March
20, 2024
Israel’s
withholding of food from the population of Gaza may be a deliberate effort to
starve the population, the United Nations’ highest human rights official said
Tuesday.
In
a statement, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that
“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.”
Türk’s
comments come as the rate of starvation and malnutrition surges throughout
Gaza’s imprisoned population of over 2 million.
According
to Türk, “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.”
Asked
to reply Tuesday to Türk’s statements that Israel may be using starvation as a
“weapon of war,” US Department of State spokesman Vedant Patel replied, “That
is not something that we have observed or witnessed.”
This
absurd denial is contradicted by the reality of mass starvation imposed on the
population of Gaza.
A
separate report published Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification (IPC) partnership, the official global body designating
starvation, found that “famine is imminent,” with a “major acceleration of
deaths and malnutrition.”
The
IPC assessment notes that 1.1 million people are expected to face catastrophic
levels of hunger and risk famine in Gaza, the highest number of people in that
category ever recorded since the beginning of the current classification
system.
“This
is the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded by the
Integrated Food Security Classification system—anywhere, anytime,” U.N.
Secretary General António Guterres said in a news briefing Monday.
Before
Israel’s assault on Gaza, less than 1 percent of children in Gaza under five
were acutely malnourished. But that figure has surged to between 12.4 and 16.5
percent.
The
report concluded, “Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and
projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”
The
report found that every single person in the Gaza Strip lives with some level
of food insecurity. The report projected that while the entirety of the Gaza
Strip is currently in the “emergency” phase of food insecurity, the entirety of
Northern Gaza will be in famine within a matter of months.
Israel
is imposing famine on the population of Gaza in a multitude of ways. The most
visible is through the imposition of a blockade that denies humanitarian
organizations the ability to provide food to starving people.
In
a statement Tuesday, the office of the United Nations Secretary-General said
that Israel had let in less than half of the humanitarian missions that the UN
had planned to send to Gaza.
“During
the first two weeks of March, less than half of planned humanitarian aid
missions to northern Gaza were facilitated by the Israeli authorities—that’s 11
out of 24 missions,” the statement said. “The rest were either denied or
postponed. Dispatching aid to the north of Gaza requires day-to-day approvals
from Israeli authorities.”
The
ongoing blockade is accompanied by the systematic and deliberate killing of aid
workers. On Thursday, the Israeli military carried out the latest in its
repeated attacks on the Kuwait Roundabout, where the remaining population of
Gaza City goes to receive food aid.
Al
Jazeera reported that 23 aid workers were killed in the latest strike, which
local officials said was a targeted attack on food distribution workers.
This
attack on food distribution workers was accompanied by a full-scale assault on
Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, which the Israeli military said left dozens of people
killed.
But
even this bloodbath is just a downpayment on what Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has in store with the planned invasion of Rafah.
On
Tuesday, Netanyahu said he made it “supremely clear” to US President Joe Biden
in a telephone conversation 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.”
Despite
its rhetorical criticisms of Netanyahu’s plans to invade Rafah, where over one
million people are sheltering, the Biden administration has made clear that it
will continue to supply weapons and funding to Israel no matter what it does.
In
a press briefing Monday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan
said that “The president emphasized his bone-deep commitment to ensuring the
long-term security of Israel.” Sullivan added, “Israel has a right to go after
Hamas, the perpetrators of the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the
Holocaust. Israel has made significant progress against Hamas.”
Earlier
this month, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump and
one of his key advisors on Middle East issues, endorsed the prospect of
expelling the population of Gaza from Palestine.
In
an appearance at Harvard University, Kushner said it would be “possible” to get
the population of Gaza “into Egypt…with the right diplomacy.” He also raised
the prospect of displacing the population of Gaza into the Negev Desert in
Israel, saying “the thing that I would try to do if I was Israel right now is I
would just bulldoze something in the Negev. I would try to move people in
there. I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that’s a
better option to do so you can go in and finish the job.”
“Gaza’s
waterfront property could be very valuable,” Kushner said.
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