Palestinian civil society organizations urgently call on the President of the European Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen, and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the European Union’s (EU) leadership to demand Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, to stop its deliberate targeted attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including with white phosphorus, to end all forms of collective punishment, to lift the 16-year-long illegal closure and blockade on Gaza, and to rescind the evacuation orders to over one million Palestinians. As a bare minimum, the EU must pressure Israel to facilitate the free passage of humanitarian consignments into Gaza for the immediate delivery of basic supplies necessary for the survival of the population, including food, water and medicine. The EU’s double standards and support of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people must end now.

On 7 October 2023, Israel launched a full-fledged military offensive on the Gaza Strip, aimed at erasing and reducing the territory to rubble. Under international humanitarian law, “the only legitimate object which States should endeavor to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy”. In pursuing this aim, “the right of the Parties to the conflict to choose methods or means of warfare is not unlimited”.

The resounding silence of the EU leadership on Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza and their blind support for Israel signals that the EU is green-lighting, enabling and encouraging Israel’s military actions, which already may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and incitement to commit genocide.

During a meeting of the Israeli government held on Saturday, 7th of October 2023, May Golan, Israel’s Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women, announced that: “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza.” Later that evening, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared: “I say to the residents of Gaza: get out of there now, because we will act everywhere and with all the strength.”

These statements unequivocally underlie the intention—turned into action—to carpet bomb Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, treating the entirety of the territory as one single military objective in breach of sacrosanct principles of international humanitarian law. Palestinian civilians, including one million children, are trapped in Gaza, with no shelter, no food, no water, no electricity, and crippled infrastructure which may collapse at any moment.

And yet, despite blatant evidence of Israel’s intention to perpetrate serious international crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the response of the EU and the majority of its Member States has been one-sided—to the point of complicity in Israel’s international crimes. An unremitting international blind eye has been turned to the 2,215 Palestinians, including at least 724 children and 458 women, killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza, and to another 8,714 wounded with various injuries, including at least 2,450 children and 1,536 women. Entire Palestinian families have been wiped out. Dozens of bodies are still under the rubble and Israel has turned Gaza from an open-air prison into an open-air morgue.

President von der Leyen shared images of the Berlaymont building, which houses the headquarters of the European Commission, lit up with the colors of the Israeli flag, while announcing her support for the right of Israel to defend itself- “today and in the days to come” and that “[t]he European Union stands with Israel”. At the time of writing, President von der Leyen has not written a single statement calling on Israel to comply with its international legal obligations or denouncing the blatant international crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. Similar unilateral support was shown by the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola and by several EU Member States.

On 9 October 2023, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Minister of Defense, stated: "We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly”. This statement, which includes genocidal language dehumanizing the Palestinian people as “human animals”, should put the international community on notice of Israel’s incitement to commit acts of genocide, and trigger a strong EU response in terms of its international law duty to prevent.

On 19 October 2022, while addressing the European Parliament, von der Leyen said: “Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure, with the clear aim of cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming—these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such”. No similar declarations were made with respect to Israel’s cutting off electricity, food, water, fuel, and medicine to Gaza. This stark disparity underscores the European leadership’s shameful double standards, which seemingly regards Palestinian lives as second-class, entrenching the apartheid reality.

On 13 October 2023—the same day Israel demanded over one million civilians in northern Gaza evacuate their homes towards areas south of Wadi Gaza—Ursula von der Leyen and Roberta Metsola met with the Israeli leadership. As thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, in what is the largest forced displacement since the 1948 Nakba, the EU leadership were photographed shaking hands with Israeli President, Isaac Herzog.

We recall that earlier this year, Ursula von der Leyen celebrated Israel’s independence day using racist tropes, denying the Palestinian Nakba, the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which paved the foundation for the State of Israel. Yet again, as a present-day Nakba unfolds before our eyes, President von der Leyen is not just ignoring it, but facilitating it through her statements and presence in the region.

For decades, our organizations have called on the EU to impose sanctions against Israel, pursuant to the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, for its for its accumulating crime against Palestinians, including wilful killing, arbitrary mass arrests, administrative detentions without due process, property appropriation, destruction, forcible transfer, settler transfer in, collective punishment, persecution, and apartheid amongst others. All our calls remain unheeded. Yet, less than 48 hours after the beginning of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, EU Commissioner Varhelyi unilaterally and arbitrarily announced that the European Commission intended to cut its aid to the Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This statement was later retracted by HRVP Borrell. However, other EU Member States have individually decided to cut, review, or suspend aid—including Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria.

We demand that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen, and the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, fully denounce Israel’s indiscriminate military reprisals against Palestinian civilians and civilian objects in Gaza, and intervene to protect the Palestinian people against Israel’s incitement to genocide.

European leaders must firmly pressure Israel, the Occupying Power, to respect its obligations under international law, including ensuring the vital supply of water, gas, fuel, electricity and basic supplies to Palestinians in Gaza, and to cease any attack on civilians and civilian facilities. European leaders also have a duty to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and collective punishment against civilians, including by publicly and unconditionally supporting the current investigation carried out by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

For violence to end, European leaders must address and eradicate the root causes of the ongoing violence, namely, Israel’s seven-decade long settler-colonial enterprise and oppression of the Palestinian people. The Israeli military must fully, unconditionally, and immediately withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, as mandated under numerous UN Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions. The EU must intervene to ensure that Israel dismantles its discriminatory apartheid regime, including by rescinding all discriminatory laws and facilitating the right of return and to self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Signatories:

• Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
• The Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD)
• The BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, Sanction) movement
• Bisan Center for Research and Development
• The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - MIFTAH
• Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man
• Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
• Health Work Committees (HWC)
• Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
• Defense for Children International – Palestine
• The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
• The Jerusalem Human Rights Consortium:
• The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre (JLAC)
• The Land Research Centre (LRC)
• The Society of Saint Yves
• The Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC)

On June 19th, 2023, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy – MIFTAH held a side event as part of the 53rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, highlighting the situation of Palestinian women and girls across historical Palestine and in exile under Israel’s military occupation, apartheid regime and settler-colonial project.

MIFTAH’s Joharah Baker briefed the audience on the varying Israeli crimes and human rights violations committed against Palestinian women and girls based on the imposed geographical fragmentation. In the occupied West Bank, Joharah discussed MIFTAH’s documentation of Israeli state-sponsored settler terrorism, systematic home demolitions and army night raids and their impact on women physically and psychologically. Regarding occupied Jerusalem, she explained that Palestinian Jerusalemite women continue to be isolated from their natural surroundings due to the annexation wall and numerous military checkpoints, talking about her own experience in this regard.

While discussing the situation of Palestinian women in the besieged Gaza Strip, Joharah mentioned that in addition to the dire conditions following a 16-year-long suffocating land, air, and sea blockade and closure, frequent Israeli aggressions on Gaza have made it almost impossible for women to seek proper medical healthcare inside Gaza or to seek medical referrals outside the besieged Strip, particularly female cancer patients as recently documented by MIFTAH.

MIFTAH also highlighted that deliberate Israeli police negligence in Palestinian areas inside Israel has led to a record increase in femicide, leading to the killing of 12 Palestinian last year alone. Palestinians there also face over 65 discriminatory laws, namely the family reunification law, which prevents mothers, wives and daughters from living with their families under one roof, leading to a denial of rights.

The speaker also explained that Palestinian women refugees residing in overcrowded camps and still denied their right of return, are denied access to basic services like access to water and electricity, which in turn leads to increased gender-based violence.

Joharah also touched on MIFTAH’s efforts domestically to push for the Family Protection Bill to be passed into law, in order to guarantee rights and protection for Palestinian women and girls, citing the predominantly patriarchal society in Palestine as a major source of discrimination against them.

The second panelist, Carrie Shelver from the Sexual Rights Initiative, talked about the importance of intersectional solidarity when it comes to Palestine and gender-related struggles. She also emphasized the need to have a progressive feminist discourse using an anti-colonial lens and including input from the global South. Finally, she discussed Israeli pinkwashing attempts that aim to obscure its crimes by promoting itself as a protector of women and depicting Palestinians as regressive.

Finally, Palestinian activist Nada Awad informed the audience of the responsibility and obligations of the international community to end Israel’s impunity and hold it accountable for its persistent crimes and human rights violations. She also laid out the various available tools and mechanisms for accountability, including the Commission of Inquiry, UN Special Rapporteurs, the International Criminal Court and the Convention of Ending All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The panelists concluded the event with a set of recommendations for the international community:

• Ending Israel’s impunity and holding it accountable with effective and concrete steps

• Political and Financial support for the UN Commission of Inquiry in light of baseless attacks

• Support for the UN Special Rapporteur to the oPt in light of smear campaigns

• Support the International Criminal Court investigation into Israeli war crimes

• Support for the upcoming ICJ advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s occupation

The undersigned Palestinian civil society organizations vehemently denounce and reject the shameful statement made by the EU Commission President, in which she celebrated Israel’s “Independence” day by using racist anti-Palestinian tropes and denying Palestinian history and the atrocities of the Nakba. These remarks depart from basic political and diplomatic principles and shamelessly favor the occupying power, which engages in persecution, aggression, and state terrorism against the Palestinian people.

In her speech, Ursula von der Leyen claimed that Israel has made “the desert bloom”, utilizing a colonial remark that greenwashes Israel’s settler-colonial project, and its displacement of the indigenous Palestinian people and the illegal confiscation of their land. We further reject Ms. von der Leyen’s use of biblical references that align with the Israeli occupier’s narrative that erases the Palestinian people and denies their deep roots in the land and their inalienable right to self-determination. This forms the foundation for the racist so-called “Nation State Law” that Israel is now using to entrench colonization and complete annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem.

The horrific events of the Palestinian Nakba which paved the way for the foundation of Israel; including displacing over 750,000 Palestinians and rendering them refugees to this day, razing hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns, and committing dozens of massacres, continue to manifest today through different ways yet with the same overall aim of displacing the indigenous Palestinian people and replacing them with Jewish Israelis across historical Palestine through ethnic cleansing.

The European Union’s failure to hold Israel accountable for its countless crimes and human rights violations, including the crime against humanity of apartheid, fuels the culture of impunity that Israel enjoys as it escalates its aggression against the Palestinian people and their land, especially in light of the new extremist Israeli government. Instead of contributing to ending Israeli violations and delivering long-awaited justice to Palestine, the EU continues to reward Israel, the occupying power, with more political, economic, and technological support and cooperation.

We urge the European Union to assume its responsibility, by refraining from such inflammatory and objectionable language as well as from employing double standards in dealing with issues related to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, as guaranteed by all relevant international laws and agreements. We call on elected European officials to muster the courage and political will to pressure Israel into abiding by international law by holding it accountable with concrete and effective measures that align with existing European Union laws and international obligations and principles.

Finally, we thank our friends and allies across Europe for speaking out and rejecting this overt anti-Palestinian racism and urge them to hold their officials accountable. Like all other forms of hate and discrimination, anti-Palestinianism must not be tolerated.

Signatories:

1. Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC)
2. The Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO)
3. AMAN Coalition
4. Al-Haq, Law in the service of man
5. The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy – MIFTAH
6. Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Gaza (PCHR)
7. Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights
8. Abdel ـ Shafi Community Health Association (ACHA)
9. Adam association for the development of family society
10. Addameer – Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
11. AFKAR Organization for Educational and Cultural Development
12. Agricultural Development Society
13. Aisha Association for Woman & Child Protection
14. Al Adham for Development
15. Al Ataa' Charitable Society
16. Al Awda Health and Community Association
17. Al Nahda Association for Development and Growth (NADG)
18. Al Najda Social Association
19. AL RAAFA ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIALLY DEVELOPMENT & HANDICAPPED CARE
20. Al Sattar Garbee Association for Developing Countryside and Farmer
21. AL-Foukhary Association For Development and Culture
22. Almanal Society for Developing the Rural Women
23. Alnajda Developmental Forum
24. Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society
25. Altaghreed Association For Culture And Development
26. Al-Tawasol Forum Society
27. Alternatives Forum - Palestine
28. Amwaj Association for Community Development and Improvement
29. Arab center for Agricultural Development (ACAD) /Ramallah – Gaza
30. Arab World Democracy and Electoral Monitor (Al Marsad)
31. Association for Visually Impaired Graduate League
32. Basma Society for Culture and Arts
33. Beit Lahia Youth Center Association
34. Bisan Center for Research and Development
35. Brilliant Tomorrow for Homes Sons Society
36. Center for Defense of Liberties & Civil Rights “Hurryyat”
37. Center of Women's Legal Research, Counseling and Protection
38. Central Blood Bank Society
39. Centre for Culture and Development
40. Charitable Family Development Association
41. Community Action Center / Al-Quds University
42. Community Media Center
43. Defense for Children International – Palestine
44. Disability Representative Body Network
45. Dr. Haidar Abdelshafi Centre for Culture and Development
46. El Amal Rehabilitation Society - Rafah
47. El-Braem Development Society
48. Faisal Husseini Foundation
49. Federation of Woman Action Committee
50. Filastiniyat
51. Future Association for Development and Environment
52. Future Charity Association
53. Gaza Community Mental Health Programme - GCMHP
54. Gaza Urban & Peri-urban Agriculture Platform (GUPAP) | Gaza, Palestine
55. General Union of Cultural Centers
56. Ghassan Kanafani Development
57. Human Rights and Democracy Media Center “SHAMS”
58. Jerusalem Human Rights Consortium (JHRC)
59. Jerusalem Legal Aid Center (JLAC)
60. Khuzaa permaculture association center
61. LABOR RESOURCES CENTER - LRC
62. Land Research Center (LRC)
63. Local Association For Social Services
64. MA'AN Development Center
65. Mabarret Palestine Society for Caring (MPC)
66. Milad Association for Youth Development
67. Mothers School Society
68. National Center for Rural Development Association
69. National Society for Rehabilitation
70. Nawa for Culture and Arts Association
71. Palestine Amputee Football Association
72. Palestinian Agricultural Development Association
73. Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)
74. Palestinian Center of Organic Agriculture
75. Palestinian Crescent Society for Relief and Development
76. Palestinian Developmental Women Studies Association
77. Palestinian Farmers’ Union
78. Palestinian Health Work Committees (HWC)
79. Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC)
80. Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS)
81. Palestinian Non–Governmental Organization against Domestic Violence against Women (Al Muntada)
82. Palestinian Social Forum (PSF)
83. Palestinian Youth Union
84. PALTEAM Association for Community Development
85. Public Aid Society - Gaza
86. Remedial Education Center - REC
87. Rural Women Development Society (RWDS)
88. Science and Culture Center
89. Teacher Creativity Center
90. The Assembly Benevolent Of Operation
91. The Civil Commission for the Independence of Judiciary and Rule of Law “Istqlal”
92. The Culture and Free Thought Association
93. The Palestinian Association for Empowerment and Local Development-REFORM
94. The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession MUSAWA
95. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Gaza (PCHR)
96. The Palestinian Development Women Studies Association
97. The Palestinian Institute for Communication and Development PICD
98. The Palestinian Women’s Coalition for the Implementation of UNSCR 1325
99. The Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD)
100. The Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation- PYALARA
101. The Society of Women Graduates in Gaza Strip
102. The Women’s Studies Centre
103. Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
104. Union of Health Care Committees (UHCC)
105. Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC)
106. Wasel Center for Youth Development
107. WEFAQ Society for Women and Child Care
108. Women Media and Development
109. Women’s Affairs Technical Committee
110. Women’s Studies Centre
111. Women's Action Association for Rehabilitation Women & the Child
112. Women's Affairs Center /Gaza
113. Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC)
114. Youth Development Association
115. YWCA of Palestine
116. Zeina Women's Society