February 17, 2026
Global Jews for Palestine, composed of over 25 Jewish organizations on the six continents in more than 20 countries, is appalled by the criminal behaviour of the State of Israel. This country claims to act in the name of Jews worldwide. And yet the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel are a negation of our history, our memory and our universal Jewish values.
The so-called “second phase of the ceasefire” under the Trump Plan serves primarily as a distraction, obscuring and sanitising Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli government is preventing almost all humanitarian aid, food and medicines from entering Gaza. No shelters have been built. Over 40 Palestinians have died from harsh winter conditions, and many more will follow suit, unsheltered under the elements.
The newly announced “Board of Peace” will seek to turn Gaza into a fully monitored concentration camp. The Board’s murderous role is highlighted by the addition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a principal architect of the ongoing genocide and a fugitive from the International Criminal Court. Of course, the Board has always been morally bankrupt. From the outset, it has embodied the racism and greed of villains such as Marco Rubio, Tony Blair and Jared Kushner. Furthermore, this unelected body, which is to determine the fate of millions of Palestinians, sees no need of Palestinian input.
In its continuing genocidal actions in Gaza, Israel seeks to drive out the Palestinian survivors. Indeed, senior Israeli officials have been pressuring various countries to accept ethnically cleansed Palestinians from Gaza. As Palestinian South African scholar Haidar Eid argues, the Trump Plan is “nothing but the antithesis of the Palestinian right to self-determination for which thousands of men, women, and children have sacrificed their lives”. Since the announcement of the initial “ceasefire” phase on 10 October 2025, Israel has killed at least 500 Palestinians and injured more than a thousand. Israeli forces are arbitrarily moving the so-called ’yellow line’ border inside Gaza, and killing Palestinian civilians, including children, in cold blood, not only for crossing a border unbeknownst to them, but even for walking towards it.
Since 10 October 2025, Israel has breached the ceasefire agreement at least 1,250 times. During the same period, Israel banned 37 aid organizations and has been maintaining conditions of deprivation in Gaza. Such measures contravene yet again the International Court of Justice’s 28 March 2024 order in South Africa vs. Israel, which required Israel to take immediate and effective steps to ensure the delivery of essential services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.
By reframing genocidal aggression as “diplomacy,” Israel and the United States have been trying to mislead the world. They have been providing Western media with justification to promote grotesque illusions that Gaza is being rebuilt or that a path to “peace and justice” has been established. The US-Israeli “planned community” in Gaza — a concentration camp by any other name — is to be based on biometric surveillance, checkpoints, and indoctrination promoting normalization with Israel, a genocidal apartheid state.
We know that our grassroots efforts across the world are a threat to senior politicians who support Israel. Just last week, UK Health Minister Wes Streeting, in an attempt to save his career, disclosed his private communications with disgraced Epstein associate Peter Mandelson. In July 2025, Streeting had privately admitted to Mandelson, “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes”, while warning that the Labour Party had difficulty fending off pressure from Palestine solidarity activists.
We know that the Palestine solidarity movement is growing and that it can prevail. We demand the immediate, complete, and unconditional opening of all Gaza crossings for humanitarian assistance and commercial goods. We call for sustained, heightened global grassroots mobilization in support of BDS — to end all complicity in Israel’s genocide, to hold Israel accountable and to end its settler-colonial apartheid regime.
