Israel has further escalated its genocidal campaign through its vicious onslaught on Gaza City – the heart and biggest urban centre of the Palestinian territory – systematically demolishing high-rise buildings. Palestinian residents of these buildings are given just moments to evacuate before they are detonated, if given any notice at all. Already, forcibly displaced persons sheltering in tents, residential buildings, and damaged school buildings throughout the city are subject to aerial targeting at any given moment.

Between 5 and 8 September, five high-rise buildings comprising 209 apartments and more than 350 tents of displaced Palestinians were bombed in Gaza City, resulting in the estimated displacement of nearly 7,600 people. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights office, located in Al-Roya Tower, was completely destroyed by Israeli Occupation Forces when they levelled the building on 9 September. On Saturday, 13 September, fighter jets bombed three UN schools – all protected under international humanitarian law – sheltering forcibly displaced Palestinians, killing dozens.

On 9 September 2025, one million people in Gaza City, where famine has been confirmed, were subjected to forced displacement orders issued by the Israeli military and covering the entirety of the city. As Al-Haq outlines in its report How to Hide a Genocide: The Role of Evacuation Orders and Safe Zones in Israel’s Genocidal Campaign in Gaza, Israel’s policy of mass forcible transfer not only constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity, it plays an integral role in Israel’s genocidal campaign by: inflicting serious bodily and mental harm; facilitating the killing of Palestinians both as they flee and in the locations to which they are forcibly displaced; and contributing to conditions of life calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza by uprooting humanitarian response efforts, stripping Palestinians of access to remaining healthcare facilities and other critical services. Daily forced displacements of thousands of starved, sick, injured, and exhausted Palestinian men, women and children have compounded an already catastrophic humanitarian situation. Those forcibly displaced no longer search for safety. The past two years have shown, time and again, that it does not exist in Gaza.

In the context of Gaza, forced displacement orders are synonymous with a death sentence – uninhabitable conditions are calculated to destroy Palestinians throughout the besieged territory. Against this backdrop, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding a high-level meeting on the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The deportation and forcible transfer of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, with no right of return, represents a long-held goal of Israel and is evidenced in its ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people – now in its 77^th year. Israeli officials brazenly call for the resettlement of Gaza and its permanent occupation, while, according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank now “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”. This cannot go unanswered.
 

Recent developments in the European Union (EU), in particular the European Parliament’s first resolution on Israel and Gaza of 11 September 2025 on ‘Gaza at breaking point: EU action to combat famine, the urgent need to release hostages and move towards a two-state solution’ and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s comments on the need to suspend free trade with Israel, must be expanded upon and, above all, implemented.

The resolution on 11 September urged EU Member States to comply with their obligations under the Rome Statute, including enforcing all arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The resolution called on the Commission to activate the Blocking Statute to protect European operators from the effects of US sanctions and help ensure that the ICC’s work can continue unaffected, and urges the EU and its Member States to take any other diplomatic and practical steps necessary to defend the ICC and those cooperating with it. It also supported von der Leyen’s declaration that EU bilateral support to Israel will be put on hold and that all payments in these areas will stop, along with her proposal for a partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

The European Parliament resolution also condemned the fact that “the Commission and the European Council have so far failed to respond with the urgency that the gravity of the catastrophic situation in Gaza demands”. However, the gravity of the situation and the irreversible destruction being wrought by Israel at an unprecedented pace demand much more than what was outlined in the European Parliament resolution.

Third States, the EU and its Member States must urgently:

1. Impose a full and immediate arms embargo against Israel and immediately cease all diplomatic and trade relations. This requires a full termination of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

2. Impose comprehensive sanctions, targeting all Israeli Ministers on the Security Cabinet, including Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and military leaders carrying out the genocide, along with settlers and settler organisations, as well as Israeli institutions and entities which aid the maintenance of the settler colonial apartheid regime, and unlawful occupation;

3. Implement the recommendations of the Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem:

   1. To not render aid or assistance to Israel’s illegal acts

   2. To bring to an end as rapidly as possible Israel’s unlawful presence, ensuring that Israel immediately ceases all settlement activities and evacuates all settlers and Israeli forces from the Palestinian territory, and ensures the return of Palestinians forcibly displaced from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

   3. To regulate all entities under their jurisdiction contributing to Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, unlawful occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory, war crimes, genocide and denial of self-determination. These actors must be held accountable through national legislation and international mechanisms;

4. Pursue international justice and accountability for crimes committed against the Palestinian people by prosecuting suspected perpetrators in their own jurisdictions; triggering universal jurisdiction against perpetrators of international crimes against Palestinians, including for settlement-related crimes; and publicly supporting and cooperating with proceedings by the International Criminal Court in the Situation in the State of Palestine.

5. At the UN General Assembly, vote in favour of a resolution calling for a Protective Presence in Gaza, sanctions, and for an IIIM accountability mechanism for Palestine and participate in and support a diplomatic aid convoy to Gaza.

6. Protect the role of civil society and human rights organisations promoting the, allegedly, universal values the international community has sworn to uphold. The recent US decision to sanction Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and PCHR is carried out in the broader context of wholesale attacks against individuals and groups working to ensure international law is abided by. This includes:

1. States exploring other avenues to effectively protect Palestinian civil society, human rights defenders, including UN mandate holders, and the ICC, its officials, and those cooperating with it from the effects of current and potential future sanctions, including by adopting protective measures at the national level.

2. States publicly condemning such acts as a baseless attack against defenders of the rule of law, and refusing to comply with extraterritorial US laws;

3. The EU amending the Blocking Statute to include Executive Order 14203 in the list of laws, regulations and other legislative instruments to which the regulation applies;