DAWN’s experts are the driving force behind the organization’s mission and vision. Our experts complement our research work and bolster our advocacy efforts.

Read all the latest articles from the DAWN team of Experts and Contributors.

After the Ceasefire: End the Siege, Ensure Accountability, Self-determination for Palestinians

DAWN urges global action to enforce ceasefire, end Israel's siege on Gaza, and pave a path for Palestinian self-determination

(Washington D.C., January 21, 2025) — The United States and international community should ensure that the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas announced on January 15, 2025 is the beginning of a comprehensive process of accountability, reconstruction, and lasting peace that includes lifting Israel's 20-year siege on Gaza, said DAWN today.

The international community should force Israel to pay the bulk of reconstruction and rehabilitation costs and hold accountable Israeli civilian and military leaders responsible for savage crimes in Gaza, while also ensuring that Israel does not shift its military campaign to the occupied West Bank.

"Israeli and American officials bear a grave responsibility for the unfathomable crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza over the past 15 months, and they should be held accountable," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. "Israel should not get away with passing the buck for the devastation it has wrought and should be forced to shoulder the costs of rebuilding everything it has broken and paying reparations to everyone whose lives it has destroyed in Gaza."

Israel has maintained a military occupation over the Gaza Strip since 1967 and remains the occupying power over the territory. Israel has launched five separate major military operations against the Gaza Strip and Palestinian militant groups there since it withdrew its troops from the territory in 2005. The current war began with a surprise attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups that indiscriminately killed over 1,000 Israelis, the vast majority of whom were civilians, and took captive another 250 civilians and soldiers, including women and children. . Israel has killed over 46,000 Palestinians since the attacks of October 7, 2023, although health experts warn the ultimate death toll could be several times that number. Of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, over 14,500 were children. 

The Israeli assault has included indiscriminate bombing of civilians and civilian areas, resulting in the vast destruction of tens of thousands of residences, hospitals, schools, universities, government buildings, and businesses. The Israeli military has deliberately targeted first responders, hospitals and medical staff, journalists, humanitarian workers, and critical civilian infrastructure. Starting in the first hours of the war, Israeli leaders openly declared that they would cut off food, water, medical supplies, electricity, and other elements necessary for human survival, which led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to charge Israel's prime minister and then-defense minister with crimes against humanity and war crimes, including using starvation as a weapon. 

Leading scholars and human rights organizations, including DAWN, have concluded that Israel's war in Gaza amounts to genocide. South Africa, with the support of over 30 other countries, has charged Israel with violating the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered Israel to halt further incursions into Gaza and end its restrictions on humanitarian aid. Israel did not comply. The ICC prosecutor also requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (Deif) for war crimes related to the October 7, 2023 attacks. Israel killed Sinwar and Haniyeh, and although the court ultimately issued an arrest warrant for Deif, he is also reported to have been killed.

"It is unconscionable that it has been nearly a full year since the ICJ ordered Israel to stop killing the Palestinian people and imposing conditions meant to bring about their physical destruction, all of which Israel ignored," said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. "Tens of thousands of Palestinians and entire cities could have been saved if the world had enforced the ICJ orders, but instead the United States continues to arm Israel and shield it from any accountability."

DAWN first called for a ceasefire in Gaza on October 9, 2023, warning at the time that the war would achieve no meaningful political or military gains but result in mass destruction and killing of civilians. 

The terms of the current ceasefire, as reported, require Israel to withdraw its troops from most of Gaza in stages and release hundreds of Palestinians it has arrested and imprisoned. Hamas is to release most of the remaining civilian hostages it is holding, as well as captive female soldiers. The current agreement is for six weeks with mechanisms to negotiate the second and third stages; Israel has thus far only agreed to the first stage. A full Israeli withdrawal would only take place in the second stage. It is unclear what will happen after 42 days if either party refuses to implement the second and third stages.

Ensuring a Permanent Ceasefire and Ending the Siege

DAWN's recommendations to the international community include:

1- Ensure that Israel Doesn't Restart the War: 

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should pass a binding ceasefire directive alongside the bilateral ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to ensure that Israel adheres to all stages of the ceasefire agreement, starting with the full and supervised withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Israeli leaders have stated that they do not intend to extend the ceasefire beyond the current six-week framework. International supervision and pressure is the only way to ensure Israel does not restart the war after the 42-day agreement expires, and hard leverage from the United States is likely necessary to ensure compliance, even with a UNSC directive.

2- Compel Israel to Lift the Siege on Gaza

A UNSC resolution should also require Israel to unconditionally lift its nearly 20-year siege on Gaza. This should include allowing the free movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, including to and from the West Bank, an end to the maritime blockade, and the construction of an international sea port. Without such measures, there can be no guarantee that Israeli crimes relating to starvation and genocide will end alongside the ceasefire.

Lifting the siege would also go a long way toward compliance with the International Court of Justice's July 19, 2024 advisory opinion, which concluded, inter alia, that Israel still occupied Gaza despite withdrawing its troops in 2005 and that its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is illegal. The United Nations General Assembly further articulated those positions in a September 13, 2024 resolution that demanded Israel end its presence in the OPT, including the Gaza Strip, within one year. 

"Ending Israel's genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza is a long-overdue and welcome development but without guarantees that Israel can never again carry out such atrocities, it is but a single gulp of fresh air," said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of research for Israeli-Palestine at DAWN. "Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank need the international community to protect them from Israeli aggression and ensure they can exercise their inalienable right to self-determination."

3- Require Israel to Pay for Gaza Reconstruction

The UNSC should require Israel to bear the primary costs of financing the rebuilding of Gaza, including the universities, hospitals and hundreds of thousands of other structures it intentionally and wantonly damaged and destroyed during this war. International donors to Gaza reconstruction and rehabilitation should ensure that Israel contributes more than any other state. Israel has come to rely on the international community to bear the costs of its devastating assaults on Palestinians in Gaza. Donor conferences raise large-albeit-inadequate sums of money to rebuild what Israel destroys, effectively externalizing the costs of its wars and policies of occupation and apartheid. 

"Israel bears primary responsibility for the devastation it has wrought, and it should bear the primary cost of reconstructing and rehabilitating the Gaza Strip, including reparations to the people whose lives have been destroyed," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. "If the world again allows Israel to externalize the costs of its crimes in Gaza, nothing will dissuade it from repeating its belligerence and abuses

4- Ensure Accountability for War Crimes 

It is critical that international accountability efforts continue to deter others from committing the same crimes, to bolster the tenets of a rules-based order, and to make possible any prospects of justice for the victims of this war. Time is of the essence, however. Israel's refusal to allow journalists and UN-mandated investigators into Gaza for the past 15 months has already dramatically limited the ability to investigate myriad crimes due to the lack of access to witnesses and victims who may have since been injured, killed, or displaced, the contamination and destruction of evidence, and other issues related to the passage of time.

Accountability should also extend to officials from third-states who aided and abetted Israeli and Palestinian crimes in this war.

Israel and Egypt should heed the ICJ's provisional order to allow into Gaza UN-mandated human rights, war crimes, and criminal investigators, including restoring free access to the international press. The ICC prosecutor should also publicly affirm that his investigations into the situation in Gaza will continue and that an end to the current fighting should not impede or be seen as satisfying accountability efforts underway. 

"A ceasefire agreement does not mean that Israeli war criminals who orchestrated this genocide are off the hook, and we will continue to demand accountability for their crimes," said Jarrar, "The international community should also hold U.S. officials accountable for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity with their ongoing support of Israel's war machine." 

5- Require Self-determination for Palestinians

The international community must ensure that there is a political horizon for Palestinians for achieving their inalienable right of self-determination. The United Nations, ideally the Security Council, should pass binding steps with a fixed timeline for achieving Palestinian self-determination at its planned "High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution" scheduled to take place in New York in June 2025.

The United Nations and international community must also ensure that in addition to Israel, no country, including any Arab country, is allowed to impose external rule over the Palestinian people in Gaza. Palestinians must be allowed to choose their own leaders, representatives, and systems of government through free and fair elections. There have been no national elections in Palestine for 19 years.

"The time has come to address the root causes of the violence that has devastated Palestinian and Israeli families for decades, and that means ending the occupation and apartheid," said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man. "If Israel is unwilling or unable to withdraw from the occupied territory in accordance with the ICJ opinion, then it should unilaterally grant full and equal rights to all Palestinians living under Israeli control—in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and within Israel."

JABALIA, GAZA - JANUARY 19: Palestinians walk among debris of destroyed buildings as they return their houses after the announcement of ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel in Jabalia, Gaza on January 19, 2025.

Source: Photo by Ramzi Mahmud/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Want more insights like this?

Get our newsletter straight to your inbox

Support Us

We hope you enjoyed this paywall-free article. We’re a non-profit organization supported by incredible people like you who are united by a shared vision: to right the wrongs that persist and to advocate for justice and reform where it is needed most.

Your support of a one-time or monthly contribution — no matter how small — helps us invest in our vital research, reporting, and advocacy work.

Related Posts

Help DAWN protect the lives and rights of Palestinians in Gaza.

We’re fighting for a ceasefire and accountability for Israeli and U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Gaza.