In an interview with the BBC NewsHour program on Monday, Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of deliberately pursuing a policy of starvation in the Gaza Strip.
“We have seen the results of their hunger campaigns with high mortality rates. People are dying not only from starvation but also from the dehydration and disease that often follows,” he said.
“Israel told us what they were doing, they did it, and we saw the effects.”
An estimated 1.84 million people are experiencing high levels of severe food insecurity, with 664,000 facing “emergency” levels of hunger and nearly 133,000 of them, according to Thursday’s report from the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Category (IPC). We are facing “catastrophe” levels.
The last figure is three quarters lower than when it was last reported in June. The IPC said the decline was due to a temporary surge in humanitarian aid and commercial supplies between May and August.
But the IPC said it expected the number of people facing “catastrophic” hunger to almost triple in the coming months because of sharp declines in aid deliveries and food availability since September.
Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Famine is coming. This is intolerable. Crossing points must be opened immediately, bureaucratic obstacles removed and law and order restored to allow UN agencies to deliver life-saving humanitarian assistance.”
Concerns about the situation are growing in Washington, with senior officials warning Israel that it would give Israel 30 days to strengthen humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip or risk having some U.S. military aid cut off.
The US letter to the Israeli government was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“We wrote this letter to emphasize the U.S. government’s deep concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and to seek urgent and sustained action by the government this month to reverse this trajectory,” the two said.
However, EU foreign affairs and security chief Josep Borrell ignored the US warning.
“The United States told Israel that it had to improve its humanitarian aid to Gaza, but gave it a one-month delay,” he told reporters in Brussels.
“At the current rate of deaths, it’s a month late. There are too many people.”
