Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, said Israel “built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine” and added: “Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide […] a crime against humanity […] a war crime.” He said “no one should act surprised,” noting his warnings, as well as other accounts, have been public since early 2024.
Israel’s then–defense minister, Yoav Gallant, announced a “complete siege” of Gaza on October 9, 2023, halting electricity, food, water and fuel. By December 2023, Gazans accounted for 80% of people worldwide facing catastrophic hunger, according to U.N. and aid-agency figures cited in the account.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) later reported more than 20,000 children were hospitalized for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July and warned the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out.”
Fakhri was among the first to warn of impending famine and in February 2024 said intentionally depriving people of food is a war crime, describing the situation as genocide.
The following month, the International Court of Justice recognized a risk of genocide and urged Israel to ensure unfettered humanitarian access, including food, water, fuel, shelter and medicines.
In May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Gallant were, according to the account, the first individuals formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation, described as a war crime. In July 2024, Fakhri and other U.N. experts declared a famine after initial starvation deaths were reported.
Fakhri also issued a detailed report on Israel’s decades-long control over Palestinian food production and supply chains; 80% of Gazans relied on aid when the current siege began, the account said.
Fakhri argued famine has taken hold because Israel outlawed fishing, destroyed local food production—greenhouses, orchards and farmland—and blocked aid. “Famine is always political, predictable and preventable,” he said, adding Israel has “used food as a weapon” and “fine-tuned” its approach over 25 years.
Israel and some allies have attributed hunger to logistical failures rather than policy. “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza. There is no starvation in Gaza,” Netanyahu said last week. UNICEF and other agencies reported malnutrition and starvation escalating since early March 2025, after a ceasefire was violated and Israel reinstated a total blockade following limited aid deliveries that were never sufficient for the “starved, sick and weakened” population, according to the account.
A new Israeli- and U.S.-backed logistics group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), began operating in May with armed security and authority to replace 400 U.N. distribution hubs with four. U.N. bodies and hundreds of aid groups condemned the move as weaponizing aid.
On June 1, Israeli soldiers killed 32 people at GHF sites, and more than 1,300 starving Palestinians have been killed trying to access food since, according to the account. GHF rejected reports of Palestinian deaths as “false and exaggerated statistics” and said that collaboration by U.N. agencies could “end the starvation, desperation and violent incidents almost overnight.”
Israel’s recent campaign in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 hostages.
Gaza’s Hamas-run authorities say Israeli retaliation has left nearly 61,000 Palestinians dead and another 180 people, including 93 children, killed by hunger or malnutrition. Fakhri added that studies suggest the true toll may be higher, since Israel has barred international researchers and journalists from Gaza.
Fakhri and other U.N. experts urged states and corporations to halt financial and military support and impose broad sanctions. He said the U.N. General Assembly should deploy peacekeepers to accompany aid convoys, arguing millions worldwide demand action.
The account also cited long-running restrictions: Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza and calculated minimum daily caloric needs. In 2006, a senior adviser to the then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that “the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Two years later, an Israeli court ordered the release of official documents showing the details of those calculations: 2,279 calories per person per day, which 1.836kg of food could provide.
Humanitarian groups now seek about 62,000 metric tons of food monthly—roughly 1 kg per person per day—for Gaza’s 2.1 million people, the account said.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has decided on the full occupation of Gaza and told the army chief to step aside if he disagrees, as debate intensifies worldwide over the war’s conduct and the Strip’s postwar governance.
On the same day, around 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written a joint letter to US President Donald Trump, calling for him to pressure Netanyahu to immediately end the siege on Gaza.
(jh)
Source: The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Middle East Eye