Dr. Salah Abdul Ati: The continuation of international inaction and silence on genocide, famine, and the announced military assault on Gaza City paves the way for massacres, mass executions, and the death of thousands from hunger, disease, and thirst

Date: 23 August 2025

Press Statement

Dr. Salah Abdul Ati: The continuation of international inaction and silence on genocide, famine, and the announced military assault on Gaza City paves the way for massacres, mass executions, and the death of thousands from hunger, disease, and thirst

Dr. Salah Abdul Ati, Head of the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR), warned of the grave consequences of the international community’s continued silence and failure to intervene to stop the genocide and famine affecting more than two million people in the Gaza Strip. He stressed that the Israeli occupation forces are implementing a systematic criminal plan of killing, destruction, starvation, thirst, disease-spreading, and forced displacement aimed at annihilating and exterminating as many Palestinians as possible and uprooting the rest from their land.

Field crimes and ethnic cleansing

Abdul Ati pointed out that the Israeli occupation forces have continued committing genocide crimes in the Gaza Strip for 687 days, with the death toll exceeding 62,263 martyrs and more than 156,000 injured, amid an official UN declaration confirming the widespread outbreak of famine, which makes the humanitarian reality in the Strip even more tragic and catastrophic.

He explained that the announced Israeli military operation to occupy what remains of Gaza City and the northern Strip is being carried out in calculated steps to tighten the siege on Gaza City by controlling the eastern Salah al-Din Street and destroying the neighborhoods of Al-Zaytoun and Al-Sabra, including historical landmarks, then advancing westward from the north and south towards the sea. This is accompanied by the use of all types of weapons and massacres to force the population into mass displacement — an attempt to expel nearly one million starving Palestinians in Gaza City and the north toward a narrow coastal area in the central and southern Strip, regardless of their catastrophic conditions and inability to move again amid famine, lack of transportation, poverty, absence of shelter, and the collapse of life’s basic necessities.

He added that the neighborhoods of Al-Zaytoun and Al-Sabra in Gaza City, along with Jabalia Camp and Jabalia Al-Nazla, have been subjected for over a week to one of the most violent military campaigns since the start of the war. The occupation has been using drones (quadcopters), ground robots, and intense artillery and aerial bombardments, causing horrific massacres against civilians, alongside ongoing forced displacement and direct shootings at citizens. Many martyrs and wounded still remain under the rubble amid communications blackouts and severe restrictions on rescue teams.

Abdul Ati stressed that the statement of Israeli war minister Bezalel Smotrich, that the operation aims to forcibly displace the population, constitutes an explicit admission of committing a crime amounting to ethnic cleansing.

Famine as a weapon of war

Abdul Ati highlighted that the delayed official UN declaration of Gaza entering a state of famine under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) proves that the occupation is using starvation as a weapon of war. Civilians — especially children and women — are facing the risk of death from hunger and thirst amid homelessness, collapsed hospitals, and the spread of diseases and epidemics caused by overcrowding, famine, and the lack of basic life necessities.

He expressed hope that this UN declaration would increase international pressure to lift the blockade and stop the obstruction of aid entry, placing the occupying power before its responsibilities.

He affirmed that this declaration legally and morally opens the door to activating urgent humanitarian response mechanisms and allowing the delivery of aid without the approval of the warring parties, based on international humanitarian law.

He stressed that deliberately militarizing humanitarian aid and creating famine conditions amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide that require international accountability.

What is required internationally

Abdul Ati emphasized that continuing to rely only on condemnations or betting on negotiations and mediation — despite appreciating such efforts — is no longer sufficient, as Netanyahu and his fascist, racist government have repeatedly used them as tools to prolong the war and genocide.

Therefore, what is urgently required today is an immediate shift toward mandatory humanitarian intervention under the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and international law, and the activation of the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism in the UN General Assembly to form an international coalition of all states rejecting genocide. This coalition should ensure the establishment and deployment of an international protection force to safeguard Palestinian civilians, and guarantee the opening of all crossings unconditionally for the flow of humanitarian aid through international organizations.

He also called on world states and international and regional organizations to impose comprehensive sanctions on Israel, suspend its membership in the United Nations, and prosecute its leaders, soldiers, and accomplices before the International Criminal Court and through the principle of universal jurisdiction.

A message to world leaders

Abdul Ati concluded his statement by stressing that the continued silence of the international community amounts to indirect complicity in crimes of starvation, destruction of residential areas and infrastructure, extrajudicial executions, and mass killings. This silence will only allow the continuation of large-scale massacres and starvation crimes that could claim the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

He said: “Divided Palestinian leaderships and world leaders should be ashamed of betraying Gaza’s population. They must use all their influence to end this genocidal war and guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid. Otherwise, we will face even more horrific and catastrophic massacres and conditions.