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Scorecard from humanitarian organizations assessing core civilian protection, humanitarian access provisions of ceasefire plan reveals failure
The Trump administration’s Gaza ceasefire plan – as endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 – is failing, according to a progress scorecard released today by five humanitarian organizations.
The scorecard, led by Danish Refugee Council, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International, and Save the Children, assessed progress against the plan’s own stated objectives, and concludes that six months on from the signing of the ceasefire plan, implementation of these core provisions is regrettably failing. In particular, Palestinians are continuing to suffer extreme deprivation, hunger, injury, and death due to the Israeli government’s continued attacks, movement restrictions, and aid obstructions.
“Six months into the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, we are seeing a continuation of the designed deprivation that we saw throughout the hostilities,” said Refugees International president and former senior U.S. humanitarian official Jeremy Konyndyk. “Palestinians are experiencing severe malnutrition and preventable deaths every day because many cannot reliably access basic food or services. Both the terms of the ceasefire deal and the core tenets of international humanitarian law require that humanitarian goods enter Gaza, and that humanitarians can do their jobs to save lives. The deal signed last year rightly committed to this – it is time to deliver on those commitments.”
“At least two children a day have been killed or injured in the six months since the ceasefire for Gaza was agreed,” said Save the Children International CEO Inger Ashing. This is not peace for children in Gaza. The ceasefire agreement has not translated into meaningful protection for children or created conditions for recovery. Even its humanitarian provisions – the most straightforward to implement – remain obstructed. We are ready to scale up and support the people of Gaza, but we must be allowed to do our jobs.”
“Six months into the ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza are still facing a daily struggle to survive.President Trump promised to lead an extraordinary recovery and declared a ‘new day’ for Gaza. Instead, his plan for peace is stalling and his attention has turned away from the crisis,” said Oxfam America President & CEO Abby Maxman. “Six months later, Palestinians are still experiencing more of the same: going to bed hungry in flooded tents, facing long lines for clean water, and succumbing to diseases and injuries without a healthcare system or basic medical supplies. All while the government of Israel drops bombs and cuts off vital, life-saving assistance with U.S. support. We cannot look away – Palestinians in Gaza need our support and pressure on our leaders to deliver on the promise of peace now more than ever.”
Oxfam International is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice. We are working across regions in about 70 countries, with thousands of partners, and allies, supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis.
"Passover, our festival of liberation, compels us to ensure that our city’s funds do not underwrite the Israeli government carrying out genocide," said an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace.
More than 500 New Yorkers gathered for an "emergency Passover Seder" outside the office of New York City comptroller Mark Levine on Wednesday, where they called for him to divest the city's pension fund from bonds tied to Israel.
The city's former comptroller, Brad Lander, chose not to renew the nearly $40 million worth of investments in 2023. But in January, Levine reversed course, announcing plans to resume investment in the bonds, describing them as sound assets.
After Israel helped pressure the US to launch a war against Iran and began a new invasion of Lebanon—campaigns that have collectively killed more than 3,000 people—the city's chief fiscal officer is facing renewed pressure to stop what Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) described as a "plan to fund Israeli bombs with city pensions."i
Protesters with the group stood outside the comptroller's office holding signs reading "Apartheid is chametz" and "Genocide is a bad investment."
"Passover, our festival of liberation, compels us to ensure that our city’s funds do not underwrite the Israeli government carrying out genocide in Gaza, enabling rampant settler violence in the West Bank, bombing Iran, and destroying entire villages in Southern Lebanon," said Jay Saper, an activist with JVP who works as a children's teacher and Yiddish translator. "Comptroller Levine’s plan goes against the will of New Yorkers who do not want our city's money to be used to fund genocide and war."
Levine took office in January after Lander left the post to challenge Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman for his seat representing New York's 10th congressional district.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been a vocal opponent of using any city funds to support Israel. But while he has publicly pushed back against the decision to resume purchasing Israeli bonds, he lacks the power, as mayor, to personally overrule it.
"I don’t think we should purchase Israel bonds,” Mamdani said in January. “We don’t purchase bonds for any other sovereign nation’s debt, and the comptroller has also made his position clear, and I continue to stand by mine.”
Though Levine has expressed strong support for Israel, saying he has "very deep personal ties" to the country, the attendees at Wednesday's Seder said the money spent on Israeli bonds could be better used to help New Yorkers.
"New Yorkers deserve to have their city funds in bonds that prioritize financial stability, accountability, and the long-term security for city workers," said New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. "They should invest in life and the livelihoods of our communities, not the complete opposite. We cannot go backward to something financially unstable and, more importantly, morally bankrupt."
Last year's JVP Seder was held to call for the release of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who was imprisoned by immigration agents and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration for activism on campus against Israel's genocide in Gaza. More than 100 JVP activists were arrested after occupying Trump Tower in Manhattan to demand his freedom last spring.
This year, Khalil—released from detention after a judge's order last June—was in attendance at the Seder.
“Just as you prayed for my freedom last year, today let us all pray together that by next Seder the Israeli genocide will have ended,” said Khalil.
(Video by Jewish Voice for Peace)
The Seder comes amid a public reckoning for Israel, including among many American Jews. A Pew Research poll released on Tuesday found that an unprecedented 60% of American adults view Israel negatively, compared to just 37% who view it positively.
A majority of American Jews have expressed disapproval of the war launched by President Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in Iran. Meanwhile, a poll last year found that around 4 in 10 American Jews believed Israel's actions in Gaza constituted genocide.
Rabbi Abby Stein of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinic Council said the hundreds of Jewish people in attendance on Wednesday were “reclaiming our beautiful, ancient liberation holiday from those who would weaponize it, and Judaism itself, as tools of colonialism and supremacy—ideas that have been historically, and are, the opposite of what Judaism is and should be."
"We cannot live this way," wrote one journalist in response to President Donald Trump's ominous threat to start another new war.
US President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the American military is already looking ahead to its "next conquest" as the Middle East remains embroiled in a deadly military conflict that Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unleashed six weeks ago.
In a late-night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said US forces will remain "in place" and "around" Iran until a "real agreement" is reached to end the war, as the two-week ceasefire the president and Iranian leaders announced late Tuesday hangs by a thread due to Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon.
After threatening a "bigger, and better, and stronger" assault on Iran if peace talks collapse, Trump said the US military is "Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest"—even as senior administration officials expressed concerns that the president's declarations of victory in Iran were premature.
Branislav Slantchev, an international relations expert who teaches political science at the University of California San Diego, wrote in response to Trump's post that "this depraved idiot is out of control."
"We cannot live this way," added journalist Marisa Kabas.
Trump, who has bombed more countries than any other president in modern US history despite campaigning on "no new wars," did not name any potential targets of the American military's "next conquest" in his Wednesday night post. But the president has lobbed threats against Cuba and Greenland repeatedly in recent months, threatening to seize both island nations by force. Last week, Trump asked Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a request that included tens of billions for new battleships and fighter jets.
During a speech at a Saudi-backed investment summit in Miami last month, Trump touted the US military's illegal attacks on Venezuela and Iran before declaring, "Cuba is next."
"Pretend I didn't say that," the president added.
In a separate Truth Social post Wednesday night, Trump hit out at NATO and characterized Greenland, in all-caps, as a "BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE."
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, argued that Trump is "lashing out because his war on a whim did not result in the hoped-for ‘Venezuela’ in Iran but a historic debacle instead."
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported last month that amid the Iran war, a top Pentagon official "revealed that US wars in the Western Hemisphere are also expanding, unveiling an effort dubbed 'Operation Total Extermination.'"
Joseph Humire, the Pentagon's acting assistant secretary for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told lawmakers that the US military "supported 'bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border'" in early March, according to Turse.
"The US–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by 'ricochet effect' on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region," Turse reported. "In addition to his wars in the Western hemisphere, Trump has also launched attacks on Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during his second term—most of them sites of US conflicts during the war on terror."
Trump has shown he "is utterly helpless to fix the disaster he personally caused," and is now "trying to blame others for his own incompetence," said one critic.
Hours after President Donald Trump pitched an angry tantrum at US allies, he reportedly demanded that they draw up plans to help fix the geopolitical and economic disaster he caused by launching his illegal war with Iran.
In a Wednesday night social media post, Trump posted an all-caps tirade against members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) who refused to commit forces to fight in a war he started without their approval or even consultation.
"NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN," Trump wrote. "REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!"
As Trump was attacking longtime allies, he was simultaneously demanding their help.
According to a Thursday report from Bloomberg, the US has been seeking "specific commitments from European allies on their pledge to help secure the Strait of Hormuz after the fighting in Iran stops," going so far as to request that they "present concrete plans to ensure navigation through the waterway within days."
Trump last month tried strong-arming allies into sending their navies into the strait to help secure safe passage of commercial vessels, but all of them refused.
Even as Trump is berating allies, he still hasn't achieved the primary goal of the ceasefire he announced on Tuesday: The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has kept shut down since the start of the war more than a month ago.
As Bloomberg reported on Thursday, ship traffic through the strait has "remained blocked," being "limited to a handful of Iran-linked ships, another sign that a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran has yet to improve flows through the world’s key energy chokepoint."
As the strait has remained shut, the price of Brent crude petroleum futures, which initially crashed upon news of the ceasefire deal, have been slowly climbing back up to the $100 mark.
Given Trump's failure to achieve even the most basic tenet of his own ceasefire deal, many critics questioned why US allies should commit to helping him clean up his own disaster.
Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor at Sky News, noted that "neither a military escort nor military force can reopen the Strait short of a full scale occupation of southern Iran and even then insurgents could keep it closed with the threat of action."
Journalist Marcy Wheeler observed that Trump's demands show he "is utterly helpless to fix the disaster he personally caused," and is now "trying to blame others for his own incompetence."
Economist Dean Baker encouraged US allies to remain completely defiant of the president.
"The European countries should specifically commit to pay the toll Iran is requesting," Baker wrote.
HuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte summarized Trump's geopolitical strategy as follows: "I broke it, someone else can fix it."