Media Releases

Statement by independent groups

Most countries recognize Palestinian statehood, yet Israel’s international law violations are accelerating, with near-total impunity, causing mass displacement, widespread death, and an escalating humanitarian crisis throughout the occupied Palestinian territory. For real impact and to avoid complicity, States must turn their expressions of solidarity into concrete, life-saving action, and any plans for a way forward must place Palestinians as the main architects of their own future.

Statehood recognition is an important, welcome step in the realization of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. It cannot remain symbolic or be treated as a reward. Importantly, it doesn’t absolve Member States of their legal and moral obligations to put an end to the Israeli occupation in the occupied Palestinian territory (Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) – which the International Court of Justice has determined to be illegal and in violation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination – and to stop what the UN Commission of Inquiry has determined to be a genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza.

The escalating humanitarian crisis driven by these actions is widely known and documented. Just in the past two years, Israeli eviction orders, demolitions, blockages, arbitrary arrests and direct attacks on people, have triggered the largest forced displacement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the start of the occupation in 1967. The largest land theft in three decades was officially approved last year, and violence by settlers is at an all-time high. In Gaza, Israeli authorities have been carrying out a deadly military operation that has killed or injured over 136,000 people, forced 2 million people to flee several times, and destroyed 90% of the buildings. Throughout Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli forces have attacked health facilities close to 1,650 times. They have restricted free movement – through military checkpoints, gates, barriers, corridors and no-go zones – with devastating consequences on communities’ ability to access livelihoods, medical care, education and other vital services.

World leaders cannot claim ignorance. Even as 4 in 5 countries globally recognize the State of Palestine, the Israeli parliament recently approved a motion to completely annex the West Bank including East Jerusalem, where 3.3 million Palestinians live, and Israeli officials have reiterated their intention to pursue “complete sovereignty” over the West Bank, stating that “there is no Palestinian people and no Palestinian State” and that “the place belongs to [Israelis]”. Similar intentions have been openly declared for all of Gaza.

Such declarations are no longer fringe: they show what is driving the accelerated erasure of a people. Israel’s fragmentation and annexation of land internationally recognized as Palestinian is rendering the prospect of a viable Palestinian State less and less realistic.

Acting is not optional. The International Court of Justice clarified in July 2024 that all UN Member States are obligated to not recognize or support Israel’s unlawful occupation, including through trade and investments. Moreover, the UN Commission of Inquiry has determined that all States must “take all necessary steps to try to avoid or stop the commission of genocide”.

Just in the few weeks that have passed since several additional countries recognized the State of Palestine, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,500 have been injured by Israeli fire across the occupied Palestinian territory. The military takeover of Gaza City has accelerated in scope and brutality: deadly strikes on tents, housing units and public buildings have forced tens of thousands to flee once more, though most people have nowhere to go; several health care facilities in the north have had to shut down leaving hundreds of thousands with very limited access to medical care. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, settler attacks and military incursions and arrests have intensified. Dozens of Palestinian structures have been demolished. The Israeli parliament’s National Security Committee has advanced discussions to restrict humanitarian access to prisons where over 9,500 Palestinians are held as well as a law to authorize the death penalty for detainees. 

With each hour of delay, another family is shattered, another child starves, another home is reduced to dust, another piece of Palestinian life is erased.

To avoid the outcome of having a State of Palestine without Palestinians, and to prevent Israeli forces and settlers from taking additional punitive action against communities, States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal for:

• An immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and for Palestinians to own and lead their own (re)construction plans and process, in line with their inalienable right to self-determination

• An end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the entire occupied Palestinian territory, ensuring the conditions needed for Palestinians to stay in their land

• Unrestricted UN-coordinated humanitarian access and protection, as enshrined in international humanitarian law, throughout the occupied Palestinian territory

• An end to trade with illegal settlements, including the provision of services and investments

• An immediate halt to all arms sales and transfers to Israel

• Accountability for crimes committed

• The immediate reopening of a corridor linking Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for medical evacuations and other purposes

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Endorsed by (alphabetical order):

1. ActionAid International

2. Al Awda Health and Community Association

3. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)

4. Arab Educational Institute – Pax Christi Palestine

5. Bystanders No More

6. Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)

7. CIDSE – International Family of Catholic Social Justice Organisations

8. Emmaus International

9. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

10. Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)

11. HelpAge International

12. Insecurity Insight

13. Médecins du Monde International Network (MdM)

14. Norwegian People’s Aid

15. Oxfam International

16. PARC – Agricultural Development Association

17. Pax Christi International

18. Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy (PICS)

19. Plateforme des ONG françaises pour la Palestine

20. Sabeel-Kairos UK

21. The Middle East Children’s Alliance

22. Terre des Hommes Italy

23. United Against Inhumanity

NOTE TO EDITORS

• In 2025, Israeli policies and practices have forced at least 40,000 Palestinians out of their homes in the northern West Bank – all-time high since Israeli occupation began in 1967 – due to Israeli-ordered demolitions, evictions, and increasing attacks by settlers and armed forces. Another 66,800 at least face a direct risk of forcible transfer, as about 663 km² of West Bank land is vulnerable to settlement takeover and expansion.

• Israeli authorities have approved the largest land theft in the West Bank in three decades in July 2024, as well as the construction of over 15,000 units and 22 new illegal settlements in 2025 alone, and established over 121 new outposts. Weeks ago, Israeli authorities gave final approval for the “E1” settlement project, which is effectively cutting off East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank and further fragmenting the land.

• For two years, Israeli forces have bombed Gaza relentlessly. The military operation has killed at least 66,000, injured 170,000 and forced close to 2 million people to flee repeatedly. Over 92% of housing units and 90% of school buildings are now destroyed and only 1.5% of cropland is now usable as a result.

• Since 2007, Israeli authorities have blocked the entry of vital goods into Gaza, including an 11-week complete siege this year that has led to extreme starvation, with famine confirmed in northern Gaza, and severe shortages in health facilities.

• Israeli forces have attacked health care facilities close to 1,650 times across the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2023.

• Israeli authorities have imposed countless movement restrictions across the occupied Palestinian territory in the form of militarized corridors, checkpoints and no-go zones in Gaza (82% of the land is now inaccessible), and over 800 gates, checkpoints and barriers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with devastating consequences on people’s ability to access livelihoods, health care, education and other vital services.

Contact information:

For more information, please contact [email protected]

The leaders of over 20 major aid agencies working in Gaza are calling on world leaders to urgently intervene after a UN commission concluded, for the first time, that genocide is being committed.

The statement is below:

“As world leaders convene next week at the United Nations, we are calling on all member states to act in accordance with the mandate the UN was charged with 80 years ago. 

What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the UN Commission of Inquiry has now concluded is a genocide.

With this finding, the Commission joins a growing number of human rights organisations and leaders globally, and within Israel.

The inhumanity of the situation in Gaza is unconscionable. As humanitarian leaders, we have borne direct witness to the horrifying deaths and suffering of the people of Gaza. Our warnings have gone unheeded and thousands more lives are still at stake.

Now, as the Israeli government has ordered the mass displacement of Gaza City – home to nearly one million people – we are on the precipice of an even deadlier period in Gaza’s story if action is not taken. Gaza has been deliberately made uninhabitable.  

About 65,000 Palestinians have now been killed, including more than 20,000 children. Thousands more are missing, buried under the rubble that has replaced Gaza’s once lively streets.Nine out of 10 people in Gaza’s 2.1 million population have been forcibly displaced – most of them multiple times – into increasingly shrinking pockets of land that cannot sustain human life.

More than half a million people are starving. Famine has been declared and is spreading. The cumulative impact of hunger and physical deprivation means people are dying every day.

Throughout Gaza, entire cities have been razed to the ground, along with their life-sustaining public infrastructure, such as hospitals and water treatment plants. Agricultural land has been systemically destroyed. 

If the facts and numbers aren’t enough, we have harrowing story upon harrowing story.

Since the Israeli military tightened its siege six months ago, blocking food, fuel, and medicine, we witnessed children and families waste away from starvation as famine took hold. Our colleagues too have been impacted.

Many of us have been into Gaza. We have met countless Palestinians who have lost limbs as a result of Israel’s bombardment. We have personally met children so traumatized by daily airstrikes that they cannot sleep. Some cannot speak. Others have told us they want to die to join their parents in heaven.  

We have met families who eat animal food to survive and boil leaves as a meal for their children.  

Yet world leaders fail to act. Facts are ignored. Testimony is cast aside. And more people are killed as a direct consequence.  

Our organisations, together with Palestinian civil society groups, the UN, and Israeli human rights organisations, can only do so much. We have tirelessly tried to defend the rights of the people of Gaza and sustain humanitarian assistance, but we are being obstructed every step of the way.  

We have been denied access, and the militarization of the aid system has proved deadly. Thousands of people have been shot at while trying to reach the handful of sites where food is distributed under armed guard.

Governments must act to prevent the evisceration of life in the Gaza Strip, and to end the violence and occupation. All parties must disavow violence against civilians, adhere to international humanitarian law and pursue peace.

States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.

The UN enshrined international law as the cornerstone of global peace and security. If Member States continue to treat these legal obligations as optional, they are not only complicit but are setting a dangerous precedent for the future. History will undoubtedly judge this moment as a test of humanity. And we are failing. Failing the people of Gaza, failing the hostages, and failing our own collective moral imperative.

CEO SIGN OFF (alphabetical)

1. Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International

2. Othman Moqbel, Chief Executive Officer, Action For Humanity 

3. Joyce Ajlouny, General Secretary of American Friends Service Committee

4. Sean Carroll, President and CEO of Anera

5. Reintje Van Haeringen, Executive Director CARE International 

6. Jonas Nøddekær, Secretary General of DanChurchAid

7. Charlotte Slente, Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council

8. Manuel Patrouillard, Managing Director, Humanity & Inclusion – Handicap International

9. Jamie Munn, Executive Director, International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA)

10. Waseem Ahmad, CEO, Islamic Relief Worldwide

11. Joseph Belliveau, Executive Director of MedGlobal

12. Joel Weiler, Executive Director of Médecins du Monde France

13. Nicolás Dotta, Executive Director of Médecins du Monde Spain

14. Christopher Lockyear, Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières International 

15. Kenneth Kim, Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee Canada

16. Ann Graber Hershberger, Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee US

17. Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council

18. Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International Executive Director

19. Simon Panek, CEO, People in Need 

20. Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International

21. Donatella Vergara, President of Terre des Hommes Italy

22. Rob Williams, CEO of War Child Alliance 

Contact information:

For more information, please contact [email protected]

Campaign focuses on companies that trade, or have until recently traded, with Israeli settlements JCB (UK), Barclays Bank (UK), Siemens (Germany), Carrefour (France), Maersk (Denmark), Tui (Germany), eDreams Odigeo and Opodo (Spain)

An alliance of more than 80 civil society organizations today launches a new campaign “Stop Trade With Settlements,” demanding countries to ban all trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including by major multinational companies and financial institutions sustaining the settlement enterprise.

The ‘Trading with Illegal settlements’ report highlights how foreign states and corporations, through ongoing trade with illegal settlements, directly enable the humanitarian crisis driven by Israel’s prolonged occupation.

It targets settlement trade specifically because of Israel’s ongoing and escalating oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), fragmentation of its economy, and undermining of the viability of a future Palestinian state. Ending trade with settlements is a necessary step to uphold human rights, protect Palestinian livelihoods, stop Israel’s settlement expansion, and end the unlawful occupation.

Over the last four years, Israel has significantly accelerated its settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, marking a staggering increase in both settlement construction and land appropriation. In 2023, the Israeli government approved the construction of 30,682 housing units in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem– representing a 180% increase in just five years. In June 2024, the Israeli government designated 12.7 square kilometres of land in the Jordan Valley as “state land”. In May 2025, the Israeli cabinet decided to establish 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. These approvals surpassed previous records and marked the highest level of settlement expansion since the Oslo Accords (1993-1995). Most of these approvals were granted for settlements located “deep into the West Bank”, further fragmenting Palestinian territory and imposing new movement restrictions on Palestinians. The revival of the ‘E1’ plan – frozen since 2012 amid widespread international opposition – approving construction of 3,400 new housing units in a bloc connecting East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, is effectively cutting off Palestinian movement between the northern and southern West Bank.

The advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024 makes it clear: governments allowing trade with the settlement economy are complicit in the maintenance and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and thus in sustaining Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

Campaigners say that trade with settlements only serves to legitimize them, despite them being illegal under international law and a barrier to peace. Israel’s control costs the Palestinian economy billions of dollars a year while poverty in the West Bank has risen from 12 to 28% in the past two years, with a recorded unemployment rate of 35% (doubled since October 2023).

Israel attracts business investment into its settlements across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, via incentives such as cheap land leases, subsidies for technology and wages, tax breaks, and cash grants. Among the international companies and financial institutions that continue to trade or have until recently traded with Israeli settlements, including provision of services or investments, helping to sustain and legitimize them are:

• German company TUI, another travel conglomerate, continues to list several tours to illegal Israeli settlements. TUI continues to offer a “Dual Narrative tour”, taking visitors to meet with settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron in a “bullet-proof settler bus”.

• Equipment manufactured by JC Bamford Excavators (JCB), a UK-based construction company, is used by Israel to demolish Palestinian structures, homes and crops – and to build illegal settlements. Construction companies like JCB profit from the forcible transfer of Palestinians and settlement expansion.

• The German multinational giant Siemens provides equipment and services for settlement-linked transportation infrastructure including a rail deal worth over €1 billion.

• French retailer Carrefour has an agreement with Yenot Bitan to produce and sell Carrefour products in Israel. There are at least nine Yenot Bitan stores located in the oPt, including two with full Carrefour branding.

• Among the foreign banks that continue to finance settlement trade through loans and financial support, British multinational Barclays supplied $18.1 billion in loans and services to settlement-linked companies between January 2021 and August 2024, making it the third largest creditor of corporations complicit in settlement trade, following BNP Paribas and HSBC.

• Danish shipping firm Maersk has transported goods for four companies listed in the UN Database of corporations complicit in the settlement economy: Comasco, Extal, Ofertex Industries, and Twitoplast.

• Spanish company eDreams Odigeo, one of the biggest travel companies in the world, and its subsidiary Opodo, have been documented as offering hotels and accommodation in Israeli settlements across the West Bank.

Around 6,500 Palestinian women are now employed in settlements because Israel’s policies have devastated local employment, leaving them with little choice. Around 65% earn less than $20 a day and most do not have written contracts or health insurance, and often work in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, over long hours.

The average wage of Palestinian women working in the settlements is significantly lower than the Israeli minimum wage but higher than available local jobs, which illustrates how the economic hardships imposed by settlements forces local people into exploitative labor.

The EU remains Israel’s largest trade partner accounting for roughly 32% of its overall trade in goods, with a total trade volume amounting to €42 billion per year. The UK is one of Israel’s largest European trade partners worth just under £6 billion a year.

Campaigners insist that countries particularly in the EU and UK explicitly ban trade with Israeli settlements, including the provision of services and investments. Israeli exporters must determine the origins of goods and be held accountable for false claims. Banks and financial institutions should be barred from providing loans and credit to settlement-based corporations that fund settlement projects.

NOTES TO EDITOR

Download our Trading With Illegal Settlements report here.

• Campaigners contacted the highlighted companies ahead of report launch. Since sending the companies their specific mentions in the report, E-dreams and Maersk have announced changes to their policy in relation to their business activity in illegal Israeli settlements. Opodo has withdrawn their offerings by the time of publication. These have been reflected in the report.

• Organizations that endorse the “Stop Trade with Settlements” campaign (#stopsettlements) are listed in the preface of the report. 

• Stop Trade with Settlements Online Webinar is scheduled on 15 September. Registration is required. Monday September 15 at 15:00 Jerusalem time; 13:00 London; 14:00 Paris; 08.00 New York.

• The July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem ruled that states are obligated under international law to “abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory”, and must “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the [Occupied Territory].

• Settlement trade includes any commercial relationship—direct or indirect—with Israeli settlements in occupied territory. This encompasses subsidiaries, services, financing and supply chains. Corporate actors engaged in or enabling these activities risk being complicit in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Trade may also be settlement-linked where it is trade with a company that is itself based in a settlement or which is closely implicated in business with settlements. More than 700,000 Israelis are living in hundreds of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, the majority in Area C of the West Bank. Israeli settlements control over 42% of the West Bank’s total land and are linked by roads, rail, industrial parks and other infrastructure, along with nearly 900 military checkpoints.

• Unemployment rate in the West Bank. See Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute-MAS (February 2025).

• Poverty increase rate 2023-2024. See ILO (October 2024).

Contact information:

For more information, please contact [email protected]