Israel / Palestine

To avert further deaths and inhuman suffering by starvation, Israel must immediately restore unimpeded access to Gaza by impartial humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN experts* said today. 

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has announced his country plans to formally recognise Palestine during the UN general assembly in September, after France and 14 other countries co-signed a declaration that pointed towards a wave of future recognitions of an independent Palestinian state.

With Gaza in ruins and the two-State solution in jeopardy, ministers convened at the United Nations this week to jumpstart political momentum toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a crisis Secretary-General António Guterres warned is “at a breaking point.”

“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza,” UN-backed food security experts said on Tuesday, in a call to action amid unrelenting conflict, mass displacement and the near-total collapse of essential services in the war-battered enclave.

Hamas confirmed on Thursday that it has responded to an Israeli proposal for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, after more than two weeks of indirect talks in Qatar have failed to yield a truce.

A senior UN official on Wednesday urged the Security Council to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages, warning that the war has become “a nightmare of historic proportions” and it is “long past time” for the fighting to end and for hostages to return home.

Twenty-eight countries including Britain, Japan and a host of European nations issued a joint statement Monday saying the war in Gaza “must end now” — the latest sign of allies’ sharpening language as Israel’s isolation deepens.

A coalition of countries has announced at a meeting in the Colombian capital of Bogota that they will pursue accountability for Israeli abuses in Gaza, including by preventing the transfer of weapons to Israel. The two-day meeting concluded on Wednesday with two dozen countries agreeing to six measures to “restrain Israel’s assault on the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

As civilians lining up for humanitarian aid in Gaza are being killed, speakers in the Security Council today urged Israel to lift restrictions on aid operations in the Strip, called for a return to United Nations-led delivery mechanisms, and stressed the urgent need for both the release of hostages and a ceasefire.

The EU and Israel have reached an agreement to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, with deliveries to take place in the "coming days", the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced on Thursday. The breakthrough comes after months of back and forth between the EU and Israel over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, as Israel escalates its offensive against Hamas.