Press Releases

After more than 15 months of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, a long overdue and needlessly delayed ceasefire has been reached. While the ceasefire deal has secured an end to the relentless Israeli bombing and massacres, the scale of the destruction and devastation deliberately inflicted in Gaza is immense, requiring more than just a ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners. Beyond that, in the West Bank, Israeli colonial expansion not only persists, but escalates to new levels. The ceasefire represents only the bare minimum international obligation in confronting a genocidal, colonial-apartheid regime. States and the United Nations must take concrete measures to address the root causes that led up to the genocide, hold the Israeli regime accountable for its crimes, protect UNRWA and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and support the Palestinian people morally, politically and materially in pursuit of their liberation.
The fact that the Israeli regime carried out genocide in Gaza for 471 days unabated reflects the states’ failure to uphold their irrefutable obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent, stop, and avoid complicity in genocide. The Israeli regime’s ongoing ability to commit international crimes stems from states’ failure to recognize, let alone confront the root causes of its system of domination. Furthermore, the genocide in the Gaza Strip was not an anomaly but a continuation and escalation of a 76 year-long system of colonization, forced displacement and apartheid over the Palestinian people.
The consequences of the genocide are stagerring. The Israeli regime has reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble, killed over 46,600 Palestinians, injured over 110,000, and forcibly displaced 1.9 million, multiple times. Gaza’s infrastructure, including many of its homes, neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and essential services, lies in ruins, leaving the remaining population under these Israeli engineered conditions of life that will result in slow death if not immediately and sufficiently addressed.
The first phase of the ceasefire agreement, which began on 19 January 2025, has provided a reprieve to those that have survived the genocide. If fully implemented, the ceasefire will ensure humanitarian aid and critical services and supplies enter the Gaza Strip, and will ultimately undermine Israel’s aims to divide Gaza, establish colonies, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population. However, achieving these outcomes demands strong political will and concrete measures from states to pressure the Israeli regime into adhering to the agreement beyond Phase 1 and the exchange of prisoners.
A key component of the ceasefire includes provisions to ensure humanitarian aid reaches the population and essential supplies are delivered to hospitals and other critical infrastructure. To uphold the terms of the deal and prevent further genocide by reversing Israeli-engineered conditions of life to bring about the destruction of Palestinians, it is crucial that states protect and empower UNRWA. UNRWA—as the UN agency best equipped and mandated to provide aid and services—is the lifeline for the displaced, starved, injured, and besieged Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. The protection of the Agency necessitates providing it with political, financial, and technical support to ensure that it leads and manages aid and reconstruction efforts in Gaza. Furthermore, states must take practical measures to pressure the Israeli regime to rescind its laws banning the Agency—e.g. implementing an arms embargo, freezing the assets of the Israeli regime and its institutions, and expelling Israeli diplomats and officials.
Prominently, the ceasefire also includes a prisoner exchange, which will see around 1,900 Palestinians released from Israeli detention during this initial phase. On 20 January, as part of the ceasefire deal, 90 Palestinians were released in the early hours, yet by the end of the same day, the Israeli regime had arrested 64 more. As the Israeli bombardment of Gaza ceases, Israeli attacks and invasions in the West Bank intensify, with a renewed Israeli suppression campaign in Jenin resulting in the killing of 12 Palestinians. Heightened Israeli suppression continues to escalate unabated via mass arbitrary arrests and detention, colonizer attacks with complete impunity, land confiscation, and increased closures and checkpoints throughout the West Bank.
A ceasefire deal is only a starting point in addressing Israeli crimes and violations. This requires much more than aid and rebuilding. Every state has an obligation to isolate and sanction the Israeli regime, hold it accountable for its international crimes and support the decolonization of Palestine. This includes imposing military, political and economic sanctions against Israel and recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to resist colonization by all legitimate means, including armed resistance. Protecting and ensuring the inalienable rights of Palestinians also includes protecting UNRWA, until the implementation of Resolution 194.
It is essential that solidarity movements maintain and escalate their direct actions to pressure governments to end their complicity in the Israeli genocide and international crimes. The private, academic and athletic sectors must also sever their ties with the Israeli regime and complicit actors to increase its isolation. Momentum must not be lost because we have achieved a ceasefire, but must continue until the Palestinian people are able to exercise their inalienable rights—including return and self-determination—and the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime is dismantled.