Since the conflict in Gaza began, your support has been a vital lifeline for the ordinary people bearing the brunt of the crisis.
You have helped our local partners keep going, often in the face of immense challenges and great personal risk, tirelessly reaching out with dignity and hope to families who can’t escape the violence.
Damaged medical centre in Gaza, July 2025
With your support our Church partner Caritas Jerusalem is operating medical points across Gaza, treating chronic illnesses, running pharmacies (though dangerously low on supplies), and supporting families mentally and physically through this crisis.
The working conditions are near unimaginable - the mobile clinics are forced to move constantly depending on where it's safest to operate – but the incredible women and men of the Caritas team are still doing all they can to bring much-needed aid to those who need it most. Please keep everyone working at or making use of the clinics in your prayers.
Other local partners are providing food and shelter for displaced families. However, they report growing difficulty in sourcing food, with the nutritional value of meals declining sharply.
This crucial work has been made possible with your support - but as the crisis continues to spiral out of control and tens of thousands face starvation and disease outbreaks, your donations are needed now more than ever.
Despite the overwhelming risk, our partners are still doing all they can to get help through to the people that need it most. Your support makes their work possible. Here are some of the ways you’ve helped recently:
In July, you helped get funds to 1,400 families so they could buy the things they most urgently need to survive and live with dignity.
In August, our Church partner Caritas Jerusalem secured a new supply of medications for treating serious chronic illnesses like hypertension. These vital supplies will help keep their life-saving work going.
Last month, one of Caritas Jerusalem’s medical points was damaged and had to be evacuated. This month our partners were able to return and resume their vital work providing life-saving treatment people taking refuge in the area.
Your support helped our partner, the Culture and Free Thought Association, scale up their emergency food programme, providing 2,000 people with rice.
As well as the enormous immediate need, people in Gaza are also in urgent need of psychosocial support, safe spaces for children and shelter for those displaced. Your donations are helping our partners continue to provide this critical assistance in spite of the unimaginably difficult working conditions.
Millions have fled their homes in search of safety. They urgently need shelter, food and basic supplies.
Our partners are helping these families right now as they arrive in safer areas.
Thousands of you have also raised your voices to ask our government to take bolder and more decisive action to call for an end to the crisis. And it’s clear that the message is getting through.
On 29 July, Sir Keir Starmer made a statement of plans for the UK to officially recognise Palestine as a state for the first time in history if a ceasefire is not declared.
“It's an important statement,” said Janet Symes, who heads up our work in the Middle East, “but the key thing behind it is that we are beyond the point of needing statements. We need concrete action.
“There has to be a ceasefire. There has to be the space to be able to start real negotiations towards that. And we also have to be in a position where we are tackling the situation of famine. It is intolerable that there is an entirely preventable famine about to unfold in front of us, and that demands immediate action. We can't wait.”
This shows the government is listening and have heard our calls for peace – but we must not let up until a ceasefire is reached.
Credit: Caritas Jerusalem
More than 100 organisations (including CAFOD) are urging governments to take decisive action to:
open all land crossings
restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism
end the siege
agree to a ceasefire now.
On 22 July, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, offered a powerful reflection on the suffering in Gaza:
“Christ is not absent from Gaza. He is there — crucified in the wounded, buried beneath the rubble, and yet present in every act of mercy, every candle in the darkness, every hand extended to the suffering.”
Pope Leo also reiterated the call for peace and that international law must be respected:
“I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war … I renew my appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law.”
With attacks set to intensify on overcrowded Gaza city, where so many have taken refuge, Cardinal Vincent Nicholls made a powerful statement urging peace instead of escalation:
“There must be a better way, one that does not heap yet further suffering and misery on so many people who are not combatants but defenceless in face of the perpetrators of violence in their midst. Already too much innocent blood has been shed; too many lives destroyed; too much hunger and starvation. This war must be ended not increased.”
As our partners continue to give their all to help those affected by this crisis, please pray for an end to the suffering.
