JJP lobbies EU embassies again to take action on Gaza
On 21 July, JJP again wrote to the EU Ambassador to the UK and the Ambassadors of all the EU member states. We said the evidence of continuing high Palestinian casualties was starting show the “verbal agreement “ between the EU and Israel was an Israeli ploy to prevent the EU from acting on the EAAS report.
Our letter
Your Excellency – —— ——- 21 July, 2025
Ambassador, Embassy of ———-
Dear Ambassador —————-,
We are writing further to our letter and annex of 10 July. United Nations OCHA has produced one weekly “Gaza Strip Humanitarian Situation Updates” since then.
The reports show the rate of killing and wounding in all of Gaza continues to be considerably higher than the rate when the joint Canadian-UK-French statement was issued on 19 May. There was an average of 93 deaths and 314 injuries per day in the week ending 16 July, increases of 70% and 103% above the rate in the two months before 19 May.1
In the seven weeks that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites have been open up to16 July, 851 Palestinians have been killed and 5,634 injured while trying to access aid.2 Medical staff report that the large majority are injured at GHF sites.3
Eleven days have elapsed since the “verbal agreement” between High Representative Kallas and Israeli Foreign Minister Saar was announced. The OCHA data for the first week is already showing a strange pattern of casualties.1
Deaths and injuries among people trying to access aid have both fallen by about 40% from the average of the first six weeks of GHF operation. That these figures are nearly identical seems to indicate a clear order being given to Israeli soldiers around the aid sites, perhaps part way through the week. However, the deaths and injuries in all the rest of Gaza have risen by 37% and 11% respectively from the average of those six weeks. Consequently, total deaths in all of Gaza have actually risen by 19%, although injuries have fallen by 7%.
It is difficult not to conclude that these developments are deliberate. It seems to us Israel has been playing the Commission and the Council to ensure that no proposal to hold Israel to account was made at the Council meeting on 15 July, while at the same time it continues to apply maximum, lethal pressure on the Palestinians to make them leave Gaza.
We welcome High Representative Kallas’ commitment to review Israel’s “compliance” with the “common understanding and the pledges” every two weeks. However, the vagueness of what has been agreed, and if it even is an agreement, is worrying.
We fear a situation in which Israel allows just enough aid to get in, and reduces the casualties at the GHF sites just enough, to play the Commission and the Council into waiting another two weeks for more progress to be made, and then another two weeks. A reduction in casualties at the aid sites is not enough. Safe access to aid is an absolute requirement of human rights law. Experience has shown that very strong action will be necessary to compel Israel to change course. Repeated reviews will not be enough.
It is clear to all that Israel has been breaching the human rights requirements of Article 2 by its very method of waging war on Gaza. Killing and wounding scores of Palestinian civilians in order to kill one Hamas commander, or a few Hamas fighters, does not in any way meet the principles of proportionality and discrimination central to the protection of civilians in time of war.
Israel’s three-month policy of starvation, followed by restricting aid to a minimum and using the GHF as a means of pressure on the Palestinians, are yet other aspects of the war crimes it has been committing. According to a British surgeon volunteering at Nasser Hospital, Israeli soldiers now also seem to be playing a grotesque game with the Palestinians at the GHF sites. Professor Maynard said “It’s almost as if a game is being played. On one day they’ll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they’ll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they’ll be arm or leg gunshot wounds.”4,5
Since we wrote to you on 10 July, Israeli Defence Minister Katz has publicly confirmed his plan to concentrate the Palestinians of Gaza into a camp in Rafah, as a transit camp before they “voluntarily migrate” to other countries.6
We believe that your government should join with other member states to ask the High Representative to take all aspects of Israel’s war on Gaza into account in her review, and then to use the qualified majority voting procedure to suspend those parts of the EU-Israel Association Agreement that provide Israel with substantial material benefits. Pre-eminent among them is the tariff-free status of Israeli imports into the EU.
The next review point will be the appropriate time if Israel has continued stalling on agreeing to a ceasefire.
Arthur Goodman
Parliamentary and Diplomatic Officer
Notes
1. Our updated calculations spreadsheet based on the OCHA data is also attached to our email.
2. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-306-gaza-strip
5. https://www.channel4.com/news/teenagers-being-shot-by-israeli-soldiers-british-surgeon-in-gaza
6. https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-calls-for-confining-all-gazans-in-humanitarian-city-built-over-rafahs-ruins/