The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced on Sunday that the death toll from the starvation policy enforced by the Israeli occupation has risen to 217 since 7 October 2023, including 100 children. This follows the recording of five new deaths in the past 24 hours caused by famine and severe malnutrition.
The Ministry explained that these deaths come amid the continued Israeli occupation blockade and the prevention of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, alongside the complete collapse of the health system. Hospitals have become unable to save lives, with patients transferred from medical points to facilities that can no longer meet even the minimum care needs.
Despite hundreds of aid trucks crowding at Gaza’s entrances, the Israeli occupation continues to prevent their entry or imposes strict restrictions on their distribution, allowing in only minimal quantities. Experts have described this as a “symbolic trickle” that does not meet even a fraction of the actual needs.
Since early March, the Israeli occupation has evaded the full implementation of the ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement, instead tightening the blockade and closing crossings to aid convoys, turning back thousands of tonnes of relief supplies at the borders.
The situation in Gaza amounts to a fully-fledged genocide. Since 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation — with direct support from the United States — has carried out systematic killings, mass bombardment, starvation, and destruction, in an attempt to break the will of the civilian population and force them into displacement, in blatant disregard for international calls and binding orders from the International Court of Justice to halt crimes against civilians.
The ongoing genocide has so far claimed the lives of 61,369 people and left 152,850 injured, the majority of them children and women. More than 9,000 others are missing, either trapped under the rubble or in unknown circumstances, in addition to hundreds of thousands living in catastrophic conditions in overcrowded displacement camps or in the open without shelter.
International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the use of blockade and starvation as weapons of war, defining them as war crimes and crimes against humanity. What is happening in Gaza constitutes a large-scale, systematic attack targeting civilians with the aim of destroying them in whole or in part — which meets the precise legal definition of genocide.
The continued silence of the international community and the failure of aid mechanisms to respond have allowed the famine in Gaza to deepen into an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, one that is erasing entire communities and testing the credibility of the international system to uphold even the most basic human rights — the right to life.
