As the grim mark of two years of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza approaches, ActionAid amplifies the voices of our partners and colleagues who continue to deliver lifesaving aid amidst relentless bombardment, famine, displacement, and unimaginable conditions.
Faten Abu Shamaleh, Project Coordinator at Wefaq Society for Women and Childcare, an ActionAid partner, said:
“I cannot find a word that can describe this in the best way. It feels like judgment day: every day is a torment, and it has not ended. I have been forcibly displaced more than ten times. On one occasion, our tent was bombed. We survived, but my husband was later captured by the IDF in front of me and my children. After that, I had to flee to Rafah with nothing, no clothes, no money, no furniture. The sequence of displacement continues; I am currently displaced again.
There isn’t a single day when we feel secure or fed. Everyone eats very little, afraid food will run out. Nothing is safe. Delivering humanitarian aid often means risking our lives under bombardment. But the hardest moments are when we have nothing to give, when I see children without shoes, shivering in the cold, and I am unable to help. That pain is unbearable.
The world’s silence and inaction have been devastating. Children have been amputated, disfigured, scarred for life. They are growing up without identity, ignored for two years. They will need urgent humanitarian and psychological support for years to come.”
ActionAid is calling on governments to act immediately. Words without action are complicity in genocide. While Israel relentlessly bombs Gaza, states must meet their obligations.
Niranjali Amerasinghe, Executive Director of ActionAid USA, said:
“The United States must stop supporting Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. It is unacceptable to keep sending guns and bombs to a government that is openly using them to commit genocide.”
ActionAid demands that the United States immediately stop providing foreign and military assistance to Israel and that European governments immediately suspend all trade deals with Israel. No country should profit from genocide. The US and EU must end their complicity and suspend material support for the Israeli government and the EU–Israel trade agreement until the occupation ends and international law is upheld.
Alaa Abu Samra, Emergency Response Program Manager at ActionAid, said:
“Two years of war means more than 65,000 lives lost, most of them children, women, and civilians. Hundreds of thousands wounded, thousands permanently disabled. Families displaced again and again, forced to sleep in tents or the open air, with no safe zone at all. Clean water is scarce, diseases are spreading, and children are growing up without dignity or privacy.
Two years of war also means silence from the world, silence that has enabled killing and suffering to continue. Yet despite everything, our people still hold on to dignity, still support one another, and still hope for life again.”
While the genocide continues in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank face annexation, settler violence, home demolitions, mass arrests, movement restrictions, gender-based violence, and shrinking access to essential services.
An anonymous mother from Hebron told ActionAid:
“Life has become increasingly difficult. My husband is unemployed, and my children remain at home. With the economy collapsing, men have lost their work due to closures. Children are beaten by soldiers and settlers, traumatized by raids on our homes. They suffer from incontinence, show unusual behavior, and yet there are no services to help them.”
Under international law, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal and must be dismantled. Annexation constitutes a grave breach of international law, and every political, legal, diplomatic, and economic measure must be taken to prevent its implementation and ensure its reversal.
Jamil Sawalmeh, Country Director of ActionAid Palestine, said:
“Palestinians urgently need this genocide to end. Words of concern cannot save lives: we demand a permanent ceasefire, an end to the blockade, and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the entire occupied Palestinian territory. Sustainable peace is only possible with recognition of Palestinian rights, dignity, and political freedoms.
World leaders must take robust and firm decisions, using every tool available, including sanctions, trade deal suspension, and international justice mechanisms, to end the assault on Gaza and dismantle Israel’s illegal occupation. There is no humanitarian solution to a political problem. European governments must end their complicity: continuing trade agreements while atrocities mount makes Europe accountable. The EU–Israel trade agreement must be suspended immediately. This is about justice, dignity, and the political will to stop a genocide in real time.”
ENDS
Jamil Sawalmeh, Country Director of ActionAid Palestine and Riham Jafari, Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, are available for 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.
