LONDON: Israel is intentionally starving the population of Gaza in its battle with Hamas in the enclave and should be held accountable for war crimes and genocide, a UN official said on Tuesday.
Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, told The Guardian newspaper that Israel had been deliberately destroying food supplies and restricting the flow of food to Gaza since the war started in October.
About 2.2 million civilians are facing hunger and severe malnutrition as a result of extreme shortages of basic supplies in the enclave.
Fakhri said that to intentionally deprive civilians of food was a war crime, as per the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which states that depriving people of “objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies” falls under that definition.
Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel of using starvation in its operations within Gaza, an act which the UN Security Council outlined as a violation of international law and a war crime in 2018.
“There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza — other than to deny people access to food,” Fakhri said.
“Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian.”
The official said that the situation in Gaza was one of “genocide” and that Israel in its entirety, “not just individuals or this government or that person,” was “culpable and should be held accountable.”
“It was already a very fragile situation due to Israel’s chokehold on what goes in and out of Gaza. So when the war started, Israel was very easily able to make everyone go hungry because they had most people on the brink,” Fakhri said.
“We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts. Israel is not just targeting civilians, it is trying to damn the future of the Palestinian people by harming their children.”
Fakhri also criticized those countries that cut their funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees following claims made by Israel that 12 of the organization’s workers had links to Hamas and its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 people were killed.
UNRWA provides food, healthcare, education and other basic services to almost 6 million Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Territories and across the Middle East.
“Ending funding almost instantaneously based on unsubstantiated claims against a small number of people has no other purpose than collective punishment of all Palestinians in multiple countries,” he said.
“The countries that withdrew this lifeline are undoubtedly complicit in the starvation of Palestinians.
“Israel will claim there are exceptions to war crimes. But there is no exception to genocide and there’s no argument as to why Israel is destroying civilian infrastructure, the food system, humanitarian workers and allowing this degree of malnutrition and hunger … The charge of genocide holds a whole state accountable and the remedy of genocide is the issue of self-determination of the Palestinian people.
“The path forward must not just be ending the war but actually peace.”
