1 week Ago
The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Israel is imposing “man-made” and “politically motivated starvation” on Gaza. The statement came as the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) reported that its food aid stocks in the enclave have been completely exhausted. WFP said it has more than 116,000 tons of food supplies positioned and ready to enter Gaza through aid corridors as soon as Israel reopens the borders.
“To meet the basic needs of the population in Gaza, it is critical that we are able to resume food deliveries into Gaza immediately,” said WFP’s Palestine country director Antoine Renard in a social media post. Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri said the United States was “complicit” in Israel’s campaign to starve Palestinian civilians. “The United States is complicit in the genocide, in the starvation of civilians,” Fakhri told Al Jazeera.
He emphasized that Israel controls the borders and the flow of goods into and out of Gaza. “What we saw in the last month alone is that child acute malnutrition increased by over 80 percent,” Fakhri said. “They are using children’s lives and the death of thousands in this negotiation process,” he added.
Fakhri stressed that “there is no political excuse to deny humanitarian aid to civilians, no matter what’s going on on the ground.” Referring to previous rulings, Fakhri said that in early 2024 the International Court of Justice recognized the use of starvation and famine in Gaza in the context of genocide. He recalled that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 3 that Israel would stop all goods and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, a policy that has continued for more than 50 days.
“Let’s recall that there is an international criminal warrant against Netanyahu and former defense minister Gallant for the crime of starvation, for crimes against humanity for mass murder, yet they continue announcing their intentions and executing this starvation campaign with no repercussions,” Fakhri said. “Under international law, there is no condition in which anyone can deny humanitarian aid to civilians,” he added. Fakhri concluded that Israel is “using humanitarian aid for civilians as a bargaining chip, as leverage,» in “a clear violation of international law.
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