Open Letter on Gaza

As a human rights network, we are firmly grounded in international law and the belief that all people deserve to live free of oppression. As such, we are appaled at the violence unfolding in the besieged Gaza Strip. Several human rights organisations and academics, including notable Jewish professor for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Prof. Raz Segal, have called the atrocities by the Israeli government a genocide towards the Palestinian people.

At the time of writing, over 8,500 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military, including 3,500 children; and at least 123 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied West Bank by armed settlers and the Israeli military, including 36 children.

We demand an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip. We call upon all national and international authorities to express their united support against the documented war crimes taking place in Gaza, in Israel and in the West Bank, and their demand for a just peace process, including reparations for victims and victims’ families, and the end of illegal occupation.

We assert further that the current situation in Gaza, as well as escalating tensions and additional human rights abuses in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, must be contextualised within the ongoing military occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel since 1967, the continuous violence and the human rights abuses against Palestinian communities, which are the root causes of the escalated violence and are described by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as an apartheid system.

We urge human rights advocates, civil society, public figures, community and religious associations, academics, human rights advocates and legal professionals, to join us in the call for a ceasefire. We support the Open Letter on Gaza, which can be found here.