Gaza has been held under water for 22 months, allowed to gasp for air only when Israeli authorities have succumbed to political pressure.
From the outset of the war, Israeli authorities said they would implement what the Israeli Defense Minister referred to as a “complete siege.” Electricity to Gaza was immediately cut, and a total blockade on aid and essential commercial goods was put in place. Israeli officials have referred to there being “no uninvolved civilians in Gaza.” The impact of months of collective punishment is now culminating in mass starvation.
I have been part of coordinating humanitarian efforts in Gaza since October 2023. Whatever lifesaving aid has entered has been the exception, not the rule, and only possible under political pressure from those with more leverage over Israeli authorities than international law itself. But the baseline of total blockade on the essentials to live has never meaningfully changed.
More than a year after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures against Israel in the case concerning the Application of the Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip - and despite all our warnings - we are still witnessing starvation, insufficient access to water, a sanitation crisis and a crumbling health system amidst ongoing violence that is resulting in scores of Palestinians killed daily, including children.
Powerless to change this, humanitarians have resorted to using our voices - alongside those of Palestinian journalists who risk everything - to describe the appalling, inhuman conditions in Gaza, in the hopes that those with power will take the necessary action. This is part of our role to promote respect for international law.
But doing so comes at a cost. After I held a press briefing in Gaza where I described that starving civilians were being shot while trying to reach food - what I called “conditions created to kill” - the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs announced in a post on X that my visa will not be renewed.
This silencing is part of a broader pattern. International NGOs face increasingly restrictive registration requirements, including clauses that prohibit criticism of Israel. Palestinian NGOs that continue to save lives daily against the odds are cut off from the resources they need to operate. UN agencies are issued only six, three, or one-month visas based on whether they are considered “good, bad, or ugly.” UNRWA has been targeted through legislation, its international staff barred from entry, and its operations slowly suffocated.
These reprisals cannot erase the reality we’ve witnessed - day in, day out - in the West Bank and Gaza. The entire population in Gaza of 2.1 million people is being crammed into 12% of the land area of the Strip. I remember receiving the chilling call on October 13, 2023, announcing the forced displacement of the entire northern Gaza. That was the opening act of what has only grown more brutal.
Since then, almost all of Gaza has been forcibly displaced - not once, but repeatedly - without sufficient shelter, food, or safety. There is no consistent access to clean water. Health services are collapsing. Mass casualties keep arriving. Ambulances often cannot reach the wounded because they’ve been targeted before and now wait for approval to move. Starvation is spreading. People are being killed while trying to reach food from the backs of trucks or entering militarized zones around Israeli-US aid distribution points. It is a daily assault on life and dignity.
Over the past 22 months, I have seen firsthand what appears to be the systematic dismantling of the means to sustain Palestinian life.
We have helped carry patients from cat infested ICU wards in destroyed hospitals without electricity, water or food. We uncovered mass graves in hospital courtyards, where families searched through clothing to identify loved ones. We repatriated the bodies of aid workers killed by drone strikes and tank fire - colleagues who died while delivering aid. We collected the bodies of NGO staff’s relatives killed in locations acknowledged as humanitarian sites. We have uncovered the bodies of medics who had been killed in their informs by Israeli forces and buried under their crushed ambulance.
Israeli authorities accuse us of failing to collect goods at the crossings. We are not failing. We are being obstructed. We wait hours for approvals to move, our convoys are interfered with, we are given unviable routes, Israeli forces open fire on crowds of desperate people. Our distribution system has been dismantled. During the ceasefire, we moved multiple convoys a day. Now, chaos, killing, and obstruction are again the norm.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, the strategy is different, but the goal is the same: to sever territorial continuity and confine Palestinians into fragmented enclaves. Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels. Settlements continue to expand, and movement restrictions intensify. Herders are driven off their land. Military raids are increasing and even airstrikes are now common.
We have met families in East Jerusalem forced to demolish their own homes to avoid heavy fines. We’ve shared meals with families on the brink of eviction from Jerusalem’s old city, with settlers waiting outside. We’ve walked through refugee camps torn apart by bulldozers, with water and sanitation systems destroyed. We’ve met herders forced to abandon their land after violent settler attacks.
These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a policy of coercion and containment, designed to push Palestinians out of Area C and into disconnected urban pockets under intensifying military control.
In a recent advisory opinion, the ICJ found that Israel’s regime of comprehensive restrictions imposed on Palestinians constitutes systemic discrimination based on race, religion or ethnic origin, in violation of international human rights law. It also found that Israel’s legislation and measures maintaining a separation between the settler and Palestinian communities breached.
Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which obliges states to eliminate racial segregation and apartheid.
Aid is vital, but it will never be a cure. In Gaza and the West Bank, humanitarian assistance in response to these atrocities is used to mask political inaction, and, at worst, to enable it.
The ICJ has been clear. In its binding provisional measures on Gaza, it ordered Israel to prevent acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, such as deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to cause the physical destruction of Palestinians. It also ordered Israel to enable urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including by increasing the number of crossings needed for that aid to flow.
In a separate advisory opinion, the ICJ left no room for doubt: Israel’s ongoing occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful under international law. The ICJ determined that Israel must end the occupation as rapidly as possible and evacuate settlements.
Israel must face actual consequences for non-compliance, including at a minimum the suspension of military aid and arms transfers.
What is unfolding is not complicated. It is not inevitable. It is the result of deliberate political choices by those who create these conditions and those who enable them.
The end of the occupation is long overdue. The credibility of the multilateral system is being weakened by double standards and impunity. The consequences are as humanitarian as they are political. International law cannot be a tool of convenience for some if it is to be a viable tool of protection for all.
A ceasefire in Gaza is needed more than ever. But so too is the equal application of international law. Every delay is another hand pressing Gaza down as it struggles for breath.
*Head of Office, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory.
