Gaza genocide: An open letter to the UK's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham

In an open letter to the UK Government, MSF UK calls for decisive action to end the genocide in Gaza.

We ask for an end to the UK's military, diplomatic and material support for the Israeli government, push for unfettered humanitarian access to Gaza, and for the medical evacuation of critically ill patients to the UK.

MSF UK Executive Director Dr Natalie Roberts writes to the UK's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband...

Dear Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,

Congratulations on your appointments as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. I am writing to you as the Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the United Kingdom to request an urgent meeting regarding the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and in Gaza.

Since 1 November 2023, we have repeatedly written to your predecessors to provide evidence of atrocities directly witnessed and experienced by our 1,500 colleagues working in Gaza, to remind the UK of its power and its obligation to act, and to request an urgent high-level meeting. We have never received clear acknowledgement of the evidence that we have provided, nor have we ever been offered that meeting. In July last year we concluded that the UK Government just did not want to acknowledge what everybody else can see: that genocide is being committed in Gaza, and it is being committed with the military, diplomatic, and material support of the UK.

We therefore greatly welcome your decision to sanction illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to recognise that what is happening in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing, and to align with the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. Thank you for finally taking some first tangible steps towards action, rather than claiming that the UK could only powerlessly stand by while a foreign government committed war crimes with complete impunity. But while the new UK sanctions are a welcome, and necessary, response to the illegal occupation and spiralling violence in the West Bank, it is difficult for us to understand how they will have any tangible impact on the catastrophic situation in Gaza.

On that subject, we urge you to hear directly from MSF. MSF is the UK's largest medical humanitarian organisation still operating in Gaza. Since January 2026, we have been prevented by the Israeli authorities from bringing international staff and supplies into Palestine, yet we continue to work at scale across Gaza and the West Bank. Around 1,500 Palestinian MSF staff are providing surgical support, wound care, physiotherapy, maternity and paediatric care, general healthcare, vaccination, and mental health services as well as water production and distribution, under extraordinarily difficult conditions. My Palestinian colleagues see every day, in our hospitals and clinics, the human consequences of political decisions taken far from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Despite the October 2025 ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza continue to face daily violence, repeated displacement, severe restrictions on humanitarian access, and appalling living conditions. The situation is characterised by the systematic erosion of Palestinians’ possibility to survive with dignity.

MSF teams witness catastrophic medical needs: traumatic injuries, malnutrition in infants and pregnant women, and rampant infectious disease. The Israeli military is now estimated to occupy at least 60 percent of the Strip, as Gaza has been divided by an unclearly marked and constantly shifting Israeli-military-controlled "yellow line". MSF teams continue to treat patients suffering from blast injuries, fragment wounds, and blunt trauma caused by explosions and gunshot wounds, including people who are shot by Israeli forces when approaching the shifting boundary. Israeli forces continue to issue sudden displacement orders, forcing Palestinians to flee with almost no warning. Palestinians in Gaza are also dying from preventable diseases and untreated health conditions, as communicable diseases spread amid severe Israeli restrictions on essential supplies and a lack of access to basic services. Israeli authorities are leaving Palestinians to suffer and die through its illegal blockade, and Israel's deliberate policies of violence, destruction, and denial of basic needs have created a deadly cycle of extreme deprivation, suffering, and death, fuelling its genocidal campaign and violating international humanitarian law. More than two and a half years of global inaction and complicity in the face of genocide have allowed this catastrophe to persist.

Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers from Gaza since October 2023, holding many without charge and routinely denying access to those imprisoned. They include our colleague, MSF orthopaedic surgeon Dr Mohammed Obeid, who was arrested during an Israeli military raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in October 2024. Dr Obeid is still detained by Israel without charge, and we are very concerned for his safety and wellbeing.

Fifteen Palestinian colleagues have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, and many more injured. Yet the Israeli military has denied any criminal investigation into the killing or injury of MSF staff. Last month, the Israeli Military Advocate General decided to close without investigation the cases MSF submitted for review: the multiple attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City in November 2023 that killed two, and the February 2024 strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis that killed two and injured six. With this decision, the Israeli authorities made it clear that there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Although we support the efforts of the International Courts in pursuing accountability for war crimes, our colleagues, their families, and the Palestinians living in Gaza cannot wait for the outcome of lengthy processes – processes which the Israeli government has anyway stated it considers invalid.

Over a year ago we asked that the UK Government:

• Acknowledges and respects the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and acts decisively to end the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by the Israeli government in Gaza
• Ends all military cooperation with Israel and suspends all arms transfers to its government
• Ends all material and diplomatic support to the Israeli government
• Speaks out to acknowledge and condemn the genocide in Gaza
• Pushes to end the siege and allow unfettered access of humanitarian aid, including medical supplies, into Gaza
• Creates a pathway for the evacuation of medical patients from Gaza to the UK to be treated

While the recent shift in UK policy makes progress in responding to those asks, and we once again thank you for showing moral leadership, we would like to meet to discuss further steps the UK Government should take to uphold fully its obligations to act under International Humanitarian Law to protect all civilians in Gaza.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Natalie Roberts
Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) UK