Attack on Gaza school, Palestine calling for Security Council to impose a ceasefire – Letter from the State of Palestine (A/ES-10/1007-S/2024/606)

10 August 2024

Identical letters dated 10 August 2024 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, the occupying Power, has perpetrated yet another massacre of displaced civilians in yet another school in the Gaza Strip.

At least 100 Palestinian children, women and men, among them many elderly persons, were murdered by Israel in the early morning hours of 10 August 2024, as they gathered for dawn prayers at Al-Tabi’in School in central Gaza City, where thousands of displaced families had been sheltering. The Israeli occupying forces deliberately struck the school, targeting it with at least three bombs.

The victims were shredded to pieces, many of them burned and charred. This horrific scene was witnessed by the children, women and men who survived this heinous attack, many of them also severely wounded, their ongoing trauma compounded by yet another terror attack by Israel.

The world cannot remain indifferent to such sheer barbarity, inhumanity and depravity. The Security Council cannot remain paralysed waiting for Israel to suddenly decide to respect international law when it is loudly telling and showing the world that it does not respect the Charter of the United Nations, United Nations resolutions or any tenet of the law and is hell-bent on shredding them to pieces, just as it is doing to our people. The Council cannot stay silent and watch an entire people being destroyed as they wait for the protection to which they are entitled as human beings and for which they have been desperately pleading , yet which the world continues to callously deny them.

Israel must be held accountable for this heinous crime and for all the other war crimes and crimes against humanity that it has committed in its genocide against the Palestinian people and throughout all the years of this illegal, inhumane occupation.

Those who continue defending this genocide and supplying Israel with an endless cache of weapons to kill, mutilate and destroy are complicit in these crimes and prolonging the bloodshed and horror. They must stop arming and abetting Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

The promises of a ceasefire – made for months now – are patently false. They are belied by Israel’s savage actions every single day on the ground as it continues to terrorize the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza and the rest of Occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, and by its deliberate sabotage of any progress made by the mediators for a ceasefire.

By now it should be clear – Israel does not want a ceasefire and will never negotiate in good faith.

Every day, in words and deeds, Israel’s politicians and military commanders prove that they prefer to go on with the killing and destruction of any semblance of life in Gaza and to do so, not only unhindered, but also with the political and material support of those who continue to excuse, defend and justify such monstrous, unlawful behaviour, although there is no justification whatsoever for the slaughtering of people. None, ever.

Waiting for Israel to do the right thing, when it has proven time and again that it will not, is incomprehensible and unconscionable. The Security Council, the General Assembly and all peace-loving nations must act now to stop this spiral of terror, death and devastation that Israel is wreaking on the Palestinian people and attempting to wreak on the entire region, which represents a dangerous threat to international peace and security. The Council must act immediately to demand and impose a ceasefire, in order to save human lives, stop the massacre, starvation, displacement and destruction of an entire people and save whatever may be left of the credibility of the United Nations and the entire international legal order.

Stop this insanity. Stop this barbarity. Stop this inhumanity. They are not only staining our collective humanity, but destroying it, with the Palestinian people paying the heaviest, most painful price for this shocking failure of the international community to uphold international law, including humanitarian and human rights law, and even the most minimal standards of decency and morality.

Stop this Israeli genocide on the Palestinian people. Stop this illegal, immoral, criminal occupation and its savage attempts to exterminate our people.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 845 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 8 August 2024 (A/ES-10/1006-S/2024/599) 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.

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