Escalating Israeli Attacks Against Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem Targeting Police Centers in Gaza, Civilians, Expanding Settlements, and Storming Al-Aqsa Are Systematic Crimes Aimed at Dismantling the Palestinian Presence

Date: May 5, 2025

Press Statement

Escalating Israeli Attacks Against Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem: Targeting Police Centers in Gaza, Civilians, Expanding Settlements, and Storming Al-Aqsa Are Systematic Crimes Aimed at Dismantling the Palestinian Presence

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) strongly condemns the continued perpetration by the Israeli occupation of grave and systematic crimes against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, within the framework of an integrated colonial system that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity and may rise to the level of genocide, including mass killing, siege and starvation, forced displacement, widespread destruction, settlement expansion, and grave violations against holy sites, foremost among them Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In this context, ICSPR affirms that the strike targeting the Sheikh Radwan Police Station and another police site northwest of Gaza City constitutes a systematic crime aimed at undermining public order and spreading chaos, and comes within an ongoing policy designed to dismantle the civil and security structure in the Gaza Strip. The attack reportedly resulted in the killing of a child and the injury of dozens of police officers and civilians, while police personnel were carrying out law-enforcement duties and intervening in a family dispute in the area surrounding the station, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and through the direct targeting of civilian bodies tasked with maintaining security and order.

ICSPR notes that the occupation has continued targeting law-enforcement institutions since October 2023, in a broader context of attacks on public institutions and civil infrastructure in Gaza, which has contributed to deepening insecurity, weakening social order, and worsening humanitarian conditions. This pattern has accelerated the collapse of public order and aggravated theft, revenge attacks, and the looting of humanitarian aid, thereby undermining social peace and the community fabric and deepening the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

At the same time, the occupation continues to commit large-scale massacres against civilians, while the humanitarian catastrophe worsens as a result of blocking and restricting aid, obstructing the evacuation of the wounded and the sick, spreading malnutrition and disease, and collapsing the health system, all of which point to the systematic use of starvation as a method of warfare. ICSPR considers these acts part of an ongoing genocidal context that has produced catastrophic civilian casualties and widespread suffering across the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, particularly in Tulkarm and its refugee camps, the occupation continues implementing a systematic policy based on the large-scale demolition of homes and civilian structures and the issuance of mass forced eviction orders, in preparation for the blowing up and destruction of residential neighborhoods, in flagrant violation of the prohibition on forcible transfer and the protection of civilian property under international humanitarian law. Official Palestinian sources reported demolition orders affecting 106 homes and buildings in Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps with only 24 hours granted for evacuation, while humanitarian reporting documented a much broader pattern of destruction and infrastructure devastation in northern West Bank camps.

This escalation is accompanied by intensified arrests, daily raids, and the targeting of vital infrastructure, all aimed at creating a coercive environment that pushes residents toward internal displacement, within a policy designed to reshape the demographic geography and impose new colonial realities on the ground.

In occupied Jerusalem, the systematic targeting of the Palestinian presence is also escalating dangerously, whether through policies of forced displacement, identity revocations, or severe restrictions on residency and construction, amounting to a gradual demographic cleansing policy. The city is also witnessing an unprecedented escalation in settler incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, with hundreds of settlers storming the compound on various occasions and reports documenting more than 65,000 settler incursions during 2025, in attempts to impose temporal and spatial division and alter the historical and legal status quo, in grave violation of international decisions, including UN Security Council Resolution 478.

ICSPR stresses that the continuation of international silence and paralysis represents a serious legal and moral failure, undermines the international justice system, and grants the occupation cover to continue its crimes without accountability.

Accordingly, ICSPR calls on mediators, the United Nations, the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, and international and regional organizations to move urgently to ensure an end to all Israeli crimes and violations in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, especially the crimes targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, police centers, and internationally protected objects, and to secure full compliance with the ceasefire, end collective punishment, starvation, and siege policies, and provide international protection to the Palestinian people in accordance with international humanitarian law, in a way that guarantees protection from killing, destruction, and displacement and compels the occupying power to fulfill its legal obligations.

ICSPR also calls on the International Criminal Court to expedite the completion of its investigations, open additional case files, and issue arrest warrants against those responsible for the crimes committed, while ensuring that they do not enjoy impunity, and further urges the activation of international accountability mechanisms through the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Finally, ICSPR calls on free peoples around the world to intensify their popular, legal, and political mobilization and to pressure their governments to fulfill their legal and moral obligations by ending political and military support for the occupation, working to impose sanctions on the occupying power, holding its leaders and soldiers accountable as war criminals, and ensuring the protection of the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights.