Humanitarian Call for Ceasefire Now

‘Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.’

This is the final line in an unprecedented press release issued by heads of OCHA, UNICEF, UNOPS, UNWRA, WFP and WHO on 7th April 2025. The whole press statement makes really grim reading, detailing the urgent and overwhelming humanitarian need in Gaza.

Palestinians inspect the damage at the Dar Al-Arqam school, where displaced people shelter, after it was hit by an Israeli strike on Thursday, in Gaza City, April 4, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa/File Photo

‘For over a month, no commercial or humanitarian supplies have entered Gaza. More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck.’

The press release starkly spells out that 25 World Food Programme bakeries have had to close for lack of supplies, that over 1,000 children have been killed in the first week after the ceasefire was broken, and that the health system is overwhelmed.

The heads of these world -renowned relief agencies go on to say that in 60 days of ceasefire they were able to deliver life-saving supplies to nearly every part of Gaza.

Now they can do nothing.

‘We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life,’ they say.

Footage of the horror has slipped from world TV screens, but outside of Israel there is continuing awareness of ongoing genocide. Intent to destroy the infrastructure and force removal of the citizens of Gaza are beyond reasonable doubt. Inside Israel, however, despite some attendees holding up pictures of children killed in Gaza at rallies urging a ceasefire to save the remaining hostages, justification for Israel’s actions is widespread.

This is partly that Israelis have to seek out media coverage of the devastation and death in Gaza, but it is also a widely held conviction that every Gazan is culpable for the human rights atrocities carried out on 7th October 2023. ‘They voted for Hamas,’ people say, despite the fact that half the population of Gaza is under 16 and many more are too young to have voted in the last elections in 2006, which were by no means a landslide for Hamas.

Official investigations into the 7th October atrocities have so far failed to highlight Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apparent policy of bolstering Hamas to undermine Fatah, letting Qatar pump millions of dollars in. Now, because war has resumed, right wing extremist Itamar BenGvir has rejoined the government. He and others inside government have openly stated their aim to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza strip. President Donald Trump’s real estate Gaza-largo dream may not be far from the truth, and the desire to exploit the natural gas off Gaza’s coast is real.

The rest of the world might look on and wonder why ordinary Israelis seem unable to see that increasing violence and destruction and human misery in both Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories can never lead to real peace.

Fear and humiliation are huge factors. As is the deliberate dehumanization of all Palestinians.

But we might also wonder at our own government and media failures. Even when evidence of the last moments of 15 humanitarian workers in the form of a mobile phone message recorded by Red Crescent medic Ref’at Radwan, executed by Israeli Forces  in Gaza on March 23rd, was broadcast; the BBC headline was ‘Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings’. Yesterday, 8th April, BBC Verify did verify the account of the surviving medic Munther Abad and the phone footage recovered from the body of Radwan, who had been buried in a shallow grave.

Palestinians ask why Israeli statements are always given the benefit of the doubt while Palestinian  statements are discounted or downplayed. Some, like Rev Munther Isaac, argue that the reason is that Israelis are the colonisers and Palestinians the colonised. Daniel Munayer of Musalaha, an organisation which seeks to bring Palestinians and Israelis together to explore reconciliation, says that the shared foundation for such coming together has to be a conviction that the Occupation is not only bad for Palestinians; it is bad for Israelis too. He has also observed how in organisations of Palestinians and Israelis together there is a tendency for the Israelis to want to take the leadership roles and says that this must be resisted.

Israel has a right to self-defence, but Palestinians who defend themselves are seen as terrorists and not freedom fighters. I am not condoning the firing of rockets into Israel from Gaza. Any attack on civilians is against international law. Hamas and others who carried out October 7th attacks should be tried under international law, as should those who are carrying out genocide on Gazans and; increasingly, in the West Bank, pushing people out of their homes, seeking to erase refugee camps and killing 555 Palestinians since January 2024, including 102 children.

‘Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.’

The aid agencies are seeking to prevent further catastrophe, predicting a death toll which far exceeds the 60,000 already numbered. World leaders, who have much else on their plate at the moment, must step up to protect the UN and its agencies and to honour international law. If they do not, we are all much the poorer, at risk of the sort of totalitarian behaviour that seems to be on the rise.

Citizens have to hold those leaders to account, by focussing on their own leaders and demanding war criminals be held to account. This is not easy, as sensitivity about perceived antisemitism and a strong Zionist lobby make people reluctant to hold the government of Israel to account. And the current persecution of peaceful pro-Palestinian activists in the US and Germany gives everyone pause for thought.

People wonder what they can do. The humanitarian agencies have given us a place to begin. Our politicians must receive the message loud and clear:

‘Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire.’