Press Release: CEASE FIRE IN GAZA
RESPECT HUMAN RIGHTS, RESPECT CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
Date: 11 October 2023
We urgently call for a total and immediate cease fire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
before more carnage is perpetrated.
We call for an end to the Israeli Government’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, that since
Saturday destroyed more than 22,600 residential units, 10 health facilities and damaged 48
schools. “Such blatant dehumanization and attempts to bomb a people into submission, to
use starvation as a method of warfare, and to eradicate their national existence are nothing
less than genocidal,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour writes to the U.N. Security
Council. (Reuters 11/10/23 Israel Pounds Gaza)
We call on all governments to openly condemn and in no way collaborate with military
warfare.
Together with the international community, we strongly condemn any attacks on
innocent people and CHILDREN, whoever they might be and wherever they come from.
CHILDREN are always the most vulnerable. All CHILDREN should be enjoying their human
rights and not subjected to the horrors of war.
We call the Israeli Government to lift its total blockade of food, water and electricity to the
2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza. This is a breach of International Humanitarian Law (Josep
Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief 10/10/23 Reuters) a form of collective punishment which
endangers the lives of the most vulnerable people, such as patients in hospitals and
homeless families. We fully support the United Nations in its call to the Israeli Government
to open humanitarian corridors.
We ask all people to unite for peace especially in the interests of the CHILDREN in the
Eastern Mediterranean Region.
On the 5th day of the war, already 260 Palestinian CHILDREN have been slaughtered. We
recall the many Israeli offences against the Palestinians in the Gaza enclave that have killed
Palestinian CHILDREN – in 2018 over 25, in 2014 over 420, in 2012 over 350 – not to
mention how many CHILDREN have lost their parents. UNICEF estimates that over 400,000
children in Gaza are already seriously traumatized.
We call for peace and increased humanitarian aid for the Palestinians.
Freedom, Equality, and Equity are the only way forward to live up to our responsibility
towards all CHILDREN, whoever they might be, and from wherever they might come from.
Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca
President