In a stark illustration of a deliberate humanitarian collapse, starvation continues to be used as a systematic weapon in the Gaza Strip, amid international silence and the tacit complicity of major powers.
On Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced that the death toll from Israeli starvation policy, imposed on the enclave since 7 October 2023, had risen to 193, including 96 children, following the death of five more individuals in the past 24 hours alone.
Hospitals in the Strip reported these fatalities as a result of famine and severe malnutrition, at a time when health facilities have become incapable of coping with worsening critical cases, particularly among children and the elderly, due to acute shortages of food, medicine and power.
Despite thousands of aid trucks waiting at Gaza’s borders, Israeli occupation continues to impose tight restrictions on their entry and control their distribution outside the supervision of the United Nations, effectively weaponising aid as part of its war.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, while Israeli occupation has “allowed” a limited number of trucks to enter since 27 August, it has facilitated their looting and turned a blind eye to theft of their contents, despite Gaza requiring at least 600 trucks daily to avert full-scale famine.
Under international law, the deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare constitutes a war crime and can amount to genocide when part of a policy intended to destroy a national or ethnic group, in whole or in part. In Gaza’s case, the blockade, denial of food and medicine, and the destruction of the health system all form part of a systematic campaign that reflects a clear intent to annihilate the population.
The ongoing targeting of children and women, leaving them to die of hunger, cannot be justified under any security or military pretext. It is a blatant act of collective punishment that transcends armed conflict and enters the realm of crimes against humanity, demanding accountability, not global indifference.
Since the beginning of the assault 22 months ago, the US-backed war of annihilation has left over 211,000 Palestinians killed or wounded, most of them women and children, alongside more than 9,000 missing beneath the rubble, mass displacement, and the total collapse of life-sustaining infrastructure.
Today, famine has become another face of death in Gaza, creeping slowly and silently into children’s bodies, as lethal as the airstrikes and bombardments, in a drawn-out massacre that will only end with genuine international intervention to halt this catastrophe and bring those responsible to justice.
