aid

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]

1 million people being forced towards unliveable, so called “humanitarian area,” in mass forced displacement.

Israel’s intent to displace around 1 million civilians, half of whom are living in famine, is impossible and illegal, Oxfam said today, while the Israeli military continued to flatten Gaza City building by building as its mass forced displacement of civilians in the city gains terrifying momentum.

Displacement orders, on leaflets thrown from the sky, or posted on social media, signal grave next steps, a scene all too familiar in Gaza where every order has preceded new waves of destruction and mass casualties. This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip, where nothing and no one has been spared.

Israel’s plan to concentrate around 1 million people into tiny slivers of already overcrowded and ill-equipped “camps” has no basis in reality, with just 42.8 square kilometres (under 12% of the Gaza Strip) allocated to this so-called “humanitarian area” for people to move to. That would mean an additional 1 million people are expected to live in under–resourced spaces located in the Southern part of the Gaza Strip, whilst most of the remaining humanitarian and emergency infrastructure is currently located in the middle area of the Strip, further limiting access to support. The plan is not only inhumane, it is physically impossible and would compound disease and hunger and be a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).

These orders cannot be carried out in a way in which Israel can meet its IHL obligations, or the terms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Mass forced displacement is not a pressure tool to replace negotiations and amounts to collective punishment. Under IHL, there must be guarantees of support to ensure Palestinians forced to flee Gaza City can do so in safety and safely return. There also needs to be guaranteed provision of accommodation, hygiene, health, nutrition, water and non-separation of families. Without these supports in place, it amounts to forcible transfer, which in current circumstances amount to war crimes and a crime against humanity. 

It is the latest result of a deliberate policy of the Government of Israel to use starvation and forced mass displacement, food and water as weapons of war. Mass forced displacement is not a pressure tool to replace negotiations and amounts to collective punishment.

“The ongoing displacement orders and the push of people deeper into “humanitarian zones”- which we know have never been safe at all- mean it becomes almost impossible to deliver aid effectively. Israel’s siege and severe limitations placed on the entry of aid also means people already in these zones lack the most basic of services even before hundreds of thousands more are forced into the same area,” said Ruth James, Oxfam’s Regional Humanitarian Coordinator, speaking from Gaza.

Oxfam’s partner organisations are under attack and facing severe pressure. On Sunday, an Israeli attack near the headquarters of the Aisha Association for Woman and Child Protection in Gaza City, resulted in the killing of one of the employees, a pregnant woman, and a 7-year-old boy and critically injuring many others. The organisation plays a leading role in the protection of women and children. Their premises are used as shelters by displaced people.

Dr Umaiyeh Khammash, Director of Juzoor, an Oxfam partner, and working in Gaza City promoting health as a basic human right, said: “While Juzoor’s team continues its humanitarian mission, moving alongside the forcibly displaced population and sharing in their suffering and uprooting, the coming days will inevitably bring more loss of lives and even further deterioration in the health and well-being of the population. Mental health is collapsing under the weight of sustained trauma—people are enduring daily nightmares of fear, shock, and hopelessness, with no sense of safety anywhere, in a crisis that will leave deep scars, not just on this generation, but on generations to come.”

Many of those already ordered to leave their homes are too weak from starvation, cannot afford the exorbitant transport costs to move, or are unwilling to leave for an area already over-crowded and not guaranteed safe. A recent multi-agency survey found that while 53% of surveyed residents said they would move if they received an official order, only 27% of those said they would move out of Gaza City, with others saying they would move to another area within Gaza City. 14% said they would not move.

This indicates that hundreds of thousands of people will be trapped in the city under increasingly heavy bombardment, with little or no aid reaching them.

“As the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza City deepens by the hour, there must be an end to this violence and deprivation,” said Ruth James. “There must be an urgent halt to all forced displacement operations, and large-scale delivery of food, water, medicine, vital water-infrastructure repair equipment and fuel.”

Oxfam is calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and release of all hostages and unlawfully detained prisoners.  The unimaginable violence and suffering Palestinians in Gaza have been enduring for over 700 days needs to end now. The moral failure of states to act is palpable. For as long as they are silent and continue to send arms support to Israel, they are complicit in the genocide that continues to unfold.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

• Customary IHL Rule 129 and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 explicitly prohibits an occupying power from deporting or forcibly transferring members of the occupied civilian population, regardless of motive. This provision is a cornerstone of the laws of occupation; it is designed to prevent demographic changes being made by the occupying power to the occupied territory, regardless of any ‘justification’ it may provide for such changes. It underscores the principle that the rights and dignity of the civilian population must be protected, reflecting an occupying power’s obligations to ensure the welfare and security of those under its administration. There are exceptions for evacuation of civilians for their own safety, but only on a temporary basis and where adequate shelter, food, water and access to medical care are provided.

• Crimes Against Humanity: The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that: 

  – Article 7(1)(d): Treats deportation or forcible transfer of population, when perpetrated as part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians, as a crime against humanity. 

  – Article 8(2)(a)(vii) and (2)(b)(viii): Make it a war crime to transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power, parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies or to deport or transfer civilians of the occupied territory, in whole or in part, within or outside that territory.

• Harvard Dataverse report with mapping and analysis of “humanitarian” zone announcement.

• The recently published Intergrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report determined that Famine (IPC Phase 5) is currently occurring in Gaza Governorate. Furthermore, the FRC projects Famine (IPC Phase 5) thresholds to be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks.

• According to the UN, at least 1.9 million people – or about 90 per cent of the population – across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more.

• On 6 September, Israeli authorities published a map of the new “humanitarian zone” comprising Al Mawasi, including the western parts of Khan Younis city (mainly Khan Younis Camp and al-Amal district) and excluding the Middle Governorate.

• As of 3 September, 86.5 per cent of the Gaza Strip remains within the Israeli-militarized zone, under displacement orders, or where these overlap.

Contact information:

For more information, please contact [email protected]