RAMALLAH, July 21, 2025 (WAFA) - Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa Monday launched an urgent appeal to end Israel’s policy of starvation and called on the international community to take immediate action to pressure Israel to allow UN agencies to fulfill their humanitarian mandate and deliver essential, life-saving aid to the Palestinian people:
He made the appeal during a press conference held today in Ramallah, attended by representatives of United Nations agencies and international relief organizations.
Below is the full text of the Prime Minister’s statement:
We are here today to demand that the international community take serious and tangible steps to stop the war against our people in Gaza, and to halt the deepening famine threatening their survival;
Today marks the 654th day of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip;
Israel continues to commit systematic destruction of civilian life and infrastructure. It has decimated Gaza’s health system, education system, and the social and cultural fabric of the Palestinian people;
It has forcibly displaced almost all of Gaza’s population and turned the Strip into a death zone;
Around 59,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023, more than 18,000 children (31%), 10,000 women (16%);
An average of 28 Palestinian children are killed every day in Gaza—an equivalent of an entire classroom full of students killed;
Gaza has been turned into a graveyard for children where our children are being targeted, killed, injured, starved to death and deprived of the most basic rights: food, clean water, shelter, safety and education;
Israel continues to use starvation as a weapon of war; including the killing of over 995 aid-seeker Palestinians and the injury of thousands of others so far;
As United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher warned: “Hunger must never be met with bullets.” Without immediate, large-scale humanitarian access, Gaza risks a catastrophic descent into famine, chaos, and further mass loss of life;
As the occupying Power, Israel bears a legal obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure that Palestinians in Gaza have access to food, medicine, and other essentials necessary for their survival;
In the West Bank, settler terrorism against the Palestinian people has been on the rise. Thousands of Palestinians from more than 70 communities across the West Bank have been forcibly displaced due to intensifying settler terrorism;
These are not separate issues. They are interconnected expressions of a single policy rooted in occupation impunity, racial domination, displacement, and the denial of our people’s right to self-determination;
Israel’s continued and illegal withholding of Palestinian tax revenues severely undermines our ability to meet our responsibilities toward the Palestinian citizens;
This deliberate policy has direct and damaging consequences for vital sectors, including education, healthcare, and food security;
The man-made famine imposed by Israel on Gaza is now extending to the broader Palestinian population, effectively threatening livelihoods, halting salary payments, and pushing entire communities toward starvation;
The international community must not be complicit through silence, or distracted by geopolitical theatrics. The credibility of the international law-based order hinges on its ability to apply the law without exception and without delay;
We all MUST ACT NOW to stop the war against our people in Gaza and stop the siege on the West Bank.
Y.S./T.R.
