Top United Nations officials on Monday called for urgent global action to save Palestinians in Gaza, highlighting once again the catastrophic humanitarian crisis. For more than a month, Gaza has been cut off from commercial and humanitarian supplies, leaving more than 2.1 million people trapped, bombed and starving. Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on civilians, including aid workers, journalists, UN personnel, hospitals and ambulances, continue with impunity.
“Over 1,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured in just the first week after the breakdown of the ceasefire, the highest one-week death toll among children in Gaza in the past year,” said a joint statement issued by six UN leaders.
“Just a few days ago, the 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme [WFP] during the ceasefire had to close due to flour and cooking gas shortages.”
Monday's statement was signed by Tom Fletcher, UN humanitarian chief; Cindy McCain, WFP executive director; Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO); Catherine Russell, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF); Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); and Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS).
For eighteen months, an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe has been unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with people dying from widespread violence, disease, dehydration and hunger. UN officials have previously described the situation in Gaza as "apocalyptic," "hell on earth," "beyond catastrophic," and said that the humanitarian community is "running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza."
More than 50,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed and more than 115,000 injured in Gaza since October 7, 2023, most of them civilians. But the real numbers are estimated to be much higher. Among the dead are at least 409 aid workers, 291 UN staff, 1060 health workers and 206 journalists.
Palestinian civilians have endured months of relentless attacks by Israeli forces, and now, after more than a month of a total blockade of aid, vital resources including food, medicine and fuel are blocked at the crossings, while medical supplies are running out, severely straining an already overburdened health system.
“Essential medical and trauma supplies are rapidly running out, threatening to reverse hard-won progress in keeping the health system operational,” the UN officials said.
On March 17, Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire it had agreed to with the Palestinian armed group Hamas on January 15 and launched airstrikes on Gaza. Since then, Israeli forces have escalated air, land and sea bombardments of Gaza and expanded ground operations, resulting in mass deaths and injuries, destruction of civilian infrastructure and large-scale displacement.
Since March 18, new Israeli displacement orders have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee, leaving them with no safe place to go. Sixty-five percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip is in "no-go" areas, under active displacement orders, or both.
Since March 2, Israel has imposed a total blockade on the territory, including fuel, medical supplies and other essential goods.
The recent ceasefire in Gaza, which lasted until March 1, 2025, allowed humanitarian organizations to rapidly scale up their response. The cessation of Israeli attacks allowed the daily entry of large quantities of humanitarian supplies and a steady flow of fuel.
Furthermore, the overall security environment and humanitarian access in Gaza had significantly improved. 42,000 trucks of goods and humanitarian aid entered Gaza during the ceasefire. More than 4,000 trucks of aid crossed into Gaza each week, reaching more than two million people.
“The latest ceasefire allowed us to achieve in 60 days what bombs, obstruction and lootings prevented us from doing in 470 days of war: life-saving supplies reaching nearly every part of Gaza,” the UN officials said.
“While this offered a short respite, assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground, and commodities are running extremely low.”
Prior to the Israeli government's total siege, humanitarian aid to Gaza had been obstructed by its authorities for more than a year, in gross violation of international humanitarian law and in apparent use as a method of warfare, a war crime,
In a press briefing last week, Jonathan Whittall, an official with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), described the situation in Gaza, including a mission to Rafah that uncovered a mass grave of medical and emergency workers killed recently by Israeli forces while trying to save lives, as “a war without limits,” that “defies decency, humanity and […] the law”.
“As humanitarians […] we cannot accept that Palestinian civilians are dehumanized to the point of being somehow unworthy of survival […] [and] people’s survival is dependent on an aid system that itself is under attack,” Whittall said.
Today's UN statement said: “We are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.”
The top UN officials are calling for firm, urgent and decisive global action to uphold international humanitarian law.
“Protect civilians. Facilitate aid. Release hostages. Renew a ceasefire”, they said.
Legal observers point out that the total blockade of humanitarian aid is a flagrant war crime and may be part of an alleged genocide against the population of Gaza, as the actions of the Israeli government appear to be aimed at deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group or part of a group.
A growing number of independent legal experts, international commissions, and human rights organizations - including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Federation for Human Rights - have found that Israel's actions in Gaza against the Palestinians as a group amount to genocide.
Israel's war in Gaza continues to be marked by serious war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israeli military and government officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the situation in Gaza, after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu in November.
Some of the worst crimes committed by Israeli officials in Gaza include collective punishment of civilians, use of starvation as a method of warfare, denial of humanitarian aid, targeted killings of civilians, indiscriminate killing of civilians, targeted killings of aid workers, disproportionate attacks, forcible transfer, torture, enforced disappearances and other atrocity crimes.