Israeli rights group accuses Israel of using starvation as ‘war tactic’

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has accused Israel of “deliberately starving” millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including more than one million children.

In a video posted on X showing hungry Palestinians desperately trying to get food at a charity kitchen, the group said: “Israel is using starvation as a war tactic,” adding that more than two million people in Gaza have been starved for about two months because of Israel’s total blockade on the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a statement on Sunday, said Israel has blocked all supplies from entering Gaza.

“Bakeries have shut. Community kitchens have closed. Warehouses stand empty. Children have gone hungry,” the OCHA’s Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory said.

It said that Israeli officials have sought to shut down the existing aid distribution system run by the UN and its humanitarian partners and have asked the aid organizations to deliver supplies through Israeli hubs “under conditions set by the Israeli military,” once the government agrees to re-open crossings.

Calling Israel’s plan “dangerous,” the UN OCHA said the UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator would not participate in it.

Israel’s proposed plan it said, “contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic.”

Violence has continued unabated in Gaza, with only two brief pauses — a two-month ceasefire from January 19 to March 17, and an earlier one-week truce in late November 2023.

In June, Hanan Balkhy, the regional director for the World Health Organization, reported that the dire conditions had driven some Gazans to consume animal feed, grass, and even contaminated sewage water.

On Tuesday, Hamas urged the international community to intervene and stop what it described as Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement of an upcoming intensified military offensive in the region.

“There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip,” AFP reported Basem Naim as saying, urging the international community “to pressure the Netanyahu government to end the crimes of hunger, thirst, and killings” in Gaza.