Israel is using famine and starvation in Gaza as a “genocidal tactic” borne from decades of Israeli occupation, a top UN adviser is warning the UN General Assembly.
In a 24-page report, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri warns that Israel’s starvation campaign is creating conditions akin to, if not already amounting to, famine in the Gaza Strip. He details how Israel was able to instrumentalize its power as an occupying force of Palestine to rapidly impose a hunger crisis on Palestinians in Gaza last October, with deadly and long-lasting consequences.
“On 9 October 2023, Israel announced its starvation campaign against Gaza. By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 per cent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri wrote. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
Fakhri stresses that famine should be viewed as a political phenomenon rather than as an issue of production and supply, arguing that famine is always a preventable, man-made problem. Underlying famine and starvation are the actions of corporations, states, and other actors that use food to harm groups as a function of their power, he said.
“What is usually at stake in starvation campaigns is power over land. As such, starvation is often used as a technique of displacement, dispossession and occupation,” the report says. “Starvation was a common tactic of colonial Powers of the past, and those same tactics are used today to colonize, conquer or dominate different territories.”
Thus, Israel’s starvation campaign can only be fully understood through the lens of its decades long occupation of Palestine, Fakhri says; he points out that, even before Israel’s current siege began last October, half of people in Gaza were food insecure and over 80 percent relied on humanitarian aid for food. This is due to Israel’s efforts to fracture Palestine and make Palestinians “increasingly dependent on the State of Israel, further undermining their food sovereignty.”
Fakhri’s report was accompanied by a powerful graphic report by Omar Khouri that illustrated, among other things, a typical meal in Gaza before and after Israel’s total genocidal siege began.
International food organizations have not officially declared famine in Gaza. However, the threshold for a famine declaration is extremely high, and a group of UN experts including Fakhri released a statement in July declaring that a famine had set in across the region. The World Food Programme emphasized on Monday that the entire population of Gaza is still in urgent need of food assistance — and a ceasefire, in order to deliver that aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference last week that it is “outrageously false” to say that Israel has a “deliberate starvation policy” — despite the fact that his own government openly declared that it was blocking food from entering Gaza last October, and has since bragged about the blockade many times.
Fakhri notes, however, that Israel’s actions since October make it clear that it is deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza. He also warns that Israel’s starvation campaign will have lasting effects on Palestinians, not only haunting Palestinians in Gaza for the rest of their lives, but also hanging heavy over their families for generations to come.
“Israel made its intentions to starve everyone in Gaza explicit, implemented its plans and predictably created a famine throughout Gaza,” Fakhri said. “What is at stake is nothing less than Israel’s attempt to annex Gaza, as the current Government has indicated on multiple instances.”
Because of his stark warnings on the power Israel has over Palestinians, Fakhri’s report also serves as a warning that Israel will retain its ability to starve Palestinians in the future if its occupation is allowed to continue, as has been mandated by the International Court of Justice.
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