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Starvation is the slow, silent unmaking of the body. Deprived of basic sustenance, the body first burns through sugar stores in the liver. Then it melts muscle and fat, breaking down tissue to keep the brain and other vital organs alive.

As these reserves are depleted, the heart loses its strength, the immune system surrenders and the mind begins to fade. The skin tightens over the bones and breathing grows faint. Organs begin to fail in succession, vision fails and the body, now empty, slips away. It is a prolonged, agonizing way to die.

We have all seen the images of emaciated Palestinian babies and children withering away from starvation in their mothers’ arms. Yet now that Israel is intensifying its war — embarking on a new campaign to “conquer” Gaza City — thousands more Palestinian civilians may be killed, either by bombs or by starvation.

“This is no longer a looming hunger crisis,” Ramesh Rajasingham, a senior UN humanitarian official, told the UN Security Council on Aug. 10. “This is starvation, pure and simple.” Alex de Waal, an expert on famine, estimates that thousands of Gazan children are now too weak to eat, even if they had access to food. “They have got to that stage of severe acute malnutrition where their bodies just can’t digest food.”

There is a growing consensus that Israel is committing the most serious of crimes in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Palestinian and international human rights groups raised the alarm about this risk within months of the start of the war and it has since been echoed by states on every continent, as well as by many in Israel. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has decried what he describes as war crimes in Gaza and leading Israeli human rights groups say Israel’s actions in the territory amount to genocide.

On Oct. 9, 2023, two days after Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages — itself a serious war crime — then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.” The population of Gaza was dehumanized and no distinction was made between civilians and combatants — a violation of a cardinal rule of international humanitarian law. The siege shut off all supplies into Gaza for 70 days, imposing collective punishment.

This first siege was eased only slightly when Israel allowed supplies to trickle into Gaza in early 2024. By that April, Samantha Power, then the head of the US Agency for International Development, was already warning of famine in parts of Gaza. The following month, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Programme, announced “a full-blown famine” in northern Gaza. 

Over the past 21 months, several governments and aid agencies have pleaded with Israel to let them deliver aid.

Binaifer Nowrojee

International law prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon of war. As the occupying power in Gaza, Israel must ensure that the civilian population receives adequate food, water, medical supplies and other essentials. If those supplies cannot be located within Gaza itself, they must be sourced externally — including from Israel.

Over the past 21 months, several governments and aid agencies have pleaded with Israel to let them deliver aid. Granting such permission is also a legal obligation: Israel has a duty to facilitate others’ relief schemes “by all means at its disposal.” But Israel has continuously thwarted these efforts. At this very moment, it is blocking humanitarian organizations from delivering aid.

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice, through legally binding decisions, ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.” Two months later, it reaffirmed that order and required that the measures be taken “in full cooperation with the United Nations.”

The UN-led humanitarian system was the only one capable of preventing widespread famine in Gaza. During the ceasefire between January and March of this year, the UN and other humanitarian organizations were operating as many as 400 relief distribution sites. But after Israel broke the ceasefire in March, these were shut down and another siege was unlawfully imposed.

Israel justified the new siege by saying that it was cutting off aid to exert greater pressure on Hamas — thus acknowledging its use of starvation as a weapon. When aid resumed in May, the UN was replaced by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private food distribution arrangement organized by Israel. But since then, nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while attempting to obtain food at the foundation’s four distribution sites. 

Although signs of the coming horrors were clear within months of the war’s onset, many governments averted their eyes.

Binaifer Nowrojee

Worse, the scheme was never going to work. According to a report from the Famine Review Committee last month, “our analysis of the food packages supplied by the GHF shows that their distribution plan would lead to mass starvation, even if it was able to function without the appalling levels of violence.”

Under international law, the war crime of starvation begins at the point of deprivation. When it becomes a more expansive policy undertaken with the intent “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” it becomes genocide. Multiple senior Israeli officials have openly expressed such intent — including Gallant in October 2023, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in August 2024 remarked that “it might be justified and moral” to “cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger,” and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister for National Security, who posted on social media that “food and aid depots should be bombed.”

Palestinians are being intentionally starved to death. Although signs of the coming horrors were clear within months of the war’s onset, many governments averted their eyes. They rationalized the restrictions on aid by arguing that it was going to Hamas — a claim that Israel now says it has no evidence for — and transferred more tonnage in weapons to Israel than they delivered in aid to Gaza. Now, they are failing in their duty to prevent and stop a genocide.

History will forever record this moment of global shame. It will archive the images of skeletal children alongside those from past episodes where the world did nothing. One can only hope that the world will act now to salvage at least a measure of our humanity, before even more children die.

• Binaifer Nowrojee is President of the Open Society Foundations.

Copyright: Project Syndicate