New York, USA, 1 December 2023 — The humanitarian truce, agreed to by Israel and Hamas this past week, has saved lives. It has shown that dialogue is possible, allowed a critical window of relief, enabled the release of hostages, and afforded humanitarian agencies the opportunity to try and reach people in Gaza with urgently needed aid and services. But the surface has barely been scratched - delaying humanitarian catastrophe rather than averting it. As a humanitarian organisation focused on protecting civilians and delivering life saving assistance, we cannot countenance a restart to the fighting in Gaza.
The pause in fighting has highlighted the level of death, destruction, and civilian suffering inside Gaza and the massive scale and scope of humanitarian assistance needed to respond. Bombardment and shelling has killed 15,000 people, including more than 6,000 children and over 100 aid workers. The fighting together with Israel’s halt on supplies of water, electricity and fuel supplies has collapsed Gaza’s healthcare system and decimated critical civilian infrastructure from electric grids to water and sanitation systems - making basic service delivery impossible. And while the pause has allowed for a marginal uptick in supplies entering Gaza, the humanitarian aid infrastructure required to deliver it effectively has been dismantled.
The violence has displaced some 200,000 people in Israel and 1.7 million people in Gaza (80% of the population), most to Southern Gaza, where they are sheltering in overcrowded, unsanitary spaces. Renewed and intensified bombardment and shelling in southern Gaza, where Palestinian civilians have no options to seek safety, risks unacceptable civilian harm and further threatens a humanitarian response that is already dangerously short of what the situation demands. A resumption of the violence will prove catastrophic for Palestinian civilians, wipe out even the minimal relief the last 7 days has allowed, and further compromise the vital efforts to release all hostages. All diplomatic efforts must be focused on ensuring that civilians in Gaza are not again returned to war, and that all the hostages are released.