Last year Peace Direct published a statement condemning the appalling attacks by Hamas on October 7th and the extreme violence of the bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza. We criticised the inadequate response of Western governments and joined global calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Since then, we have watched in horror as Israeli forces have killed over 40,000 Palestinians in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that the International Court of Justice has ruled amounts to a “plausible” risk of genocide. This includes direct and targeted strikes on schools, hospitals and medical staff, essential infrastructure and refugee camps, withholding of humanitarian assistance, torture and other war crimes. Peace Direct is also appalled by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment in Lebanon, which has killed thousands and displaced over 1.2 million people. We fear these actions and those of other states, enabled by the international community, are stoking the risk of a regional war involving Iran, Syria, and Yemen.
In the context of a decades’ long occupation and the intensification of violence by Israel’s government and settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, we support the UN General Assembly’s resolution in September, calling for an end to new settlements and the occupation, which it declared as unlawful. Peace Direct takes the lead from local contacts in Palestine, Lebanon, and the region who tell us it is not possible to have true local “peacebuilding” in a context of such injustice and unaccountability. Nor should the cause of peacebuilding be used to normalise occupation.
