Date: 9 Mar 2024
Press Release
The International Commission “Hashd” Warns of Deteriorating Humanitarian Situation and State of Chaos, Calls for Concerted Efforts to Protect Civil Peace amid Aggression on Gaza Strip
The International Commission to Support Palestinians Rights (Hashd) expresses its grave concern over the worsening catastrophic humanitarian situation and chaos caused by the genocidal war and continuous Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip for the 155th consecutive day. The occupation persists in its crimes, resulting in the martyrdom and disappearance of 40,000 citizens, the injury of 73,000 with various injuries, 72% of whom are children and women, the destruction of 75% of humanitarian, economic, and infrastructure facilities in the Gaza Strip, and the forced displacement of 2 million citizens. These crimes have been and continue to be committed for the sixth month in a row amidst ongoing international failure to stop them and provide international protection for Palestinians or ensure the flow of humanitarian aid. This has led to increased indicators of security deterioration, chaos, lawlessness, and the weakening of civil peace, as well as the absence and weakness of response to humanitarian needs and the loss of people’s ability, especially vulnerable and fragile groups, to obtain any resilience resources. There is also an increase in cases of aid theft and obstruction of aid trucks, with the Israeli occupation playing a role in solidifying these actions through various means and policies aimed at dismantling Palestinian societal structures, pushing towards internal conflict, chaos, and security breakdown by deliberately targeting police stations, public prosecutors’ offices, courts, and other justice institutions to render Gaza an uninhabitable area plagued by crime and chaos, aiming to force people into forced migration. Additionally, it seeks to sow division and disputes among the hungry by distributing aid with trucks and conducting air drops.
In recent times, Hashd has observed a heightened escalation of psychological, social, and economic pressures due to the aggression, lack of response to citizens’ needs, and the disruption and collapse of humanitarian service institutions. This has led to the proliferation of security chaos, absence of the rule of law, family and social disputes, vigilantism, theft, looting of public and private property, and the emergence of roadblocks by well-known families carrying weapons and resorting to aid theft in the absence of police forces due to deliberate Israeli attacks targeting accompanying police and relief agency employees, exacerbating monopolistic practices, price hikes due to scarcity, hoarding, shortage of goods and aid, and the failure of regulatory and law enforcement agencies to perform their duties, which in turn exacerbates these phenomena. During the ongoing Israeli aggression, Hashd has documented hundreds of cases of theft from citizens’ homes, warehouses, aid distribution centers belonging to agencies, shops, and public facilities, as well as dozens of cases of forced theft, family fights resulting in the death of citizens and the injury of others. These incidents occur within the context of Israeli policies aimed at causing deliberate chaos and exacerbating humanitarian crises in Gaza, obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid, targeting civilian police forces, and destroying and disabling the functioning of judicial institutions in prosecuting these crimes and violations, making the Gaza Strip a devastated and uninhabitable area plagued by famine, crime, and chaos, thereby increasing the likelihood of forced displacement of citizens outside Palestinian territories.
Hashd views with utmost seriousness the deterioration of the rule of law in the Gaza Strip due to the continuation of Israeli aggression, warning of its implications on the humanitarian situation, civil peace, and social fabric. The Israeli occupation bears primary responsibility for the crimes of genocide, collective punishment, the continuation of catastrophic humanitarian conditions, and the insistence on creating a state of chaos in the region and exacerbating famine and humanitarian catastrophe, deliberately destroying the humanitarian service system in Gaza and imposing severe famine through the use of starvation, killing, destruction, and forced displacement, targeting police forces and courts to push towards chaos and security breakdown. Hashd appreciates the role of all parties, actors, and humanitarian service providers who work under extremely difficult and complex conditions and amidst limited resources, while recording and demanding the following:
- Hashd calls on the international community to compel Israel to immediately cease its aggression and stop committing genocide targeting 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through policies of mass killing, inflicting severe physical and psychological harm, comprehensive destruction of homes, infrastructure, and means of life, and collective punishment through starvation, dehydration, deprivation of treatment, and forcing them to flee to places where they lack the most basic human rights and then targeting them in their places of displacement and killing them.
- Hashd calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to compel the State of Israel, as the occupying power, to fulfill all its obligations under Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including putting in place appropriate mechanisms to deliver humanitarian aid to ensure the protection of civilians and preserve their dignity, and to pressure for the provision of more humanitarian land, sea, and air corridors to facilitate the work of international humanitarian institutions in delivering the required quantities of food and medicines, especially to the residents of northern Gaza who are experiencing severe famine claiming the lives of dozens daily.
- Hashd calls for concerted national and community efforts to protect civil peace, form popular committees in all areas of the Strip to support the work of government and international agencies in ensuring the protection of aid convoys, monitoring and controlling price hikes, ensuring aid reaches its beneficiaries, resolving disputes, and tackling manifestations of thuggery and chaos, taking the law into their own hands, amidst deliberate Israeli shelling of security headquarters and targeting of police and security personnel, preventing the Israeli occupation from achieving its goals of spreading crime, chaos, internal strife, and violence, and destroying the pillars of civil peace.
- Hashd calls on the international community to provide international protection for Palestinians and exert serious pressure on the Israeli occupation state to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid and facilitate the work of international institutions, especially UNRWA, to ensure the delivery of humanitarian and relief aid to all areas of the Gaza Strip.
End
The International Commission to Support Palestinians Rights (Hashd)
