Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights stands in solidarity with Palestinians in Jerusalem facing forced displacement from their homes, escalating violence, and ongoing violations of their human rights by Israeli forces. The situation across the region is intensifying under a watchful, but hesitant to act, world gaze. As a rapid response fund that supports feminist movements in Palestine - we call on donors, civil society, and governments to uphold and be held accountable to their international human rights and humanitarian legal obligations.

During Ramadan, we are witnessing attempts to further erase Palestinian presence in Jerusalem and the rest of historic Palestine. There are increasing reports of Israeli police assaulting residents of Sheikh Jarrah as they protest the forceful removal of Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem neighborhood. Israeli police have raided the Al-Aqsa mosque (the third holiest site in Islam), wounding hundreds of worshipers throughout the week. These attacks have also culminated in multiple airstrikes on Gaza taking the lives of over 65 people, including 16 children - and growing.

We are deeply troubled by the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian residents in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and beyond. These ongoing acts of brutality demonstrate the critical need to dismantle systems that perpetuate violence on Palestinian bodies and deprive Palestinian people of their fundamental freedoms under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to life, liberty, self-determination and security of person. These are at the core of intersectional feminisms and require the confrontation of colonial systems of oppression and patriarchal power dynamics.

UAF pledges continued support and solidarity to our feminist sisters and siblings – Palestinian cis and trans women, Palestinian trans men, and Palestinian non-binary folks who are at the forefront of this struggle for human rights in Sheikh Jarrah and throughout Jerusalem. We hope the world will stand with us and call for an end to this violence and commit to upholding the basic rights of self-determination, equality under the law, and peace.