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EMERGENCY NGO STATEMENT: ESCALATING VIOLENCE IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

The indiscriminate attack on people who were guilty of nothing other than their nationality is a war crime. Nothing can justify it.

Taking away water, food, electricity – essential means of survival – from more than two million people, who for decades have been subjected to daily and systematic violation of the most basic human rights, as a reaction to that attack is also a war crime.

With Saturday’s escalation of violence, only more deaths will follow.

During his tenure, Netanyahu has pursued a “foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians,” as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote yesterday. For years, the international community has also ignored the living conditions in the Gaza Strip, abandoning the people of Gaza from a humanitarian point of view, but above all politically. The images coming out of the region bear witness to the fact that there is no security without rights, while 75 years of weapons, military occupations, bombings and kidnappings have only brought more war, more hatred, more human lives lost.

A wretched story already seen and experienced on both sides of the border.

In the face of this disaster, we call on the international community to mediate to protect civilians, to create humanitarian corridors for their evacuation, and to bring about a cessation of hostilities.