2024-02-06T14:10:47+00:00
A-
A
A+
/ The UN Special Rapporteur on Food, Michael Fakhri, considered on Tuesday that Israel used hunger as a means of repression and committed a crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, pointing out that Israel is obstructing the access of UN aid teams to those in need in the Strip.
Fakhri said in a statement to the Turkish Anadolu Agency that Israel had used disproportionate force against civilians in its attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023, and had also used hunger as a means of suppression against civilians.
He stated that “Israel has intensified its attacks to prevent civilians from accessing food and water, and the access of UN humanitarian aid teams to all those in need is almost impossible, and the biggest reason for this is Israel’s prevention of humanitarian aid.”
He explained that “the famine began after Israel prevented food and water from entering Gaza, and the latest data issued by the United Nations revealed that about a quarter of the population of Gaza is suffering from hunger and the rest is suffering from malnutrition.”
“Israel is destroying the food system in Gaza and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people. We know that 2.2 million people are suffering from hunger in Gaza. We have never seen such a number of people starving completely,” Fakhri continued.
The UN rapporteur stressed that “the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza for 16 years is one of the reasons for the difficulty of accessing food, and that it has targeted civilian infrastructure, hospitals and bakeries in its attacks in a planned manner.”
“Israel’s denial of access to food for the people of Gaza is a war crime. Israel has made Gaza uninhabitable, and this is clearly a war crime because there are indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilian targets, and in human rights terms, this is genocide. Palestinians are being targeted simply because they are Palestinians,” he said.
He concluded by saying: “The latest reports indicate that the Israeli army has destroyed about 22% of the agricultural lands in the northern Gaza Strip since the start of the ground attack, in addition to destroying 70% of the fishing boats and more than 60% of the homes of Palestinians in Gaza.”