Reporting snapshot · 15 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The joint statement is a political declaration with no enforcement mechanism, and Israel's defence minister said on 15 November that the offensive in Gaza would continue, so the text is unlikely to change Israeli policy on its own. The number of signatories also differs between the statement's headline and its opening paragraph, and no independent tally has been published.
Israel’s military said on Saturday evening that it had struck a senior Hamas commander in Khan Younis, and on 15 November its defence minister said the offensive in Gaza would continue until the territory is “demilitarised and there is no Hamas”. Those statements came less than a day after foreign ministers led by Pakistan’s Foreign Office demanded that Israel honour the ceasefire it signed last October and lift restrictions on aid into Gaza. Al Jazeera reported on 15 November that Hamas had confirmed the killing of Rafah brigade commander Samir Abu Younis in a drone strike on the al-Mawasi area of the city, and in its live coverage the same day reported that Defence Minister Israel Katz had pledged to continue the offensive despite the Netanyahu government having been voted out of office, a transition KhabarWire has tracked.
The demand came in a joint statement issued by Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 14 November and numbered 329/2026. The foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Palestine, Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan, Libya, Djibouti, Somalia, Lebanon and Oman “condemn in the strongest terms the Israeli airstrike on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, which caused casualties among patients and medical personnel, in violation of international humanitarian law”.
What the statement asks Israel to do
Beyond the strike itself, the statement condemns continued Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians, “including strikes on tents and other sites sheltering displaced persons”, and says those attacks “undermine the ceasefire and efforts to restore security and stability in Gaza and are inconsistent with President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan”. The ministers express “grave concern” that Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid, on shelter materials including tents, caravans and mobile homes, and on medical supplies are deepening Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe as winter approaches, and warn that “inadequate shelter and deteriorating water, sanitation and healthcare services put civilian lives at grave risk”, particularly for children and infants who “could once again die from exposure to freezing temperatures”.
The text sets out three instruments: the Sharm El-Sheikh Agreement, President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025). Israel is called on to “fulfil immediately and in full” its obligations under them, to “uphold the ceasefire, protect civilians and medical facilities”, to ensure the “safe, sustained and unimpeded delivery” of aid including shelter and early recovery supplies, and to let United Nations agencies work “without obstruction”. The statement adds that the first-phase commitments “were due to take effect upon signature” and that “urgent humanitarian assistance must proceed independently of progress on subsequent phases”.
The ministers also ask others to act. The statement calls on “the United States and the Board of Peace, within their respective roles, to intensify their efforts to ensure Israel’s full implementation of these commitments and the lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid”. The Board of Peace held its first formal meeting in Washington in February, attended by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, as KhabarWire reported.
How many governments signed is reported inconsistently. The statement’s own headline names 17 countries including Kuwait, while its opening paragraph names 17 signatories and lists Palestine in Kuwait’s place; Geo News carried the text at 7.54pm on 14 November as Pakistan acting “among 17 nations”, and The Express Tribune reported that “Pakistan, 16 other countries” had condemned the strike. Read together the two lists point to 18 governments, counting Palestine alongside the 17 named in the statement’s headline.
The strike on Nasser and the fighting that followed
The statement refers to a strike two days earlier. On 12 November, an Israeli airstrike hit a building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing at least six people including a surgeon and wounding 20, Gaza’s civil defence service said; its spokesman Mahmoud Basal told Reuters, as carried by Geo News, that the strike hit the hospital’s surgery department and caused extensive damage, and medics identified the slain surgeon as Rezik Abushira. Al Jazeera reported that Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Waheidi called it “a horrific crime” and said Israel had targeted the surgery department, and that the hospital serves at least 500,000 people in southern Gaza and had been attacked seven times.
Israel gave a different account of the target. The Express Tribune reported that the Israeli military confirmed striking the medical complex claiming it had targeted Muhammad Abu Ismail, commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade, and others allegedly hiding inside, while Hamas denied using the hospital for military purposes and called the justification a “false narrative”. The same report described 12 November as the deadliest single attack since Israel’s inconclusive elections last month, and said Nasser Hospital confirmed six deaths while a doctor reported nearly 30 wounded.
The fighting has continued since. Al Jazeera reported on 15 November that Israel’s military and Shin Bet said in a joint statement they had targeted a senior Hamas military commander in a drone strike in Khan Younis on Saturday, that casualties were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex, and that footage verified by the outlet showed ambulances inside the hospital grounds. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said in its update on Saturday that Israeli attacks had killed 16 people and injured 68 over the previous 48 hours, that at least 1,643 Palestinians had been killed and 5,964 injured since the ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025, with at least 850 bodies recovered from under the rubble, and that deaths linked to cold had risen to 11 after a nine-month-old baby died of hypothermia.
Why Islamabad is speaking on Gaza
The statement lands in a crowded week for Pakistan’s diplomacy. It was issued from Islamabad, where the 30th meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization Council of Ministers is due to run on 15 and 16 November, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and attended by the foreign ministers of the ten member states, including Iran and Türkiye — Geo News reported. Pakistan chairs the organisation for 2026 and 2027 under the theme “Reviving Regionalism for a Resilient ECO”.
It is also the second Pakistan-led multilateral text on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a month. On 16 October, a joint statement issued by Pakistan’s Foreign Office rejected Colombia’s embassy in Jerusalem as legally void and urged Bogotá to reverse the move, as KhabarWire reported. Islamabad is using the same instrument — a statement issued from its own Foreign Office and signed by other governments — to press Israel on the ceasefire it signed in October.
What a statement cannot do is compel. The text sets no deadline, names no consequence and creates no mechanism; it asks the United States and the Board of Peace to push for compliance. Israel’s defence minister said on 15 November that the offensive would continue until Gaza is “demilitarised and there is no Hamas”, which points the opposite way. Two questions remain open: whether the United States and the Board of Peace act on the appeal, and whether aid deliveries change. The ceasefire has held for more than a year, but Gaza’s health ministry says 1,643 people have been killed since it began, and Israel’s own military campaign, in Katz’s words, is not finished.
