THE headquarters of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), a Christian Aid partner in Gaza, was destroyed by Israeli warplanes this week.
Christian Aid’s programme manager in the region, Katie Roxburgh, said that the action was “not just about blowing up a building, but the callous and deliberate destruction of Palestinian civil society and the obstruction of accountability efforts”.
The previous week, the United States sanctioned the PCHR for providing evidence to the International Criminal Court’s investigation into alleged breaches of international law by the State of Israel.
Christian Aid’s head of Middle East policy and advocacy, William Bell, said on Friday that the sanctions were “just the latest attempt to stop those who dare to pursue justice. Anyone who either tells the brutal story of illegal Israeli occupation across Gaza and the West Bank, or seeks to challenge human-rights violations, is silenced.”
Three days later, the Al-Roya Tower, where the PCHR has its main office, was demolished in an air strike. Warning was given to evacuate the building less than three hours before the attack. The Israeli military alleged on social media that there was “Hamas terrorist infrastructure inside it or adjacent to it”.
In recent days, Israel has targeted high-rise buildings in Gaza City. The latest attack was “another war crime committed against the Palestinian people and their institutions”, the PCHR said. It recalled that its offices in Khan Younis and Jabalia had been destroyed last year.
On the same day as the air strike, the PCHR published a report, Assassination of Truth: Killing of journalists amid genocide in Gaza. It documents the killing of 221 journalists in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and last May.
Further high-profile killings have been carried out this summer (Leader comment, 15 August). The Israeli government prevents international journalists’ entering Gaza.
A Franciscan from the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, Fr Ibrahim Faltas, said during a trip to Italy that the situation in Gaza was “truly inhumane”, Vatican News reports.
Children in Gaza had been “deprived of everything”, including education and healthcare, he said. He described the situation in the West Bank, and said that Bethlehem “has become an open-air prison”.
About 185 Christian families had left Bethlehem, he said, and, “if things continue like this, there will truly be no Christians left.”
THE President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, met Pope Leo XIV privately in Rome last Thursday. A Vatican spokesperson said that hope was expressed during the meeting “for a speedy resumption of negotiations” leading to the release of hostages, a permanent ceasefire, and access for humanitarian aid.
Such hopes appeared to be undermined on Tuesday afternoon when Israel bombed a meeting of Hamas’s negotiating team in Doha.
There were conflicting reports on whether senior Hamas leaders had been killed in the strike, which was condemned by Qatar as a “flagrant violation of all international laws”.
The US President, Donald Trump, described the attack as an “unfortunate incident”.
The Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, said on Wednesday that his country “reserves the right to respond to this blatant attack”, raising fears of further instability in the region.
Mr Herzog was expected to hold talks with Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday. Before the meeting, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, told Times Radio that Mr Herzog “needs to answer the allegations of war crimes, of ethnic cleansing and of genocide that are being levelled at the government of Israel”.
The Government’s official position is that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. In a letter to the chair of the International Development Committee at the start of September, the then Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, said that the Government “has not concluded” that Israel intends to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
