WILPF Statement: Ceasefire Today but Justice and Liberation Tomorrow!

On 9 October 2025, WILPF welcomed the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, while stressing that true justice and liberation for the people of Palestine require far more. The ceasefire is a crucial first step to save lives in Gaza, where years of violence have caused massive loss of life, displacement, and destruction.

9 October 2025

We welcome the announced upcoming ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—it is long overdue. While the ceasefire cannot erase two years of genocidal violence and the failures of the international community to live up to its ethical and legal responsibility to stop it, we are painfully aware that people in the Gaza Strip, and all over Palestine, are exhausted, starved, and that their bodies, households and communities are depleted—emotionally, physically and materially.

The genocidal violence has taken more than 20,000 children’s lives, displaced 1.9 million people, destroyed over 90 per cent of homes, leaving Gaza with over 50 million metric tons of rubble, with thousands of people buried under it. 67,000 people are confirmed dead, likely a severe undercount. Journalists, medical professionals, hospitals, schools, shelters, and refugee camps have all been a target of Israel’s intention to annihilate the Palestinian people.

While we know that for the people living in the Gaza Strip a ceasefire is not enough on its own, we welcome it as a first step to save the lives of those that have survived. We urge compliance with the ceasefire and demand an immediate start to a process of bringing justice and liberation to the people of Palestine.

As we have said before, a ceasefire can only ever be a first step. Achieving justice and liberation for the people of Palestine requires addressing the root causes of violence and oppression. It means dismantling the foundational structures of settler colonial violence and apartheid. It means that the Palestinians’ rights to self-determination, dignity, and freedom must be upheld by the international system. It means that Israel must be brought to justice and held accountable for all its crimes. It means that countries that support Israel militarily, economically and politically are held to account for enabling the genocide and for blocking other countries to act on their duty to prevent it. It means dismantling what the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, has called “the economy of genocide,” through which corporate entities and global capital have profited from the death and destruction of Palestinians.

It also means centring the voices and agency of the Palestinian people, so that they, and they alone, can decide how they want to govern themselves and what kind of future they want, without preconditions and limitations on self-determination.

The world is guilty of watching and allowing a genocide to take place for two full years. No one has the privilege to say that they did not know. The road to addressing and redressing the violence committed against the people of Palestine is long, including the violence of not acting to protect. But this journey can begin with ensuring the ceasefire is upheld and that Israel doesn’t once again resume its genocidal violence. This requires an immediate and comprehensive two-way arms embargo and an end to all arms transfers and military support to Israel today!

As the Gaza Strip is promised ceasefire today, we continue demanding justice and liberation tomorrow.

We demand:

An immediate end to the siege and the illegal blockade of Gaza Strip!

Unimpeded and unconditional delivery of fuel and humanitarian aid, including water, food, and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip to address the immediate humanitarian crisis.

An immediate and comprehensive two-way arms embargo and an end to all arms transfers and military support to Israel.

All UN member states must implement targeted sanctions against Israel in line with those proposed by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement; including a ban on trade with Israel that might harm Palestinians. All political and economic support that enables genocide must cease.

All states and corporations must act, both unilaterally and collectively, to end their complicity in human rights violations and international crimes and to immediately implement all recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

States should join the Bogotá commitments adopted by the Hague Group and others in July 2025.

All states must end their persecution of Palestinian civil society groups, solidarity activists, UN officials, and others working to end the genocide.

Accountability for war crimes must be ensured, and reparations for the victims guaranteed. War criminals must be held to account.

All hostages and prisoners must be returned to their loved ones. The praxis of kidnapping and illegally imprisoning Palestinians must end now. Redress to the victims must be ensured.
The Israeli illegal occupation of Palestine must end.

The announced 20-point “peace proposal", which appears to be the current framework for discussion, does not address any of these issues, and has been criticised by UN experts for violating international law. It is on us, as peace activists around the world, to continue to apply pressure on our governments and the international multilateral system to start fulfilling their fundamental responsibility to end the genocide, and to end the illegal occupation, apartheid and settler colonial violence.

We must continue to centre the liberation of Palestine until it is free!

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