By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Palestinian Territory – The Israeli army has committed one of its most heinous massacres against starving civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza. According to Euro-Med Monitor field documentation, Israeli forces killed 67 people and injured dozens more today. The occupation army ordered the civilians to approach aid trucks with their hands raised—a clear sign of surrender—and then opened fire on them without provocation.
Euro-Med Monitor’s team documented Israeli soldiers opening fire atcivilians as they neared the route used by aid trucks north of Gaza City. This deliberate killing, committed without any military necessity, reflects an unprecedented level of brutality and constitutes a clear act of genocide aimed at eliminating the Palestinian population through a series of crimes including intentional killings, starvation, and forced displacement.
According to information gathered by Euro-Med Monitor’s field team, thousands of desperate civilians, driven by days of total flour shortages,headed early on Sunday to the Al-Waha area in northwest Gaza City after reports circulated that flour-laden trucks had entered via the Zikim crossing. In a desperate attempt to feed their families, many individuals rushed to the site.
When the first groups arrived, Israeli tanks were already stationed in the area. Soldiers then used loudspeakers to command: “Raise your hands and walk in front of the tanks—those who want flour, come forward.” Around 200 civilians complied. As they neared the aid trucks, Israeli forces suddenly opened heavy fire directly at their heads, instantly killing dozens. Others were left crawling, wounded, and bleeding. The massacre left 67 dead and more than 150 injured, many of whom are in critical condition.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces shot and killed six more starving civilians near a food distribution point run by the “Gaza Relief” organisation in Rafah as people attempted to access aid.
Notably, these attacks coincide with the peak of mass starvation across the Gaza Strip, where deaths from malnutrition are now documented and dozens have been hospitalised due to exhaustion and lack of food. Israel is deliberately using aid deliveries and distribution sites as death traps to lure in starving civilians—part of a systemic pattern of intentional killing, deprivation, and collective humiliation that flagrantly violates international law.
Euro-Med Monitor emphasises that the targeting of civilians attempting to access food, combined with the use of starvation as a weapon of war, constitutes grave breaches of international humanitarian and criminal law, including war crimes under the Rome Statute, namely: willful killing, targeting civilians, and starvation as a method of warfare.
The widespread and systematic nature of these violations meets the legal threshold for crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts causing severe suffering or injury. These crimes are being committed as part of a large-scale, organised attack on the civilian population.
It is critical that the violations be viewed within the broader context of Israel’s systematic destruction of survival infrastructure, obstruction of aid, and imposition of deadly living conditions, along with public statementsmade by Israeli political and military leaders that reveal a clear, declared intent to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza. The aforementioned atrocities and actions meet the definition of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention, particularly through the intentional killing of group members and imposing conditions of life intended to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also places responsibility on the international community and complicit governments for enabling these atrocities, especially the operation of aid distribution points by the so-called “Gaza Relief” body, which was forcibly imposed by the Israeli military to replace the UN aid mechanism in the Gaza Strip.
Euro-Med Monitor calls for an immediate cessation of the organisation’s operations and for an independent international investigation to hold its officials accountable before domestic and international courts for their role in facilitating systematic mass killings.
All states must hold accountable not only the Israeli leadership but also any state actors who directly or indirectly support the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, whether through political, military, or financial means. Such complicity constitutes criminal participation under Article 25 of the Rome Statute. Also responsible are those states that have failed to take meaningful measures to prevent or stop the genocide, and are therefore in breach of their obligations under international law.
Further, Euro-Med Monitor calls for urgent international investigations into the role of the so-called “Gaza Relief” entity in facilitating crimes against civilians and accountability for its founders, managers, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any staff involved—whether through planning, facilitation, direct contribution, or conscious failure to act.
Countries with universal or territorial jurisdiction are urged to launch criminal proceedings against individuals affiliated with this entity or its contracted private security firms for their roles in war crimes, including deliberate killings, starvation, and degrading treatment.
All states, individually and collectively, must urgently fulfill their legal obligations to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms. This includes taking concrete measures to protect Palestinian civilians in the enclave, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and theInternational Court of Justice rulings, and guarantee full accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor also calls for the enforcement of the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister, and for their swift surrender to international justice without regard to immunity.
The international community is urged to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their grave and systematic breaches of international law; these sanctions should include comprehensive arms embargoes and the suspension of all forms of political, financial, military, and intelligence cooperation. In addition, Euro-Med Monitor calls for freezing the assets of responsible Israeli, US, and any complicit EU officials, banning their travel, halting their military and security companies’ access to international markets, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that facilitate Israel’s ongoing Western-backed crimes against the Palestinian people.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe
21 July 2025
Source: countercurrents.org