Human Rights Watch urges world leaders to denounce “heinous war crimes.”
An international NGO has accused Israel of using famine as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement released Monday that Israel is deliberately depriving Palestinians of access to food, water and other basic necessities. The use of hunger against the civilian population is a war crime, the NGO said, calling on world leaders to act.
The press release cites statements by Israeli officials, interviews with survivors, reports from humanitarian organizations and evidence from satellite imagery to establish that Israel is engaged in “the deliberate use of policies aimed at depriving Palestinians resources necessary for their daily existence.
“For more than two months, Israel has been depriving the population of Gaza of food and water, a policy encouraged or approved by senior Israeli officials and which reflects an intention to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir , Israel and Palestine. director of Human Rights Watch.
“World leaders should denounce this heinous war crime, which is having devastating effects on the people of Gaza,” he added.
The statement comes as Israel faces growing internal and external pressure over rising civilian casualties resulting from its “indiscriminate” bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Israel has killed 18,787 people and injured 50,897 others, according to the latest figures, while thousands are believed to be buried under rubble.
Speeches and statements by Israeli officials promoting a campaign to deliberately block access to needed resources for the people of Gaza as a strategy indicate that Israel has not hidden these intentions, HRW said.
Early in the Israeli offensive, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant infamously declared that Israel was “applying a complete siege to Gaza.” … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – everything is closed,” justifying the decision by calling the Palestinians “a beastly people.”
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects essential to their survival, including by deliberately obstructing the supply of relief supplies”, constitutes a war crime, HRW said in the press release.
The plight of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents has become desperate amid the war, which has now lasted more than two months. About 80 percent of Palestinians living in the enclave have been displaced by the violence, while efforts to deliver aid to the enclave have been difficult.
Images showing mass devastation of the Gaza Strip, desperate Palestinians attacking food banks, humanitarian aid delivery trucks and reports of deliberate destruction of agricultural land reinforce the allegations.
Alarmed humanitarian organizations have called in vain for a ceasefire and denounced the shocking cost of this catastrophic war which amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population.
The Israeli government responded to HRW, accusing it of being an “anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli” organization.
“Human Rights Watch…did not condemn the attack on Israeli citizens or the October 7 massacre and has no moral basis to speak out about what is happening in Gaza if they turn a blind eye to the suffering and the human rights of Israelis,” he added. ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told AFP.
