade Gaza City. The plans announced by the Israeli government reveal a blatant intent to forcibly transfer the 1 million Palestinians living in the city and surrounding areas, causing further trauma and loss to a population already repeatedly displaced and suffering starvation and deprivation on an unimaginable scale.

Moreover, the occupying Power has announced its intentions to impose total military control on the entirety of Gaza, in conjunction with its land, air and naval blockade and siege of the territory, entrenching its illegal occupation and its subjugation and persecution of the Palestinian people.

Extremist ministers in the government have further exposed plans to recolonize Gaza with Israeli settlers to further terrorize the population and with the aim of annexing the Palestinian land, the same illegal and immoral plan that is being violently and systematically implemented in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by Israeli occupying forces and settlers alike.

These plans are illegitimate, inhumane and dangerous and must be stopped. Israel’s actions and plans constitute grave breaches of international law, including international humanitarian law, and violate every single human right of the Palestinian people. These are war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide that obligate immediate international action.

The international community must act with every legitimate tool, including Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, in the face of these crimes. The Security Council cannot just monitor and observe from the sidelines when millions of lives are endangered, when its resolutions are being flagrantly violated and when international peace and security is unravelling.

Israel cannot be permitted to continue breaking every rule of law and waging war on civilians, shredding every tenet of international humanitarian law, without consequences. Israel cannot be permitted to continue ignoring the global demands to cease its use of starvation as a weapon of war, to open all border crossings and to ensure immediate humanitarian access without consequences. Israel cannot be allowed to continue violating the binding provisional measures orders of the International Court of Justice, and equally its ruling that Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, that Israel has no sovereignty rights whatsoever and that it must end this illegal occupation, without consequences.

It is obvious: neither words of condemnation, nor expressions of concern, shock or horror, nor appeals to Israel to come to its senses, nor direct demands to halt its violations are working. On the contrary, Israel remains confident that there will never be a cost for its impunity. Otherwise, such a plan would not be pursued by Israel, and the efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, as mediators, to secure a ceasefire, release hostages and detainees, and ensure the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces and immediate aid distribution by United Nations and international partners would have long ago succeeded.

We heard these demands, yet again, in the emergency meeting of the Security Council convened on 5 August. Security Council members reiterated, with near unanimity, the position echoed by States around the world that there is no military solution to this conflict and demanded a halt to all military attacks, an immediate, permanent ceasefire and full humanitarian access. But to no avail. Israel’s rejection of these demands must be met with real pressure and consequences.

Arms embargoes and sanctions on Israel cannot be delayed. International protection must be deployed for the Palestinian people. The depraved Israeli siege on Gaza must be broken. The United Nations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme and other agencies, along with other international humanitarian organizations, must be allowed to carry out their life-saving work. The survival of millions of Palestinian civilians is dependent on immediate international intervention.

Throwing boxes of food and bags of flour at them is neither a humane nor sufficient solution, nor does it meet the obligations of States under international law, including the Genocide Convention. They need care to accompany humanitarian aid, care to treat the starvation and malnutrition, to treat the wounded and injured, to shelter the displaced, to heal the trauma and suffering and to restore dignity to a people so dehumanized and brutalized.

With over 215,000 Palestinian casualties and the victim count rising by the minute, with more than 2 million people forcibly displaced and with the entire population at risk of death by starvation or bombardment by Israel, it is long past time to act with every political, legal, diplomatic and economic tool available to bring a halt to this inhumanity, to halt this genocide.

No one should be complicit in what is clearly an attempt to annihilate Palestinian existence in Gaza and to annex the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, to destroy the two-State solution and impose Greater Israel. These illegal, nefarious actions and plans must be stopped now. We therefore call on the Security Council to respond with urgency to the call by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to act without delay to prevent Israel’s planned military escalation and stop its destruction of Palestinian life.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 872 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 25 July 2025 (A/ES-10/1041-S/2025/488), 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 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