DaysofPal – Twelve Israeli human rights organizations have warned that the second year of the Gaza war has become “the most lethal and destructive year for Palestinians since 1967,” documenting an unprecedented expansion of Israeli violations and the transformation of once-exceptional wartime practices into entrenched daily policy by 2025.
The findings were published by The Platform Coalition, which brings together leading Israeli rights groups including B’Tselem, ACRI, HaMoked, Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel. The coalition’s conclusions draw on three consecutive annual reports (2023–2025), tracking a profound shift like Israel’s military campaign and systems of control.
Civilian Targeting Becomes “Systematic”
According to the report, Gaza’s death toll had already reached 36,000 Palestinians by May 2024 before rising sharply to 67,173 by October 2025. The dead include more than 20,000 children and 10,000 women, with an estimated 10,000 bodies still buried under rubble. Injuries have surpassed 170,000.
The organizations argue that this unprecedented escalation coincided with the erosion of military discipline and increasingly extreme government rhetoric, turning the targeting of civilians into a systematic feature of Israel’s war strategy rather than an incidental outcome.
Mass Displacement and Collapse of Life in Gaza
The report notes that over one million Palestinians were displaced inside Gaza in 2024. That figure surged to nearly 1.9 million, around 90% of the population, in 2025, as entire neighborhoods and essential services collapsed, including water networks, electricity grids, agriculture, and hospitals. Many families were displaced multiple times in a single year.
With living conditions deteriorating rapidly, hunger warnings issued by the UN in 2024 turned into mass starvation in 2025. By July 2025, 13,000 children were suffering from severe malnutrition; in August, the UN formally declared a full-scale famine. By October, 461 Palestinians, including 157 children, had died of hunger.
The report describes the act of obtaining food as becoming “a life-threatening event” in 2025. While such deaths were not recorded in 2024, Israeli security practices near aid distribution zones in 2025 resulted in the killing of 2,306 Palestinians and the injury of 16,929 others due to chaos, lack of organization, and the use of live fire.
Rights groups also documented multiple cases in which Palestinians, including children and the elderly, were used as human shields inside Gaza, with some held blindfolded and bound for days or weeks.
Escalating Settler Violence and Forced Expulsions in the West Bank
The coalition highlights a “dangerous surge” in settler violence across the West Bank. What had been high levels of attacks in 2023–2024 escalated into wide-scale expulsions in 2025. A total of 44 Bedouin communities were completely displaced, while 10 others were partially emptied, forcing 2,932 Palestinians from their homes, including 1,326 children.
The number of Palestinians held under administrative detention rose from just over 1,000 in 2023 to 3,577 in 2025. The report documented 98 deaths in Israeli custody due to torture, denial of medical care, and inhumane prison conditions, abuse that the organizations say has become a “systematic practice” across security agencies and prisons.
In East Jerusalem, the groups report a rapid deterioration since 2023, with Israel using land registration to strip Palestinians of property, tightening restrictions on movement and services, and expanding settlement at an unprecedented pace. They argue that 2025 marked the shift from institutional discrimination to active, intensified confiscation policies.
The report also documents severe cultural and heritage losses: historic sites and archives, including the Qasr al-Basha, Rafah Museum, and municipal archives, were destroyed in Gaza. In the West Bank and Jerusalem, archaeological sites were leveraged to entrench spatial control, alongside expanding settlement authority, national parks, and large-scale heritage projects around the Old City.
“No Longer Exceptional, Now Daily Policy”
The coalition concludes its report with a stark warning: “The year 2025 revealed an unimaginable reality: a state operating without restraint, systematically violating international law and dismantling the values it claims to uphold. Starvation as a weapon, attacks on hospitals, disappearance of detainees, community expulsions, and mass killing of civilians are not failures but policy.”
The organizations stress that violations once defined as crimes against humanity have become routine, daily practices carried out without accountability. They warn that without the establishment of an independent and effective international investigative mechanism, the trajectory of escalating abuses “will soon become irreversible.”
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