UN says Israel using starvation as weapon
‘RESTRICTIONS ON ENTRY OF GAZA AID AMOUNT TO WAR CRIME’
The United Nations warned yesterday that Israel’s severe restrictions on aid into warravaged Gaza coupled with its ongoing attacks could be seen as using starvation as a “weapon of war”.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk decried the rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza. “The situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure,” he said in a statement.
“The extent of Israel’s continued restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime.”
Court to decide
His spokesman, Jeremy Laurence, told reporters in Geneva that the final determination of whether “starvation is being used as a weapon of war” would be determined by a court of law. “The suffering of the people of Gaza is unconscionable,” he said.
The comments came after a UN-backed assessment determined that the war-torn Palestinian territory is facing imminent famine.
The devastating war since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans — around 1.1 million people — experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, a UN-backed food security assessment warned.
Without a surge of aid, famine would hit the 300,000 people in Gaza’s war-battered north by May, it said Monday.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told reporters in Geneva his agency feared that without action, “you’re looking at more than 200 people dying from starvation per day”.
Turk also stressed that “the clock is ticking”. “Everyone must insist that Israel acts to facilitate the unimpeded entry and distribution of needed humanitarian assistance and commercial goods to end starvation and avert all risk of famine.”
1.1million
people in Gaza experiencing ‘catastrophic’ hunger, according to UN
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spurned a plea from Joe Biden to call off a planned ground assault of Rafah, the last refuge in Gaza for more than a million displaced people, where Israel believes Hamas fighters are holed up.
Netanyahu told lawmakers yesterday he had made it “supremely clear” to the US president “that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there’s no way to do that except by going in on the ground”.
The two leaders spoke by phone on Monday. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington believed a ground assault on Rafah would be a “mistake” and that Israel could achieve its military aims by other means.
Blinken’s Middle East trip
Washington has launched a new diplomatic push for a ceasefire in the nearly sixmonth-old war to free hostages and bring in food aid to stave off famine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a trip to the Middle East, where he would meet senior leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to “discuss the right architecture for a lasting peace”.
Unusually, Blinken made no mention of a stop in Israel itself, and the Israeli foreign ministry said it had received no notification to prepare for one.
14 killed overnight
In Rafah, dazed survivors walked through the ruins of a home yesterday morning, one of several buildings hit in overnight Israeli air strikes that killed 14 people in the city, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been pushed against the southern border fence with Egypt.
At a nearby hospital morgue, relatives wailed beside corpses laid out on the cobbles. A woman peeled back a tiny bloodstained shroud to reveal the face of a small boy, rocking him back and forth in her arms.
“There’s US support, European support and support of the whole world for Israel, they support them with weapons and planes,” said one of the mourners, Ibrahim Hasouna.
“They mock us and send four or five airdrops [of aid] just to save their faces.”
Food shortage
The war was triggered when Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on a rampage on October 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Nearly 32,000 people have been confirmed killed in Israel’s retaliatory onslaught, according to Palestinian health officials, with thousands more feared lost under the rubble.
The international hunger monitor IPC, relied on by the United Nations, said on Monday that Gaza’s food shortages had already far surpassed famine levels, and Gazans would soon be dying of hunger at faminescale rates without a truce.
Peace talks in Qatar
Ceasefire talks are resuming this week in Qatar after Israel rejected a Hamas counter-proposal last week. An Israeli delegation headed by the country’s spy chief travelled to Qatar on Monday, although an Israeli official said Israel believed any agreement would take at least two weeks to nail down.
Both sides have been discussing a six-week truce during which around 40 Israeli hostages would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees and aid would be rushed into the Gaza Strip.
‘Very tough’
But they have yet to narrow differences over what would follow the truce, with Israel saying it will negotiate only for a temporary pause in fighting, and Hamas saying it will not release hostages without a wider plan to end the war.
A Palestinian official close to the mediation talks said the new round in Qatar was expected to be “very tough,” accusing Israel of deliberately stalling. “Israel’s crimes on the ground complicate things and Netanyahu is playing the time game,” the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.