Palestinian leadership appeals for Chapter VII measures to enforce ceasefire, lift blockade, ensure humanitarian access, and restore UN Presence – Letter from the State of Palestine (A/ES-10/1044-S/2025/570)

10 September 2025

Identical letters dated 10 September 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

After over 700 days of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, it is incomprehensible that the world continues to watch innocent children, women and men being massacred, yet fails to act to protect them and prevent their annihilation.

As the Security Council continues to delay action despite the mounting atrocities, we must once more appeal to the international community: act now to stop this genocide.

Inaction is unjustifiable as Israel violates every tenet of international law and every tenet of human decency. Inaction has only allowed, enabled and emboldened Israel to inflict more death and suffering on our people and to wreak more ruin on our land and across the region.

This impunity is most savagely on display now in Gaza City for all the world to see, where Israel is intensifying its attacks. And it was also shockingly on display yesterday in the heinous Israeli attack on the Hamas headquarters in Doha, in violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the State of Qatar, of the Charter of the United Nations and of the prohibition on extrajudicial execution.

It is long past time to reign in this rogue Israeli regime that every day murders and destroys and threatens regional and international peace and security. It is time for concrete action – including arms embargoes, sanctions and the deployment of international protection – to finally bring a halt to this gross impunity and save civilian lives.

Absent accountability measures, Israel clearly remains undeterred, refusing to heed any words of condemnation, ignoring the global demands for ceasefire and lifting of its merciless siege, and even mocking[1] the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification confirmation of famine[2] in the Gaza City governate.

Instead, believing there will never be consequences for its crimes, Israel has invaded Gaza City, slaughtering, maiming, starving and displacing yet more civilians and flattening whatever homes and buildings remain standing in the city and its environs, where a million people had been living and sheltering, creating a dystopian nightmare. And it continues to terrorize the population with its “evacuation orders” demanding all civilians – even the sick, injured, disabled, orphans, widows and elderly – to leave north Gaza and go to the south to “humanitarian zones” akin to concentration camps and not spared from Israeli attack, pressing on with its original plans from the start of this genocide to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

The United Nations Children’s Fund has warned: “Gaza City, the last refuge for families in the northern Gaza Strip, is fast becoming a place where childhood cannot survive. It is a city of fear, flight and funerals. … Palestinian life is being dismantled here, steadily but surely. The suffering of children in the Gaza Strip is not accidental. It is the direct consequence of choices that have turned Gaza City and indeed the entire Strip into a place where people’s lives are under attack, from every angle, every day”.[3]

It is a fact: Israel kills and destroys wantonly and willfully, deliberate in its aims to collectively punish the Palestinian people under its illegal occupation and inflict as much harm and devastation as possible. This is not a secret. Israeli officials keep saying so, openly vowing more bloodshed and more havoc in Gaza, with such threats echoed against the West Bank as well.

Most recently, the Israeli “Defence Minister” Katz declared: “The gates of hell are being unlocked in Gaza City”, the latest in a litany of Israeli incitement, hate speech, threats and vows of destruction against the Palestinian people and the State of Palestine.

It is a repugnant irony that Israel refuses to open the gates of Gaza to humanitarian access, preventing food, water, medicine, fuel and shelter to enter in quantities sufficient to allay the humanitarian catastrophe and ensure the population’s survival, but has no qualms sadistically opening the “gates of hell”, raining tons of missiles, bombs and terror on defenceless civilians.

How can it be that the Security Council watches an occupied people being terrorized, starved, forced from their homes, shelters and land, their lives destroyed and society devastated by the occupying Power, and still does not act?

The horrors inflicted on children alone – and Israel’s designation as a serial violator of child rights in the Secretary-General’s children and armed conflict report – should have long ago compelled Council action.

Save the Children’s latest assessment has found[4] that at least 20,000 children have been killed in 23 months of Israeli onslaught. This amounts to “more than one Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces every hour” since October 2023, equivalent to 2 per cent of Gaza’s child population, including 1,009 children under the age of 1 year, among them 450 babies born and killed during the war.

Child casualties also include over 42,000 children injured, and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reports that at least 21,000 children have been left permanently disabled. Thousands more are still missing or presumed buried under rubble. And 131 children are among 367 Palestinians who have died of malnutrition as a result of Israel’s forced starvation of the population and infliction of famine. Figures on the number of child orphans,[5] child displacement, diseases suffered by children and loss of education,[6] now almost two years on, are equally harrowing.

As stated by Inger Ashing, Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children, “The death and loss, the physical and mental harm, will last lifetimes and even generations. … Palestinian children are their society’s future – and that future, and theirs, has been irrevocably undermined”.[7]

The overall casualty toll in Gaza has now surpassed 64,000 Palestinian children, women and men killed by Israel and 162,000 injured since October 2023. In the same period, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and thousands more have been injured, in addition to thousands more abducted and detained by Israel.

In this regard, a resolution adopted by the International Association of Genocide Scholars affirms: “Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)”. The resolution calls, inter alia, “upon the government of Israel to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza”, and “calls upon all states to actively pursue policies to ensure respect for their obligations under international law, including under the Genocide Convention, the Arms Trade Treaty and international humanitarian law, with regards to Israel and Palestine”.[8]

All States are bound to uphold the jus cogens norms enshrined in the Genocide Convention and other provisions of customary international law, including the Geneva Conventions. Yet action has not risen to level of gravity of the crimes being perpetrated.

As stressed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in a statement on 8 September, “The international community is failing in its duty. We are failing the people of Gaza. Where are the decisive steps to prevent genocide? Why are countries not doing more to avert atrocity crimes? Inaction is not an option”.[9]

Swift and decisive action is needed to save the millions of Palestinians threatened by the Israeli war machine with death or displacement. The Security Council must uphold its Charter mandate and act forthwith to halt this genocide against our people and protect them from further irreversible harm by Israel.

The Palestinian leadership thus calls once again for Chapter VII measures to impose a ceasefire; demand that Israel lift its blockade and ensure unfettered humanitarian access, including restoration of the United Nations presence, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as a backbone of United Nations humanitarian operations, and other international organizations; and provide international protection for our people.

This is imperative to stop Israel’s weaponization of food and humanitarian aid and alleviate the catastrophic levels of hunger and thirst, injury and illness, destitution and displacement. It is imperative to halt the spread of famine and prevent the ethnic cleansing of our people. Action is equally urgent to stop Israel’s annexation schemes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as in Gaza, which it continues to pursue in breach of international law and with deliberate intent to thwart Palestinian self-determination and destroy the two-State solution.

While recognizing the efforts and concrete measures undertaken by many governments, individually and collectively, and the efforts and solidarity initiatives by civil society from around the world, much more needs to be done to confront the existential threats facing the Palestinian people and their nation, including a halt to arms transfers and sanctions against Israel.

The upcoming resumption of the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, as mandated by the General Assembly, offers another critical moment for States to step up their efforts, strengthen support for the Palestinian people and government and commit to taking immediate tangible measures.

Action for accountability can no longer wait. Further delay or failure by the Security Council does not absolve States of their obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide and to bring an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, as called for by the International Court of Justice in its July 2024 advisory opinion and by the General Assembly one year ago in resolution ES-10/24. The world cannot allow Israel to continue its butchery of civilians, endless occupation, dismantlement of international law and threats to international peace security. The time to act is now. Millions of lives depend on it.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 874 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 22 August 2025 (A/ES-10/1043-S/2025/529), 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

          [1] See www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/Response_to_Issues_Raised_Following_IPC_Famine_Classification_in_the_Gaza_Strip.pdf.

          [2] See www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1159696/?iso3=PSE.

          [3] See www.unicef.org/press-releases/unthinkable-gaza-city-has-already-begun.

          [4] See www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/2025/gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child.

          [5] See www.pcbs.gov.ps/post.aspx?lang=en&ItemID=5965.

          [6] See https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165765.

          [7] See www.savethechildren.org/us/about-us/media-and-news/2025-press-releases/children-starved-plain-sight-famine-confirmed-gaza.

          [8] See https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf.

          [9] See www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2025/09/hc-turk-updates-human-rights-council-we-need-safeguard-eighty-years.