We, law students of Birzeit University, call on the world to stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinians in Gaza

For 75 years, the Israeli occupation has been subjecting the Palestinian as a whole to an oppressive, settler-colonial, apartheid regime, along with an illegal military occupation. The Israeli regime has been denying Palestinians their right to self-determination and to return; systematically committing international crimes and violating international law with impunity. Israeli forces have been subjecting the occupied territory in Gaza to 16 years of illegal blockade, imposing unlivable conditions on the population, 70% of whom are refugees displaced from their homes and villages in 1948.

Since the 7th of October, the Israeli occupation has launched a retaliatory military aggression on the Gaza Strip, killing  more than 11,078 Palestinians, 68 percent of whom are women and children, while 1,700 more children are trapped under the rubble, and injuring more than 27,490 Palestinians.

Under international humanitarian law, civilians and civilian objects shall not be made the object of attack. However, In Gaza, the Israeli occupation is indiscriminately attacking civilians, journalists and medical personnel; bombing homes, schools, universities, hospitals, bakeries, places of worship and shelters under the care of the United Nations. The occupying forces have also employed prohibited means and methods of warfare, such as starvation and white phosphorus on densely-populated areas, breaching the main principles of conduct of hostilities under IHL. These acts amount to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Israel has imposed collective punishment against the civilian-protected population of Gaza by: further tightening the illegal blockade and closure, cutting off electricity, food, fuel and water, and denying the entry of humanitarian aid. As we speak, Gaza’s healthcare system is collapsing as it exhausts its last fuel and medical supplies. Additionally, Israeli officials have been using dehumanizing language to describe Palestinians, and calling for the erasure of Gaza. Israeli military actions and words of their political and military leaders indicate a clear incitement to commit genocide, which is prosecutable under the Genocide Convention. UN Special Rapporteurs and academics from all around the world have sounded the alarm at the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.

There is no safe place in Gaza. The Israeli military has been ordering the “evacuation” of Over 1.5 million people from northern and middle Gaza to the south of Gaza. In fact, this is forcible population transfer, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity. Moreover, while some Palestinians are evacuating to the south of Gaza, Israel continues to bomb the so-called ‘safe routes’ identified for evacuation, as well as areas in the south of Gaza.

As Israel’s genocidal war continues, 88,000 university students in Gaza are deprived of their right to education. Universities have been targeted and shelled, destroying their infrastructure and any potential for education in the near future. Directly targeting our universities is a means of cultural and moral destruction, which hinders the ability of the society to recover and rebuild. We ask you - isn’t the right to education a universal right that must be protected under international human rights law?

Meanwhile, the Israel occupying forces has been intensifying its oppression against Palestinians in all of historic Palestine, including persecution, collective punishment, arbitrary killings, mass arrests, and state-backed settler violence. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has killed 185 Palestinians, and arrested and kidnapped more than 2,300 Palestinians since the beginning of October. From Birzeit University alone, more than 30 students have been arrested including one female student. The occupying forces has been subjecting prisoners and detainees to torture and other punitive measures; five Palestinians were killed in Israeli prisons as a result this past month.

We call on the international community to pressure Israel into an immediate ceasefire, to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, to lift its illegal blockade of Gaza, to end its illegal occupation of all the Palestinian territory, and to hold Israeli officials accountable for their crimes, away from double standards.

We call on our fellow students around the world for academic solidarity; to amplify Palestinian voices, to boycott Israeli institutions, corporations, and those complicit in war crimes against us, and to pressure their governments to impose sanctions and countermeasures against Israel to halt the extermination and genocide of our people.

This is an ongoing Nakba, a catastrophe, against the entire Palestinian people.

May our martyrs in Palestine rest in peace – الرحمة لشهدائنا