Israel using hunger as ‘weapon’ against Palestinians in Gaza, UN expert warns
Israel is using hunger as a “weapon” against Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip since Tel Aviv launched the ongoing war on the besieged territory four months ago, a UN expert warns.
Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said on Tuesday that the occupying regime was weaponizing hunger in its attacks against inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
“Israel is clearly and systematically obstructing access to food for all civilians in Gaza,” he told Turkey's state news agency Anadolu on Tuesday.
“UN humanitarian teams reported that reaching everyone in need of food and water in Gaza is almost impossible due to Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid,” Fakhri added.
He warned that the Israeli-imposed blockade of food and water entering the coastal sliver has led to famine in the region, whose 85 percent of the population has been internally displaced due to the current war.
Israel waged its brutal war on besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out an unprecedented operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 27,585 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 67,000 others.
Israel has imposed a “complete siege” on the densely-populated territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
The latest figures by the UN show that almost a quarter of Gaza's more than two million inhabitants are suffering from hunger, while the rest are under-nourished, Fakhri further noted, saying that there is no other conflict zone where access to clean water and food is so difficult.
“Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people,” the UN expert said, adding, “We know that 2.2 million people in Gaza are hungry. We have never seen so many people completely deprived of food before.”
Fakhri also noted that the Tel Aviv regime’s four months of attacks against the Gaza Strip have deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, hospitals and bakeries, condemning as a “war crime” the regime’s obstruction of Gazans’ access to food.
“Israel has made Gaza uninhabitable. This is clearly a war crime because indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian targets are taking place,” the UN expert added.
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