Palestinians gather to receive aid, including food supplies provided by World Food Program, outside a United Nations distribution center, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, on August 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel’s warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, a special U.N. committee said Thursday (November 14, 2024), accusing the country of “using starvation as a method of war”.

The United Nations Special Committee pointed to “mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians”, in a fresh report covering the period from Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack in Israel last year through to July.

“Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated U.N. appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation and serious injury,” it said in a statement.

Israel’s warfare practices in Gaza “are consistent with the characteristics of genocide”, said the committee, which has for decades been investigating Israeli practices affecting rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel, it charged, was “using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population”.

A U.N.-backed assessment at the weekend warned that famine was imminent in northern Gaza.

Thursday’s (November 14, 2024) report documented how Israel’s extensive bombing campaign in Gaza had decimated essential services and unleashed an environmental catastrophe with lasting health impacts.

By February this year, Israeli forces had used more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives across the Gaza Strip, “equivalent to two nuclear bombs”, the report pointed out.

AI-assisted targeting

“By destroying vital water, sanitation and food systems, and contaminating the environment, Israel has created a lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come,” the committee said.

The committee said it was “deeply alarmed by the unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure and the high death toll in Gaza”, where more than 43,700 people have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The staggering number of deaths raised serious concerns, it said, about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence-enhanced targeting systems in its military operations.

“The Israeli military’s use of AI-assisted targeting, with minimal human oversight, combined with heavy bombs, underscores Israel’s disregard of its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths,” it said.

It warned that reported new directives lowering the criteria for selecting targets and increasing the previously accepted ratio of civilian to combatant casualties appeared to have allowed the military to use AI systems to “rapidly generate tens of thousands of targets, as well as to track targets to their homes, particularly at night when families shelter together”.

The committee stressed the obligations of other countries to urgently act to halt the bloodshed, saying that “other States are unwilling to hold Israel accountable and continue to provide it with military and other support”.

Palestinians gather to receive free food as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, during the holy month of Ramadan, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip March 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The U.N. said on March 19 that Israel’s severe restrictions on aid into war-ravaged Gaza coupled with its military offensive could amount to using starvation as a “weapon of war”, which would be a “war crime”.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced the rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza.

In a statement slammed by Israel, Mr. Turk said that “the situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods”.

It was also linked to the “displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure”, he said.

“The extent of Israel’s continued restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime.”

His spokesman, Jeremy Laurence, told reporters in Geneva that the final determination of whether “starvation is being used as a weapon of war” would be determined by a court.

Imminent famine

The comments came after a U.N.-backed food security assessment determined that the war-torn Palestinian territory is facing imminent famine.

The devastating war since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans — around 1.1 million people — experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, the assessment warned.

Without a surge of aid, famine would hit the 300,000 people in Gaza’s war-battered north by May, it said.

The finding comes just over five months into the Gaza war, which erupted after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed more than 31,800 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, pointed to the difficulty of clearly determining if the strict criteria have been met to declare a famine.

“The famine thresholds may already be the case in northern Gaza,” he told reporters, highlighting that for weeks people had already been reduced to eating bird seed, animal fodder, wild grass and weeds.

“There is literally nothing left,” he said.

Looking ahead, he warned that without more aid, Gaza could soon be looking at “more than 200 people dying from starvation per day”.

‘Clock is ticking’

Already, health workers are seeing “newborn babies simply dying because their too-low birthweight” and “children that are at the… brink of death through starvation”, World Health Organization spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.

She noted that malnutrition had been basically “non-existant” in Gaza before the war.

The crisis was “entirely manmade”, she said, denouncing the lack of safe access to bring in the aid needed to meet the towering needs.

Mr. Turk said that “the clock is ticking”.

“Everyone, especially those with influence, must insist that Israel acts to facilitate the unimpeded entry and distribution of needed humanitarian assistance and commercial goods to end starvation and avert all risk of famine.”

He demanded “an immediate ceasefire, as well as the unconditional release of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva rejected Mr. Turk’s statement, insisting that he was seeking “once again to blame Israel for the situation and completely absolve the responsibility of the U.N. and Hamas”.

“Despite the rockets, the holding of our hostages, the acts of pure evil on October 7, Israel is committed to facilitating humanitarian aid into Gaza,” it said, insisting that “Israel is at war with Hamas, not the Palestinian people”.

The country, it said, was “doing everything it can to flood Gaza with aid, including by land air and sea”.

“The U.N. must also step up.”