Palestinian Territory – The United Nations and international relief organisations must move beyond superficial condemnations and adopt a clear, decisive stance against the escalating Israeli crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip, especially at aid distribution centres.
They must also utilise their legal and institutional tools to expose violations, document consequences, and apply pressure to end them. This will prevent humanitarian action from being used as a cover for perpetuating the ongoing genocide, which has lasted over 20 months, along with the associated systematic killings and starvation.
Through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Israel has introduced a new killing mechanism cloaked in a humanitarian facade, further escalating the genocide in the Gaza Strip. By using military force and maintaining illegal control and blockade, it has created a reality where starving individuals are forced to risk their lives for meagre amounts of food. This has led to the deaths of over 500 civilians near aid distribution centres since 27 May, including approximately 55 killed yesterday alone.
Aid distribution must remain exclusively in the hands of neutral and specialised humanitarian actors, and any military or political interference by Israel in this domain constitutes a serious breach of international law
The Israeli army's targeting of starving people near distribution centres has become a systematic daily practice, carried out openly before the world, with international silence perpetuating impunity and allowing this dangerous pattern to continue unpunished.
This occurs as the international community—states and institutions—remains unable to take serious action to hold Israel accountable for its crimes, compel it to permit independent relief organisations to resume their work in the Gaza Strip, and lead humanitarian efforts that ensure the population's vital needs are met while safeguarding their lives and dignity.
The United Nations and international humanitarian organisations must fully implement their mandates to address the deliberate collapse of humanitarian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. This can be achieved by intensifying the documentation efforts of serious violations, providing regular public briefings on the impact of Israeli policies to UN agencies and member states, adopting clear positions that hold Israel legally accountable, demanding the removal of restrictions on relief organisations, and ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law.
Relevant UN bodies, primarily the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), must utilise their analytical tools, field monitoring, and direct experience to identify individual and institutional responsibilities for the crimes committed, incorporating this information into their public or confidential reports. This will provide a solid foundation for supporting timely judicial and criminal accountability, as impunity is fostered by generalisation and is only overcome through specificity. Naming officials or individuals in specific positions carries significant legal implications and strengthens accountability efforts in subsequent stages, including before international criminal courts.
Supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) must be an urgent priority, as it is essential to humanitarian efforts in the Gaza Strip, providing basic needs to hundreds of thousands of civilians. Undermining the agency's role undermines the international community's ability to protect the population and fulfil its moral and legal obligations.
UN bodies with human rights or oversight mandates, primarily the Human Rights Council, international commissions of inquiry, and special rapporteurs, bear direct responsibility for documenting violations, identifying responsibilities, and issuing clear public recommendations on accountability. This is particularly crucial given the escalating systematic patterns of killing and starvation in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, UN relief agencies, such as the World Food Programme (WFP), UNICEF, and UNRWA, are expected to transparently document and report on obstacles encountered, within the limits of their institutional mandates.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Palestinian territory must play a more effective role in promoting comprehensive legal and human rights documentation of all incidents involving the targeting of civilians and obstruction of aid. They should also provide field data and independent analysis highlighting the disastrous impact of the Israeli mechanism on civilian life.
Such efforts will support member states' positions and actions in the Security Council and General Assembly to hold perpetrators accountable, end the blockade, and ensure the safe and regular flow of humanitarian aid.
The WFP, which has been carrying out critical humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip, must implement ongoing monitoring and reporting mechanisms to document incidents of civilians being targeted while waiting for aid and to highlight the scale of the catastrophe caused by Israel's use of food as a weapon. The organisation should prepare periodic reports for submission to the UN Security Council, General Assembly, and donors, pressuring these parties to urgently intervene to protect civilians and open all land crossings to ensure the adequate and sustainable flow of aid.
The World Health Organization (WHO) plays a pivotal role in this issue, as its field teams deployed throughout the Gaza Strip enable the documentation of human losses from the targeting of starving people near distribution centres. Additionally, these teams can monitor the catastrophic health impacts of Israel's strict blockade, which has caused high rates of acute malnutrition, the spread of hunger-related diseases, and the near-collapse of the health system.
The organisation's submission of specialised reports to United Nations agencies, or its cooperation in providing technical evidence before international judicial bodies, could support any subsequent legal processes aimed at holding Israeli officials accountable for crimes committed against the starving population of the Gaza Strip.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) must also intensify its field role in the Gaza Strip by documenting the humanitarian and health impacts of targeting starving people near aid distribution centres and providing independent assessments of living and health conditions in the affected areas, especially given the escalating incidence of infection, hunger, and the collapse of the health system.
As the body legally mandated to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law, the ICRC is obligated to exert public pressure on Israeli authorities to ensure respect for these rules, guarantee full protection for civilians, and facilitate the evacuation of the wounded and missing persons, as well as the recovery of bodies from dangerous areas, in line with its humanitarian principles and international standards governing its work.
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has reached a critical point, requiring all concerned parties to move beyond traditional condemnations and focus on effective action, including legal and political pressure, as well as field work, to end the deadly Israeli aid system, protect civilians, and safeguard their fundamental rights to food, health, and other essentials.
The Israeli occupation army and the US-backed organisation it established to operate the aid distribution centres direct Palestinians to wait at inspection gates for aid, before targeting them with direct fire from snipers, quadcopter drones, helicopters, and occasionally tank shells, under the pretext of a threat to the lives of Israeli forces stationed hundreds of metres away.
Relevant states and UN bodies have effectively abandoned their legal and moral obligations to protect civilians and prevent the worsening of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. They have refrained from taking firm measures—not only to hold Israel accountable for killing starved civilians but even to protect the UN-led aid delivery mechanism, which Israel has deliberately undermined through siege and armed force, in blatant and dangerous defiance of the international system and the principles it was founded upon.
Allowing Israel to continue committing serious crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by killing and wounding dozens or even hundreds daily while they attempt to access limited food aid places international legal responsibility on states with influence, particularly those that continue to provide political or military support to Israel.
Failure to take effective measures, such as imposing sanctions or exerting pressure to stop these crimes, constitutes, under international law, direct complicity or responsibility for standing by despite the proven ability to intervene. This entails legal responsibility for states that, through action or inaction, contribute to the continuation of the crime.
Since Israel imposed its mechanism for the distribution of humanitarian aid, Euro-Med Monitor has documented the involvement of Israeli occupation forces—alongside local gangs operating in coordination with them and personnel from the American security company managing the distribution sites—in the killing of Palestinian civilians as they approached the centres, despite posing no real threat to Israeli forces or security personnel.
As the occupying power, Israel bears a legal obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid and the fulfilment of the basic needs of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. However, this duty in no way entitles Israel to manage or control the distribution of aid.
Aid distribution must remain exclusively in the hands of neutral and specialised humanitarian actors, and any military or political interference by Israel in this domain constitutes a serious breach of international law and a deviation from the humanitarian purpose of relief work.
UN and international relief organisations must take immediate, collective action through all available legal, diplomatic, humanitarian, and field channels to end Israeli crimes against the starving people in the Gaza Strip.
Israel must halt its inhumane aid distribution mechanism and urgently push for the restoration of humanitarian access and the lifting of the illegal blockade, as this is the only way to stop the accelerating humanitarian deterioration and ensure the entry of aid, given the imminent threat of famine.
The establishment of safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision is vital to ensure the delivery of food, medicine, and fuel to all areas of the Strip, with independent international monitors deployed to verify compliance.
All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel's compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.
The international community must impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its allies, particularly the United States, for such grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include arms embargoes; a ban on the export and import of parts, software, and dual-use goods; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians and imposing travel bans on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli and US military and security companies in international markets and freezing their assets; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel and the US with economic benefits that enable their continued crimes against the Palestinian people.
