ICSPR Warns Gaza Faces a New Nakba Amid Escalating Crimes of Genocide, Starvation, and Forced Displacement – Ink-on-Paper International Interventions Have Become a Humanitarian and Legal Imperative

Date: September 18, 2025

Press Release

ICSPR Warns: Gaza Faces a New Nakba Amid Escalating Crimes of Genocide, Starvation, and Forced Displacement – Ink-on-Paper International Interventions Have Become a Humanitarian and Legal Imperative

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) expresses its deep concern, strong condemnation, and outrage over the escalating Israeli crimes against civilians and their property in the Gaza Strip, now on the 712th consecutive day of the Israeli aggression and genocidal war. These crimes reflect recurring patterns of systematic atrocities, which have intensified since the launch of the ground offensive on Gaza City on August 11, 2025, when Israeli forces escalated their operations to unprecedented levels, committing massacres, mass displacement, and systematic destruction of infrastructure and residential neighborhoods.

According to field data and reports from the Government Media Office and the Ministry of Health, the ground assault on Gaza City has resulted in the killing of 3,542 civilians to date, including 56% of Gaza City and northern Gaza’s population—a clear attempt to forcibly empty and displace these areas, while simultaneously targeting central and southern regions, confirming the comprehensive nature of the assault.

ICSPR reports that yesterday the occupation committed a massacre near Al-Shifa Hospital, killing at least 15 civilians, including photojournalist Mohammad Alaa Al-Sawalhi, raising the total number of slain journalists to 252. Crimes committed yesterday and today alone left around 200 new martyrs arriving at hospitals, while hundreds of bodies remain trapped under rubble due to heavy bombardment and obstruction of civil defense operations. The number of missing persons has now risen to more than 15,000, while since the beginning of the aggression over 65,000 martyrs and 165,000 wounded have arrived at hospitals.

During the past week, Israeli warplanes launched more than 1,000 airstrikes, targeting what remained of homes, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and historical landmarks in Gaza City. Since the start of the current ground offensive, more than 2,600 residential towers, buildings, and shelters have been destroyed, in addition to partial destruction of over 6,000 structures. Moreover, around 20,000 tents for displaced families were burned or torn down—an evident policy of emptying the city and rendering it uninhabitable. Israeli forces even used explosive robots to demolish entire neighborhoods including Al-Zaytoun, Al-Sabra, Sheikh Radwan, Al-Shati Refugee Camp, Al-Rimal, and Tel Al-Hawa, alongside relentless aerial, artillery, and drone attacks. These crimes displaced around 500,000 civilians, with 400,000 forced to flee south under catastrophic conditions, many on foot, while families had to pay up to $1,000 in transportation costs. With no shelters or tents available, they now live in disastrous conditions within so-called Israeli-designated “humanitarian zones,” covering no more than 12% of Gaza’s area—turned into overcrowded detention-like camps with almost no water, food, medicine, or shelter. Even these areas are not spared from bombardment, forcing hundreds of families to return to Gaza City despite the risks.

Throughout the genocidal war, Israeli forces have deliberately cut off communications and internet repeatedly and systematically, most recently on September 17, 2025, through targeting transmission stations and towers. This organized policy aims to isolate Gaza from the outside world, obscure documentation of crimes, prevent civilians from calling for ambulances, obstruct humanitarian relief, undermine healthcare and education services, and suppress media coverage—constituting war crimes and blatant violations of international law.

The occupation also continues to block humanitarian and medical aid and fuel, while deliberately using starvation tactics by allowing only around 15% of actual needs to enter. Civilians waiting for aid in front of distribution centers belonging to the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Organization” (U.S.-Israeli), and near crossings, have been repeatedly targeted. Despite UN confirmation that Gaza has entered a phase of famine, epidemics, and total collapse of the health system, Israel persists in these colonial policies aimed at rendering Gaza uninhabitable and entrenching permanent forced displacement—a repetition of the Nakba. In this context, the recent statements of extremist Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich, describing Gaza as a “real estate treasure,” reveal the true nature of the colonial-settler project in full partnership with the U.S.

ICSPR highly values the global popular movement demanding an end to the genocidal war, including the mobilization of the Freedom Flotilla toward Gaza, and welcomes the announcement by Spanish Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz of opening a criminal investigation into Israeli crimes in Gaza—a qualitative step towards accountability and ending impunity. ICSPR calls on all state parties to the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions to follow Spain’s example, stressing that any further international inaction amounts to complicity in the crime of genocide.

Accordingly, ICSPR demands the following:

1. Immediate international action to stop the genocidal war and activate Chapter VII of the UN Charter through the UN General Assembly (Uniting for Peace mechanism), including sending an international protection mission, opening humanitarian corridors for fuel, medical, and food supplies, and restoring essential services, including communications and internet.

2. Imposing comprehensive sanctions on Israel, severing political, economic, academic, sports, and cultural ties with it, and enforcing an arms embargo.

3. Accelerating international accountability by supporting the ICJ to expedite its ruling, urging the ICC to speed up investigations, and issuing additional arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, soldiers, and their partners.

4. Convening an urgent conference of the state parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their legal obligations, provide international protection for Palestinians, and ensure Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law—alongside mobilizing collective humanitarian action to force Israel to cease all crimes against civilians and civilian objects, achieve justice, and provide reparations for the victims of genocide.