Omar Shakir, who is the Israel and Palestine director for the organisation, wrote yesterday that Israel was responsible for the starvation of civilians after the Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that between 19 and 22 July, 33 people had died due to malnutrition.
This comes as 109 aid and human rights organisations called on governments to take urgent action, including pushing for Israel to lift all restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
“Palestinians’ starvation, which has likely resulted in thousands of deaths, is entirely human-made,” Shakir said.
“It’s the product of Israel’s intentional policy to use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, a war crime that Human Rights Watch first documented in December 2023.
“Months of research into Israel’s restrictions on aid and services led us to the inescapable conclusion that Israeli authorities are deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza in whole or in part, amounting to the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.”
Human Rights Watch previously concluded that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people (a conclusion that has also been reached by several other human rights organisations and scholars) with official figures stating that at least 59,000 people have been killed since October 2023. However, a Lancet study from July 2024 said the actual death toll could have already exceeded 186,000.
United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres also said that scenes of malnutrition and starvation were a “horror show” and that Israel was denying the international humanitarian system the conditions to function and the safety to save lives.
The Israeli assault on Gaza has also been condemned by the board of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, which said in a statement that it joins “those around the world who denounce the genocide in Gaza”, while retailer Co-op has said that it is stopping trading with Israel after 73% of its members backed a motion calling for the move at last month’s AGM.
In November 2024, The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli minister of defence for their role in war crimes and crimes against humanity.