For almost 600 days, the Israeli occupation has waged a brutal and bloody war on the Gaza Strip, in which the occupation violated all legal and humanitarian obligations repeatedly through its aggression and targeted civilians on a massive scale.

The occupation has also completely annihilated 2,200 families by ethnically cleansing them from the civil registry, killing fathers, mothers, children, and any remaining family members where the murder of these families resulted in more than 6,350 martyrs. Furthermore, the murder of 5,120 additional Palestinian families where only one member survived resulted in an excess of 9,351 family members martyred. The total number of injuries has reached approximately 123,000 Palestinians since the beginning of the genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip almost 17 years ago, where these figures clearly demonstrate the deliberate targeting of civilians en masse and military strategies and operations that are devoid of any moral or legal restrictions.

Since March 2nd, the occupation has prevented the entry of any trucks into the Gaza Strip, including foods, supplies, hospital supplies, medical equipment, medication, and fuel to run hospital generators and power plants. This directly caused 58 deaths due to malnutrition, 242 deaths due to lack of food and medicine, most of whom were elderly, 26 kidney patients who lost their lives due to lack of nutritional and therapeutic care, and more than 300 miscarriages among pregnant women due to lack of sustenance necessary to sustain pregnancy. Moreover, physicians were forced to perform operations without anesthesia and to choose between and decide on which wounded patients could be treated and which had to be left to die. 

This complete denial of truck access is a war crime, even as Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), confirmed that the agency has ‘just over 5,000 trucks in several areas of the region loaded with life-saving supplies and ready to go’ and UNICEF Director-General Catherine Russell confirmed that ‘more than 116,000 metric tons of food aid – enough to feed one million people for four months – are currently stagnant in aid lanes and ready to go.’ 

According to an overview released by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IFSCI), 470,000 people in Gaza face catastrophic hunger (IFSCI Phase 5) and the entire population faces severe food insecurity. The report also predicts that an alarming 71,000 children and more than 17,000 mothers will require urgent treatment for severe malnutrition. At the beginning of 2025, UNICEF and the World Food Program estimated that 60,000 children would need treatment.

In the face of this catastrophic and unacceptable situation, we call on international governments and the Egyptian government to:

• We call on all countries to publicly announce their intention to join the humanitarian convoy by sending official diplomatic missions to escort aid trucks into Gaza through the Rafah crossing. (A specific date for the convoy’s departure will be announced soon).
• Countries must also reject the politicization of humanitarian aid and the distribution mechanisms proposed by the Israeli occupation, which militarize the distribution of humanitarian aid and bypass UN agencies and humanitarian organizations.
• We urge all states to coordinate with the UN and the Egyptian government to facilitate the entry of the convoy and ensure the immediate and safe passage of humanitarian aid, medical teams, and aid workers.
• Where some governments complicit in the ongoing crimes in the Gaza Strip refrain from participating in the convoy, we call on diplomats, parliamentarians, and ministers from those countries to join the convoy in their personal capacity.
• We urge the international media to accompany the convoy, to document the famine, expose the siege, and bear witness to modern history’s first livestreamed ethnic cleansing campaign. 
• We call on global civil society, including NGOs, trade unions, student groups, political parties, and solidarity networks to take immediate action to pressure their governments to support the convoy and provide material, political, and public support.
• We call on the United Nations to urgently complete the necessary assessments and procedures to declare Gaza a famine zone, based on documented data, and to support this unified call by diplomatically facilitating, participating in, and actively supporting the convoy. 
• We call on the Egyptian government to facilitate the procedures that will allow the convoy to reach the Gaza Strip starting with entry procedures into Egypt, through securing the convoy’s movement, and ending with enabling the convoy to pass through the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. 

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