The killing must stop, the terror must stop, the forced displacement must stop, the inhumanity must stop – Letter from Palestine (A/ES-10/976-S/2023/993)

18 December 2023

General Assembly                                                                                      Security Council

Tenth emergency special session                                                        Seventy-eighth year

Agenda item 5

Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Identical letters dated 15 December 2023 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

As the world watches, the Israeli occupying army is invading Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps, from Khan Younis to Jenin, Jabaliya to Dheisheh, Beit Hanoun to Nablus, Rafah to Al-Khalil, Gaza City to East Jerusalem, Israel is waging a war of terror on the Palestinian people. Attacking homes, hospitals, shelters for the displaced, mosques, churches and people in the open streets, Israel is violating every law created to protect civilians and prevent atrocities in times of war.

Commanded from the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, Israeli soldiers are wilfully killing and wounding children, women and men; attacking humanitarian and medical personnel trying desperately to aid civilians in need and journalists trying to share these truths with the world; seizing and detaining civilians, especially men and boys, holding them captive in places unknown; pillaging, looting and destroying wantonly; methodically and forcibly displacing civilians, now reaching nearly 2 million people in the Gaza Strip; and besieging and collectively punishing the entire Palestinian population, including leaving them homeless and vulnerable to starvation and disease, with a ruthless vengeance and aims of annihilation.

Israel is striking with missiles and bombs from the air by warplanes and drones that terrorize in the day and night, by tanks on land and gunships at sea and by machine gunfire sprayed by soldiers and settler militias, massacring civilians by the dozens or murdering them point-blank, all in cold blood. It brags about over 22,000 strikes, thousands of tons of explosives, dropped on a defenceless civilian population, bullets of machine guns too many to count, the weapons and ammunition constantly replenished by Israel’s allies and suppliers, despite its blatant breaches of international law and blatant dehumanization of the people subjugated to its illegal colonial occupation and apartheid.

On the seventieth day of Israel’s aggression on Gaza, the casualty toll has surpassed 19,000 Palestinian men, women and children killed and more than 50,600 wounded, the vast majority of victims women and children. Homes continue to be obliterated and UNRWA schools continue to be targeted, the most recent the destruction of an UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, causing the death toll to climb daily by the hundreds. However, this toll above still does not include nearly 8,000 people buried under the rubble, the majority also children and women, who have neither been rescued nor recovered as Israel’s bombs continue to rain down.

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli military and settler attacks have killed more than 290 Palestinians since 7 October, among them 65 children, and injured 3,365. Many victims are from the Jenin refugee camp, which has been targeted by near-daily Israeli invasions. The most recent was a three-day assault by the Israeli occupying forces, including drone strikes on civilian areas and an attack on a hospital, killing 12 Palestinians and wounding 34 others, where again Israeli soldiers prevented medics from saving the wounded.

This ever-rising casualty toll is the direct result of the commands of Israel’s political and military leaders, whose genocidal threats, intentions and plans are unhidden. Israel is perpetrating acts constituting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, with systematic intent and brutality.

Israel is undeterred by international law, the Security Council, the General Assembly, world opprobrium, or global demands for a ceasefire. Israel’s leaders do not care and act with total contempt because they do not fear the consequences of their illegal behaviour, confident they will be forever shielded from accountability for their crimes, confident Israel will never face an arms embargo no matter how many Palestinian children, women and men it kills, confident they will never face responsibility.

Prove them wrong. We implore the international community to act to bring an end to this injustice. To act to implement all relevant United Nations resolutions, to ensure accountability in accordance with international law, including at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and to ensure respect for the will and principled positions of the international community.

In this regard, the global calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, as demanded by the General Assembly in its resolution ES-10/22 of the tenth emergency special session, adopted on 12 December 2023, by 153 countries representing the vast majority of the world, must be respected and all efforts must be made to implement it now.

The killing must stop, the terror must stop, the forced displacement must stop, the inhumanity must stop. Civilians must be protected, international law must be upheld, and all efforts must be made to alleviate this humanitarian catastrophe. An immediate and sustained humanitarian ceasefire and humanitarian assistance at scale, including shelters, food, water, medicines and fuel, are urgently needed and all impediments to these immediate objectives must be removed.

We appeal to the international community to act now, without delay. The Palestinian people are gravely suffering and look to the world to uphold the decades-long promises and principles that remain unfulfilled. As stated by the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, at the Global Refugee Forum, Palestinians, and especially our refugees, “feel abandoned by the international community. They feel betrayed as the world fails to act in the face of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time in Gaza. They now believe that human lives are not equal and human rights are not universal. This is a dangerous message, and it will have serious repercussions.”

Palestine cannot continue being the exception to the protections and rights under international law, including humanitarian and human rights law; and Israel, the occupying Power, cannot continue being exempted from the rule of international law and absolved of its obligations to comply with Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. It is time to act to fulfil long-standing commitments made and the outstanding obligations of all States in this regard. Millions of lives are at stake, regional and international peace and security are at stake, the future of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples is at stake.

The present letter is in follow-up to our 819 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 5 December 2023 (A/ES-10/973-S/2023/957) 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

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