The Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip continues amid a shameful international silence, turning the area into a zone of slow death, where nothing is louder than the sound of hunger and destruction. While bombs rain down on civilians, another deadly forces operate silently: hunger, disease, and thirst.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned that the Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza is silently killing more women and children every day, in addition to those dying from direct bombardment.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini stated in a post on X that “children, women, and the elderly in Gaza are being collectively punished”, referring to the continued closure of border crossings and the denial of basic humanitarian aid for over two months.
Lazzarini stressed that the catastrophic humanitarian situation worsens with each passing day, and that the siege alone, regardless of the bombardment, has become a tool of mass killing. He called on the Israeli occupation forces to lift the blockade immediately and to allow the flow of essential supplies into the Strip, where residents are facing genuine famine, the collapse of the healthcare system, and the breakdown of water and electricity infrastructure.
The Israeli occupation resumed its genocidal war on Gaza at dawn on 18 March 2025, despite a ceasefire agreement that had come into effect on 19 January. However, the Israeli occupation continued to violate the truce throughout its duration.
The genocide, politically and militarily backed by the United States and several European countries, has resulted in more than 170,000 people killed or injured, most of them women and children, as well as over 14,000 missing individuals whose fate remains unknown under the rubble or in undocumented mass graves.
The siege imposed on more than two million people in Gaza represents one aspect of modern genocide, where systematic starvation and the denial of food, water, and medicine are deliberately used to destroy civilian life and target the Palestinian presence.
This disgraceful conduct, under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, constitutes acts of genocide, particularly given the clear intent to inflict severe physical or mental harm on a specific group.
Moreover, the crippling of life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza and the imposition of deadly living conditions is a blatant violation of international law, specifically the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, amid a complete absence of effective accountability mechanisms. This entrenches a system of total impunity in one of the clearest cases of mass atrocity in modern times.
