[Bagor]

Man-made famine’ charge against Israel is backed by mounting body of evidence

Prospect of Israel facing war crimes charges has moved closer after UN condemnation of Gaza aid restrictions.


The accusation by the UN and other humanitarians that Israel may be committing a war crime by deliberately starving Gaza’s population is likely to significantly increase the prospect of legal culpability for the country, including at the international court of justice.
Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces are hiring dozens of lawyers to defend against anticipated cases and legal challenges, the charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by deliberately obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza is backed by an increasing body of evidence.
Already facing a complaint of genocide from South Africa at the ICJ, the UN’s top court – including an allegation that senior Israeli political officials have incited genocide in public statements – Israel is also the subject of a provisional emergency ruling by the court ordering it to admit life-saving aid to Gaza.


On Wednesday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, underlined the growing sense of crisis as he warned that all of Gaza’s 2 million people were experiencing “severe levels of acute food insecurity” – the first time an entire population of Gaza has been so classified.
Unlike other issues related to Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives and displaced more than 85% of the population amid widespread destruction, the human-made famine occurring in the Palestinian territory appears more straightforward.
While the question of civilian casualties from specific attacks and from the wider policy of bombing will need to be tested against highly contested notions in international humanitarian law such as proportionality and necessity in conflict, the war crime of starvation is simply and clearly defined.
Though Israel denies the allegation, the Rome statute of the international criminal court defines it as the crime of intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival” including “wilfully impeding relief supplies”.
Underpinning the allegations is the fact that as a belligerent occupying power in Gaza, Israel is legally responsible under article 55 of the fourth Geneva convention for “ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population”, which requires the occupier to “bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate”.
A central plank of any case that Israel has provoked a famine is the data generated by the UN’s Gaza famine review committee, staffed by international experts on food security, whose findings this week fall under the auspices of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – regarded as the international gold standard in assessing food crises.
Highly technical, often cautious and designed to be neutral in its analysis, the committee – which had already warned of the risk of famine not least in the worst affected region of northern Gaza – has relied on World Food Programme surveys that concludedPalestinians were already facing IPC phase 4 and 5 levels of malnutrition – “emergency” and “catastrophe”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...idence-un-gaza


But then again the article doesn't take into account the robust defence that Israel will be able to present in defence of these allegations.

Originally Posted by Azure

the reality of the situation on the ground where Hamas is intentionally stopping aid from reaching the people.