Rights group’s report condemns Israel for ‘systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life’.
The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza as the United Nations and aid groups warn of famine in the Palestinian enclave.
In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”
The group accused Israel of “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”.
“It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction – which is part and parcel of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty said.
Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians and turned Gaza into rubble since it launched its military offensive on October 7, 2023. Campaigners and rights organisations have called it a war of vengeance and identified Israeli actions as a genocide.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes .
The report is based on interviews conducted in recent weeks with 19 displaced Palestinians in Gaza sheltering in three makeshift camps as well as two medical staff members in two hospitals in Gaza City.
“I fear miscarriage, but I also think about my baby. I panic just thinking about the potential impact of my own hunger on the baby’s health, its weight, whether it will have [birth defects] and, even if the baby is born healthy, what life awaits it, amid displacement, bombs, tents,” Hadeel, 28, a mother of two who is four months pregnant, was quoted as saying in the report.
A 75-year-old woman told Amnesty International that she wishes to die. “I feel like I have become a burden on my family. … I always feel like these young children, they are the ones who deserve to live, my grandchildren. I feel like I’m a burden on them, on my son,” Aziza said.
Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said in a statement: “As Israeli authorities threaten to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, the testimonies we have collected are far more than accounts of suffering, they are a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades.”
Nearly one million Palestinians in Gaza City, many of whom have been displaced multiple times in the past two years, face forced displacement as Israel has intensified its attacks on the enclave’s main urban centre.
Call for truce
Rosas called for “an immediate, unconditional lifting of the blockade and a sustained ceasefire” for reversing “the devastating consequences of Israel’s inhumane policies and actions” in Gaza.
Rosas concluded: “The impact of Israel’s blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective and dangerous airdrops of aid.”
The Israeli military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not make statements about Amnesty’s findings at the time of publication.
Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation.
More than 250 Palestinians, including 110 children, have died of malnutrition during the war due to the Israeli blockade. The enclave – home to 2.1 million people – had already been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, but since the war began, Israel has tightened it, at times stopping all aid from entering and now allows only a trickle of supplies into the Strip.
In a report issued last week, the Israeli military body overseeing civil affairs in Palestinian territory rejected claims of widespread malnutrition in Gaza despite widespread condemnation from the UN and the international community in general.
‘Famine unfolding before our eyes’
Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan and several of their European allies have called on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, stressing that the humanitarian crisis has reached “unimaginable levels”.
“Famine is unfolding before our eyes. Urgent action is needed now to halt and reverse starvation,” the foreign ministers of about two dozen countries and the European Union’s top diplomat said in a joint statement last week.
In April, Amnesty accused Israel of committing a “livestreamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Palestinians in Gaza and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims that Israel dismissed at the time as “blatant lies”.
