Senators Merkley and Van Hollen say US is complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza

Democrats Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley reach ‘inescapable conclusion’ after fact-finding trip to region

Read the full report here: https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/van_hollen_merkley_report_following_2025_codel_to_gaza_border_israel_west_bank_jordan_and_egypt.pdf

Two Democratic senators claim they have reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force locals to leave, and they say the US is complicit.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both members of the Senate foreign relations committee, released their findings in a report on Thursday after returning from a congressional delegation to the Middle East where, they note, the destruction goes beyond bombs and bullets. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call “using food as a weapon of war”.

“The Netanyahu government has gone far beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza,” Van Hollen said at a Thursday press conference. “What they’re doing, and what we witnessed, is putting those goals into action.”

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/democratic-senators-gaza-ethnic-cleansing

Statement by the Humanitarian Country Team in the occupied Palestinian territory

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/no-safe-place-left-gaza-un-and-ngos-demand-ceasefire-and-protection-forced-displacement

With no safe place left in Gaza, UN and NGOs demand ceasefire and protection from forced displacement
Statement by the Humanitarian Country Team in the occupied Palestinian territory*
10 September 2025

We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in Gaza city, where Israeli forces have stepped up their operations and ordered everyone to move south. This comes two weeks after famine was confirmed in the city and surrounding areas. While Israeli authorities have unilaterally-declared an area in the south as “humanitarian,” it has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals.

Nearly one million people are now left with no safe or viable options – neither the north nor the south offers safety.

Leaving northern Gaza means paying prohibitive costs for transport and safe passage, sums that most families simply cannot afford. It means navigating roads that are barely passable. It means finding a place to sleep either in the open air or in overcrowded displacement sites. And it means continued struggles to secure food, water, medical care, and shelter, and live without dignified and safe sanitation. Survivors in Gaza are exhausted.

Civilians, including humanitarian personnel, remain present throughout Gaza. They and the civilian infrastructure they depend on, such as health facilities, must never be targeted. Civilian sites must also never be used to shield military operations, but even if they are, this does not in itself render them lawful targets. The looming destruction of Gaza city sounds the gravest of alarms.

Amid ongoing Israeli impediments, the current levels of humanitarian support are wholly insufficient.

Humanitarian access must be expanded and sustained to include direct routes to both the north and the south. Critical supply lines of fuel and water must remain open and uninterrupted. Any further disruption will have devastating consequences for civilians.

To families in Gaza: The humanitarian community will remain in Gaza city for as long as we can and will remain across the Strip, doing all we can to bring aid and deliver lifesaving services.

To the international community: Act. Call for an immediate ceasefire. Uphold international humanitarian law, including the release of hostages and those arbitrarily detained.

This catastrophe is human-made, and responsibility rests with us all.

* The Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) is a strategic decision-making forum led by the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It brings together heads of UN entities and over 200 NGOs – both international and local – all working on humanitarian affairs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under internationally agreed humanitarian principles.

US reportedly suspends visa approvals for nearly all Palestinian passport holders

The United States has suspended visa approvals for nearly everyone who holds a Palestinian passport, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The restrictions go beyond those Donald Trump’s administration had previously announced on visitors from Gaza. They would prevent Palestinians from traveling to the United States for medical treatment, attending college and business travel, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified officials.

 

The state department said two weeks ago that it was halting all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza while it conducts “a full and thorough” review, a move that has been condemned by pro-Palestinian groups.

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/palestine-passport-visa-approval-suspension

 

Forget symbolic statehood — the world must recognize Israeli apartheid

The push to recognize a Palestinian state creates the illusion of action, but delays the real remedies: sanctioning and isolating Israel's apartheid regime.

Let us not waste another 30 years of Palestinian lives on the partition paradigm — a colonial “solution” to a colonial problem. Israel has long made clear it will never accept a Palestinian state; clinging to the two-state solution is gaslighting on an extraordinary scale, and it has brought us only despair.

Now, more than ever, symbolic gestures are worse than useless, as they buy time for the regime committing the crimes and drain urgency from the only remedies that matter: ending the genocide, sanctioning the perpetrator, isolating the apartheid system, and insisting without apology on equal rights and the right of return. This is not extremism. It is the bare minimum of justice.

Read more at: https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-statehood-israeli-apartheid-recognition/

UN Relief Chief says Gaza famine “must spur the world to urgent action”

Remarks on Gaza at the UN press briefing and Q&A by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

https://www.unocha.org/news/un-relief-chief-says-gaza-famine-must-spur-world-urgent-action

You can watch Tom Fletcher give this report at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDegib9npZI

Geneva, 22 August 2025

As delivered

Please read the IPC report, cover to cover. Read it in sorrow and in anger. Not as words and numbers but as names and lives. Be in no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony.

It is a famine. The Gaza Famine.

It is a famine that we could have prevented, if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.

It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food, in a fertile land.

It is a famine that hits the most vulnerable first. Each with a name, each with a story. That strips people of dignity before it strips them of life. That forces a parent to choose which child to feed. That forces people to risk their lives to seek food.

It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of. But that the international media has not been allowed in to cover. To bear witness.

It is a famine in 2025. A 21st century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history.

It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.

Subcategories

Latest

The latest news from the Joomla! Team
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.