Gaza: U.S. Christian Groups Oppose Israeli Military Plan

The war in Gaza is showing few if any signs of wan­ing. Every day seems to bring news of additional horrors that pile suffering on top of suffering. All of the killing, starvation, and destruction violates the essential imago dei in every person and that is the foundation of human dignity and freedom. The recent determination by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) regarding confirmed famine in Gaza impacting over 500,000 residents underscores the grave danger Gazans face even without the threat of increased military operations. We mourn those Palestinian Gazans who will die in the coming days, and we raise concerns about the intensified risks to the Israeli hostages, due to the new escalations that are about to be implemented.

On August 8, 2025, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli Security Cabinet approved a new military cam­paign to re-occupy Gaza City and forcibly eject its 710,000 inhabitants. The plan simultaneously cuts an additional 340,000 people off from what few lines of assistance remain in the northern sections of the Gaza Strip. This military strategy not only puts half of Gaza’s population in even more immediate danger, but could also result in the forced displacement of all of Gaza’s population into the southern half of the strip. According to the latest UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) snapshot, an estimated 86.3% of the Gaza Strip is under the Israeli-militarized zone and displacement orders for civilians. This leaves only 13.7% of the Gaza Strip’s original territory available for habitation outside a military zone for all of the Gaza Strip’s population. The taking of Gaza City would further decrease this available space while squeezing much of the Gaza Strip’s pop­ulation into a piece of territory that is fundamentally unsuitable to allow such a densely packed population the ability to survive. The entire Gaza Strip has remained under Israeli military occupation since 1967, an occu­pation that the International Court of Justice deemed “unlawful” under international law.

Based on previous campaigns by the Israeli military forces in Gaza, the resultant expulsion of inhabitants from Gaza City and potentially northern Gaza would result in hundreds of thousands of people – many of whom are already malnourished and sick from a lack of adequate access to food, water, shelter or healthcare – being forced to walk at least 10-20 kilometers in the intense heat, without proper access to food or water. Most of them are elderly, women and children, and cannot manage such an arduous. There are few to no functioning vehicles available to move so many people. Roads are damaged and destroyed, with remnants of war littering the entire Strip, so there are few clear ave­nues for safe movement. All of this displacement will occur within an active war zone under constant bomb­ing, gunfire and shelling.

Assuming Palestinians can survive the proposed expulsion, they will then need to cross the Netzarim Corridor – a militarized corridor that the Israeli military bulldozed through the center of the Gaza Strip–which is notoriously dangerous to cross and has resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians and aid workers. Finally, assuming people make it into the southern Gaza Strip, they will arrive in a region equally devastated.

All of these actions proposed by Israel amount to col­lective punishment and forced displacement of an entire civilian population— a war crime as stipulated under the Fourth Geneva Convention (Articles 33 and 49). This dis­placement will result in a modern-day death march that is clearly intended to ethnically cleanse half of the Gaza Strip and compress all of Gaza’s population into a tiny sliver of territory incapable of sustaining life.

Churches for Middle East Peace and the churches and agencies signed below call on the United States, the United Nations, and all governments with influ­ence over Israel to reject this plan of ethnic cleansing unequivocally, to use all available leverage to press for an immediate and durable ceasefire, and to demand unfettered humanitarian access to all parts of the Gaza Strip through credible and experienced aid mechanisms and modalities, including UN agencies. Our faith, seeing the image of God in each and every human being, calls us to feed the hungry, offer drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in captivity. We therefore urge all parties to act with urgency to save lives and prevent this catastrophe from further deep­ening, and to work to address the core issues so that a long-term, durable and just peace can be achieved.

FAITH IN ACTION: See the list of signatories at https://bit.ly/CMEPaug26