The Palestinian human rights organizations Condemn the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF’s) artillery-shelling of tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip although the area had been designated a “safe zone.” As a result, some were killed, including a woman, an elderly and persons with disabilities, as Israel’s ongoing and widescale military genocidal campaign hits its 156^th day.

Al-Mawasi area extends from northwestern Khan Younis to southwestern Rafah and has become a shelter for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who have set up tents there or sheltered under sheds and greenhouses or in a friend or relative’s house.

IOF’s latest attack on this area proves that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip and IOF force civilians to gather in specific places and then target and kill them as part of their genocidal campaign ongoing for the sixth month.

This crime comes at a time IOF continue their airstrikes and artillery-shelling across the Gaza Strip, inflicting more casualties.

The human rights organizations emphasize that forcible displacement of Palestinians and then targeting them on their way to or in these shelters and subjecting displaced Palestinians to inhuman circumstances, starvation, lack of healthcare and hygiene due to the strangulating siege on the strip perpetuate the crime of genocide.

In light of the above, our organizations, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, al-Mezan and Al-Haq reiterate their call on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to cease immediately their aggression and stop all genocidal acts against the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through a state policy of mass killing, causing severe physical and mental harm, comprehensive destruction of homes, infrastructure and life essentials, collective punishment materialized in starvation, dehydration, no access to healthcare and forcible displacement far away from homes under dire conditions lacking basic human rights and then targeting and killing them in the places they are sheltering in.

We urge the international community to take immediate and serious steps to pressure Israel to adhere to the binding decisions by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering the end of genocidal acts, Israel’s taking effective measures to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip and ending the collective punishment policy that is criminalized by all international and humanitarian laws.

We call on the High Contracting Parties to pressure Israel, as an occupying power, to comply with its obligations under Article 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including placing appropriate mechanisms to deliver humanitarian aid in a way that ensures protection of civilians and maintains their dignity, and to initiate more humanitarian corridors to facilitate the international humanitarian organizations’ work to deliver the required supplies food and medicines in northern Gaza Strip.