After two years of unfathomable suffering in Gaza, ActionAid notes efforts by the international community to end active hostilities, facilitate humanitarian action and lay the groundwork for reconstruction. The 17 November UN Security Council resolution marks an acknowledgement that the current situation cannot continue.
However, some of its provisions risk entrenching rather than resolving the true drivers of conflict:
- continuing to impose control and oversight over the Palestinian people, with no limit in scope and duration;
- limiting Palestinian agency over governance, security, territory, and humanitarian access;
- providing no clear accountability to the Palestinian people;
- making self-determination conditional, when it is a fundamental right.
Jamil Sawalmeh, ActionAid Palestine’s Country Director, said:
“Temporary measures may be helpful in stopping the bleeding today. But Palestinians continue to be killed by Israeli fire daily, throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, and Israeli authorities continue to obstruct humanitarian action in countless ways since the ceasefire came into force five weeks ago.
Palestinians do not need new forms of foreign supervision. Palestinians remain committed to all previous and current international efforts towards a long-lasting solution. The Government of Israel, on the other hand, has been accused by the UN Commission of Inquiry of committing genocide, and by the UN International Court of Justice of maintaining an illegal occupation or obstructing UN humanitarian operations, against international law. If the UN Security Council believes that external oversight is necessary, it must ensure such measures are directed toward the Israeli authorities, found by its own bodies to be responsible for major crimes.”
ActionAid urges the UN Member States to ensure that this resolution does not become a vehicle to further control the Palestinian people under the guise of creating stability. Its efficacy and legality reside in how it will be implemented:
- According to international law, including ICJ Advisory Opinion, UN Member States have an obligation to ensure the occupation is ended—not managed or replaced. Any transitional structure must be clearly time-bound and ensure that Palestinians themselves are at the decision-making table to rebuild and govern their own communities.
- Any credible plan forward must prioritize accountability for crimes committed—without double standards—and remove all barriers to Palestinian self-determination, with no conditions or political manipulation.
- The international community must support—not supplant—the capacity of Palestinian institutions and civil society to deliver life-saving aid and recovery, and create justice for all, empowering women and youth.
ENDS
Jamil Sawalmeh, Country Director of ActionAid Palestine, and Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, are available for an interview. For media requests, please email christal.james@actionaid.org or call 7046659743.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.