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By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 15 Palestinians have died of starvation in the past 24 hours across the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of deaths from hunger and malnutrition to 101, including 80 children, as Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave for over four months.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry on Tuesday, 15 people died from starvation in the past 24 hours, including four children.

It added a total of 101 people, including 80 children, have died due to hunger and malnutrition since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

“This is a silent massacre. The Ministry of Health holds the Israeli occupation and the international community fully responsible. We urgently call for the immediate opening of all crossings to allow the entry of food and medicine,” it added.

On Sunday, at least one Palestinian died of hunger every 80 minutes in Gaza as “Israel maintains a systematic starvation policy against 2 million residents,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Moreover, Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 900 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 60,000 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Additionally, 46 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”

“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

22 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli army has committed one of its most heinous massacres against starving civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in northern Gaza. According to Euro-Med Monitor field documentation, Israeli forces killed 67 people and injured dozens more today. The occupation army ordered the civilians to approach aid trucks with their hands raised—a clear sign of surrender—and then opened fire on them without provocation.

Euro-Med Monitor’s team documented Israeli soldiers opening fire atcivilians as they neared the route used by aid trucks north of Gaza City. This deliberate killing, committed without any military necessity, reflects an unprecedented level of brutality and constitutes a clear act of genocide aimed at eliminating the Palestinian population through a series of crimes including intentional killings, starvation, and forced displacement.

According to information gathered by Euro-Med Monitor’s field team, thousands of desperate civilians, driven by days of total flour shortages,headed early on Sunday to the Al-Waha area in northwest Gaza City after reports circulated that flour-laden trucks had entered via the Zikim crossing. In a desperate attempt to feed their families, many individuals rushed to the site.

When the first groups arrived, Israeli tanks were already stationed in the area. Soldiers then used loudspeakers to command: “Raise your hands and walk in front of the tanks—those who want flour, come forward.” Around 200 civilians complied. As they neared the aid trucks, Israeli forces suddenly opened heavy fire directly at their heads, instantly killing dozens. Others were left crawling, wounded, and bleeding. The massacre left 67 dead and more than 150 injured, many of whom are in critical condition.

In a separate incident, Israeli forces shot and killed six more starving civilians near a food distribution point run by the “Gaza Relief” organisation in Rafah as people attempted to access aid.

Notably, these attacks coincide with the peak of mass starvation across the Gaza Strip, where deaths from malnutrition are now documented and dozens have been hospitalised due to exhaustion and lack of food. Israel is deliberately using aid deliveries and distribution sites as death traps to lure in starving civilians—part of a systemic pattern of intentional killing, deprivation, and collective humiliation that flagrantly violates international law.

Euro-Med Monitor emphasises that the targeting of civilians attempting to access food, combined with the use of starvation as a weapon of war, constitutes grave breaches of international humanitarian and criminal law, including war crimes under the Rome Statute, namely: willful killing, targeting civilians, and starvation as a method of warfare.

The widespread and systematic nature of these violations meets the legal threshold for crimes against humanity, including murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts causing severe suffering or injury. These crimes are being committed as part of a large-scale, organised attack on the civilian population.

It is critical that the violations be viewed within the broader context of Israel’s systematic destruction of survival infrastructure, obstruction of aid, and imposition of deadly living conditions, along with public statementsmade by Israeli political and military leaders that reveal a clear, declared intent to destroy the Palestinian population in Gaza. The aforementioned atrocities and actions meet the definition of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention, particularly through the intentional killing of group members and imposing conditions of life intended to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also places responsibility on the international community and complicit governments for enabling these atrocities, especially the operation of aid distribution points by the so-called “Gaza Relief” body, which was forcibly imposed by the Israeli military to replace the UN aid mechanism in the Gaza Strip.

Euro-Med Monitor calls for an immediate cessation of the organisation’s operations and for an independent international investigation to hold its officials accountable before domestic and international courts for their role in facilitating systematic mass killings.

All states must hold accountable not only the Israeli leadership but also any state actors who directly or indirectly support the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, whether through political, military, or financial means. Such complicity constitutes criminal participation under Article 25 of the Rome Statute. Also responsible are those states that have failed to take meaningful measures to prevent or stop the genocide, and are therefore in breach of their obligations under international law.

Further, Euro-Med Monitor calls for urgent international investigations into the role of the so-called “Gaza Relief” entity in facilitating crimes against civilians and accountability for its founders, managers, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any staff involved—whether through planning, facilitation, direct contribution, or conscious failure to act.

Countries with universal or territorial jurisdiction are urged to launch criminal proceedings against individuals affiliated with this entity or its contracted private security firms for their roles in war crimes, including deliberate killings, starvation, and degrading treatment.

All states, individually and collectively, must urgently fulfill their legal obligations to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms. This includes taking concrete measures to protect Palestinian civilians in the enclave, ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and theInternational Court of Justice rulings, and guarantee full accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians. Euro-Med Monitor also calls for the enforcement of the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister, and for their swift surrender to international justice without regard to immunity.

The international community is urged to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel and its more powerful allies, particularly the United States, for their grave and systematic breaches of international law; these sanctions should include comprehensive arms embargoes and the suspension of all forms of political, financial, military, and intelligence cooperation. In addition, Euro-Med Monitor calls for freezing the assets of responsible Israeli, US, and any complicit EU officials, banning their travel, halting their military and security companies’ access to international markets, and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that facilitate Israel’s ongoing Western-backed crimes against the Palestinian people.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

21  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Malak Ridwan

The specter of famine has returned to Gaza, creeping through its shattered streets like a thief in the night, stealing the breath of children, the strength of mothers, and the dignity of fathers. It is a slow, cruel death—one that does not come with the sudden roar of bombs but with the silent gnawing of empty stomachs, the hollow eyes of those who have not known bread for days.

This is not Gaza’s first famine. Only last year, in January 2024, the people of the north endured a hunger no less severe than the current torment. Then, as now, flour, sugar, lentils—staples that once seemed too humble to notice—became treasures beyond reach. Families rationed grains like gold, stretching meager supplies to keep their children alive. Even then, medicine was a luxury few could afford. My own father, a diabetic, clutched his dwindling pills with trembling hands, counting each one, measuring his pain against the fear of running out.

Now, famine has returned, darker, deeper. The markets, if they can be called such, are graveyards of empty stalls. The few who find a sack of flour guard it like a secret, grinding it into coarse bread that tastes of dust and despair. Children no longer cry for sweets; they have forgotten the taste of sugar. Instead, they whimper weakly, their bellies swollen with hunger, their ribs pressing against skin stretched too thin.

And still, the world watches. Still, the trucks are stopped, the aid is delayed, the borders remain choked. Gaza starves in plain sight, while the powerful debate the arithmetic of suffering—how many calories a person needs to survive, how many grams of rice constitute a meal. But famine is not numbers. It is a father breaking his last piece of bread in half, pretending he is not hungry. It is a mother boiling water with a handful of salt, calling it soup. It is my diabetic father, counting his pills, praying they outlast the siege.

Gaza has known hunger before. It knows it too well. But how many famines must a people endure before the world remembers they are human?

Malak Ridwan is a writer from Gaza

21  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 18 Palestinians died of starvation on Sunday alone across the Gaza Strip, as Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave for over four months, with warnings that Gaza is “on the verge of catastrophic hunger.”

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 18 people died from starvation in the past 24 hours, including a man with special needs.

It added a total of 87 people, including 76 children and 10 adults, have died due to hunger and malnutrition since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

“This is a silent massacre. The Ministry of Health holds the Israeli occupation and the international community fully responsible. We urgently call for the immediate opening of all crossings to allow the entry of food and medicine,” it added.

On Saturday, two children also died from malnutrition: Yahya Al-Najjar and 35-day-old infant Jawad Al-Anqar.

On Sunday, at least one Palestinian died of hunger every 80 minutes in Gaza as “Israel maintains a systematic starvation policy against 2 million residents,” said Euro-Med Monitor.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Most humanitarian organisations, including the UN, have distanced themselves from GHF, arguing that the group violates humanitarian principles by restricting aid to south and central Gaza, requiring Palestinians to walk long distances to collect aid, and only providing limited aid, among other critiques. They have also said the model would increase forced displacement in Gaza.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

Moreover, Israeli mass killings of aid seekers near GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces.

Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 800 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 5,200 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Additionally, 46 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that “weaponizing aid in this manner may constitute crimes against humanity.”
“Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza,” MSF said.

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the “lethal” US-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza. In a post on X, Lazzarini indicated that Palestinian lives “have been so devalued”.

“It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” he said.

“Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible of this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.

Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

According to a Haaretz report, conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered forces to shoot at crowds waiting for food near or at the US-backed GHF aid sites to drive them away or disperse them, despite posing no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

In a recent statement, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinian civilians at US-Israeli aid distribution centers in Gaza. The army claimed new field instructions were issued based on “lessons learned.”

A new Associated Press report with leaked footage also detailed how American contractors at GHF aid sites used live ammunition, stun grenades and pepper spray against starving Palestinians seeking food.

21  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Gaza is starving. There has never been like it in this Israeli-induced and enforced genocide that has now been going on for about 19 months and counting.

People are literally falling in the streets and in front of the television cameras because of the biting hunger that doesn’t seem to end at the hands of a merciless Israeli enemy.

Of the people who manage to get to the dilapidated and destroyed hospitals they are dropping off on the doors of these institutions with many losing consciousness and even shrieking the last breath of death. And people die while the people in the world looks on with lavish feasts.

UNRWA says Israel is systematically and willfully starving the Palestinian population into submission; they want them either dead or expelled from their ancestral homes in the Gaza Strip. The UN refugee organization says that up to 1 million children are threatened with death through starvation. These figures are given as they are the most natural thing in the world.

This is one of the worst periods of the genocide as Arab and Israeli makers meet in Doha and elsewhere try to end this nightmare but to no avail as politics over-rides common sense and decency.

Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, director of the Al Shifa Hospital says that neither patients nor medical staff nor ancillary personnel in the whole of the Gaza hospitals, which number 36 in total, have had anything to eat in the last 24 hours. 

Al Jazeera correspondent Anis Alsharif says neither him nor the other anchors have had a bite to eat since Saturday afternoon because there isn’t any. People around here walk aimless until their last breath of death. Yet people, except for the frail seems to go on, as if their is an ordained hand telling, forcing them to go on.

The Israelis have refused to let  anything into Gaza since last March when they realized that there was a possibility that Palestinians would flourish again; and this is after they threw on them around 100,000 tons of bombs, facilitated by their American benefactors – a situation that begun soon after, 7 October, 2023.

There is simply no food into the strip thanks to Israel. Even animal fodder, which Gazans had been reduced to eating in order to survive in the first period of starvation in 2024 and early 2025, has run out. Then fodder like wheat and barley was eaten to survive, but this appears to be the end game.

In this brave new world of starvation and famine, food has become a scarce, nay, non-existent commodity because of Israeli policies to beat the Palestinians with but they will not win despite the evil intentions.

UNRWA continues to appeal to the international community to force Israel to lift its tight and claustrophobic siege on Gaza and let the aid, food and medicine into the strip. Meanwhile, it says it has its cargoes lying in the Sinai Peninsula waiting to be delivered to the starving people of Gaza. It says in its storehouses, it has three months of supplies but it’s waiting for the might of Israel to upon up the borders.

Meanwhile people are continuing to die starting from Rafah, in Khan Younis in the center of the Strip to the far-northern areas in Jabalia, Biet Lahia and Biet Hanoon where fighting is still going on between Palestinian resistance fighters and the Israeli army. 

In comes the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which has since last May tried to provide food parcels at distribution centers run by US and Israeli personnel and which is today turning into a “free-shooting killing field” of starving Palestinian that has young been denounced by the United Nations as “weaponizing food” with very sinister connotations that include depopulating Gaza of its original inhabitants.

Seeing is believing. Palestinians, and on a daily basis, and under the eyes of the world are shot fatally on a daily basis. Take Sunday for example, the number of those that have been killed is already in the 60s. As they run to get their food parcels they are shot by Israeli soldiers guarding the distribution centers. They are shot with no compunctions but with a sense of hellish deliverance.  

And it is the social media who are narrating, nay “dancing” on the graves of the Palestinians. This war is probably the most documented set of atrocities, but people, the international community, gaze on with a sense of helplessness, frustration and complicity. Professor Amos Goldberg, who teaches Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University, doesn’t mince words. He says this is a “disgusting genocide”. 

Dr Marwan Asmar  is a journalist based in Amman

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Francesca Albanese

Remarks of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, at the Hague Group Emergency Conference of States in Bogotá, Colombia.

Excellencies, Friends, 

I express my appreciation to the government of Colombia and South Africa for convening this group, and to all members of the Hague Group, its founding members for their principled stance, and the others who are joining. May you keep growing and so the strength and effectiveness of your concrete actions. 

Thank you also to the Secretariat for its tireless work, and last but not least, the Palestinian experts—individuals and organisations who travelled to Bogota from occupied Palestine, historical Palestine/Israel and other places of the diaspora/exile, to accompany this process, after providing HG with outstanding, evidence-based briefings.  

And of course all of you who are here today.

It is important to be here today, in a moment that may prove historical indeed. There is hope that these two days will move all present to work together to take concrete measures to end the genocide in Gaza and, hopefully, end the erasure of the Palestinians from what remains of Palestine—because this is the testing ground for a system where freedom, rights, and justice are made real for all. This hope, that people like me hold tight, is a discipline. A discipline we all should have.  

The occupied Palestinian territory today is a hellscape. In Gaza, Israel has dismantled even the last UN function—humanitarian aid—in order to deliberately starve, displace time and again, or kill a population they have marked for elimination. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, ethnic cleansing advances through unlawful siege, mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, widespread torture. Across all areas under Israeli rule, Palestinians live under the terror of annihilation, broadcast in real time to a watching world. The very few Israeli people who stand against genocide, occupation, and apartheid—while the majority openly cheers and calls for more—remind us that Israeli liberation, too, is inseparable from Palestinian freedom. 

The atrocities of the past 21 months are not a sudden aberration; they are the culmination of decades of policies to displace and replace the Palestinian people.  

Against this backdrop, it is inconceivable that political forums, from Brussels to NY, are still debating recognition of the State of Palestine—not because it’s unimportant, but because for 35 years states have stalled, refused recognition, pretending to “invest in the PA” while abandoning the Palestinian people to Israel’s relentless, rapacious territorial ambitions and unspeakable crimes. Meanwhile political discourse has reduced Palestine to a humanitarian crisis to manage in perpetuity rather than a political issue demanding principled and firm resolution: end permanent occupation, apartheid and today genocide. And it is not the law that has failed or faltered—it is political will that has abdicated. 

But today, we are also witnessing a rupture. Palestine’s immense suffering has cracked open the possibility of transformation. Even if this is not fully reflected into political agendas (yet), a revolutionary shift is underway—one that, if sustained, will be remembered as a moment when history changed course.  

And this is why I came to this meeting with a sense of being at a historical turning point —discursively and politically.  

First, the narrative is shifting: away from Israel’s endlessly invoked “right to self-defence” and toward the long-denied Palestinian right to self-determination—systematically invisibilised, suppressed and delegitimised for decades. The weaponisation of antisemitism applied to Palestinian words, and narratives, and the dehumanising use of the terrorism framework for Palestinian action (from armed resistance to the work of NGOs pursuing justice in international arena), has led to a global political paralysis that has been intentional. It must be redressed. The time is now. 

Second, and consequentially, we are seeing the rise of a new multilateralism: principled, courageous, increasingly led by the Global Majority it pains me that I have yet to see this include European countries. As a European, I fear what the region and its institutions have come to symbolize to many: a sodality of states preaching international law yet guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vassals to the US empire, even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery and when it comes to Palestine: from silence to complicity. 

But the presence of European countries at this meeting shows that a different path is possible. To them I say: the Hague Group has the potential to signal not just a coalition, but a new moral center in world politics. Please, stand with them.  

Millions are watching—hoping—for leadership that can birth a new global order rooted in justice, humanity, and collective liberation. This is not just about Palestine. This is about all of us. 

Principled states must rise to this moment. It does not need to have a political allegiance, color, political party flags or ideologies: it needs to be upheld by basic human values. Those which Israel has been mercilessly crushing for 21 months now. 

Meanwhile I applaud the calling of this emergency conference in Bogota to address the unrelenting devastation in Gaza. So it is on this, that focus must be directed. The measures adopted in January by the Hague Group were symbolically powerful. It was the signal of the discursive and political shift needed. But they are the absolute bear minimum. I implore you to expand your commitment. And to turn that commitment into concrete actions, legislatively, judicially in each of your jurisdictions. And to consider first and foremost, what must we do to stop the genocidal onslaught. For Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, this question is existential. But it really is applicable to the humanity of all of us.  

In  this context my responsibility here is to recommend to you, uncompromisingly and dispassionately, the cure for the root cause. We are long past dealing with symptoms, the comfort zone of too many these days. And my words will show that what the Hague Group has committed to do and is considering expanding upon, is a small commitment towards what’s just and due based on your obligations under international law. 

Obligations, not sympathy, not charity. 

Each state immediately review and suspend all ties with Israel. Their military, strategic, political, diplomatic, economic,  relations – both imports and exports –  and to make sure that their private sector, insurers, banks, pension funds, universities and other goods, and services providers in the supply chains do the same. Treating the occupation as business as usual translates into supporting or providing aid or assistance to the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT. These ties must be terminated as a matter of urgency. I will have the opportunity to elaborate on  the technicalities and implications in our further sessions but lets be clear, I mean cutting ties with Israel as a whole. Cutting ties only with the “components” of it in the oPt is not an option. 

This is in line with the duty on all states stemming from the July 2024 Advisory Opinion which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, which it declared tantamount to racial segregation and apartheid . The General Assembly adopted that opinion. These findings are more than sufficient for action. Further, it is the state of Israel who is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, so it is the state that must be responsible for its wrongdoings. 

As I argue in my last report to the HRC, the Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation, and has now turned genocidal. It is impossible to disentangle Israel’s state policies and economy from its longstanding policies and economy of occupation. It has been inseparable for decades. The longer states and others stay engaged, the more this illegality at its heart is legitimised. This is the complicity. Now that economy has turned genocidal. There is no good Israel, bad Israel. 

I ask you to consider this moment as if we were sitting here in the 1990s, discussing the case of apartheid South Africa. Would you have proposed selective sanctions on SA for its conduct in individual Bantustans? Or would you have recognised the state’s criminal system as a whole? And here, what Israel is doing is worse. This comparison— is a legal and factual assessment supported by international legal proceedings many in this room are part of.  

This is what concrete measures mean. Negotiating with Israel on how to manage what remains of Gaza and West Bank, in Brussels or elsewhere, is an utter dishonor international law. 

And to the Palestinians and those from all corners of the world standing by them, often at great cost and sacrifice, I say whatever happens, Palestine will have written this tumultuous chapter—not as a footnote in the chronicles of would-be conquerors, but as the newest verse in a centuries-long saga of peoples who have risen against injustice, colonialism, and today more than ever neoliberal tyranny.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Gaza is “on the brink of mass death” and facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, as Israel’s blockade continues for more than four months.

“We are on the brink of mass death due to the Israeli occupation’s closure of all border crossings for over 140 consecutive days, the prevention of humanitarian and relief aid, baby formula, and fuel from entering, the complete tightening of the blockade, the depletion of food and medicine, and the continuation of a deliberate starvation policy,” Gaza’s Government Media Office warned on Sunday.

It added, “The world watches silently as Gaza is slaughtered and exterminated through hunger and genocide.”

“We are witnessing the largest mass massacre in modern history.”

The Office said, “Gaza is heading toward an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe amid ongoing Israeli genocide through mass killing and starvation targeting more than 2.4 million people, including 1.1 million children, in the Gaza Strip.”

Starvation in Gaza has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, aid groups and officials have warned.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.”

He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned on Sunday, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, according to reports by human rights organisations who have accused it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report in May warned that almost a quarter of the civilian population would face catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase Five) in the coming months.

After more than 80 days of total blockade, starvation, and growing international outrage, limited aid has allegedly been distributed by the GHF, a scandal-plagued organization backed by the US and Israel, created to bypass the UN’s established aid delivery infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Mass killings of aid seekers near and at GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces and American mercenaries. Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 900 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces and American mercenaries and over 6,000 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The UN confirmed that Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians with only a few trucks of aid having reached Gaza.

The markets are empty of all basic needs, including flour and vegetables. For the majority of people, such luxuries are unavailable except at unimaginable prices.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Over 40 starving people were killed and dozens more injured on Sunday after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd seeking aid in northern Gaza, amid a months-long blockade that has left the enclave “on the verge of catastrophic hunger.”

Local and medical sources confirmed that 45 starving aid seekers were killed and more than 60 others injured while waiting for flour trucks to enter through the Zikim crossing.

Reports said the number is expected to rise.

Israeli forces targeted and killed the aid seekers as they were starving.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that the number of aid seekers killed by the Israeli army over the last two months has risen to more than 900, with 6,000 others injured.

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Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 130 people have been killed and 495 wounded in the past 24 hours.

That brings the death toll since the start of Israel’s war to 58,895 with 140,980 people also wounded.

Israeli political analyst Gideon Levy has accused the government of planning ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“Someone conceived it, there were discussions of pros and cons, alternatives were suggested, options of total cleansing vs. stages, and all done in air-conditioned conference rooms with minutes taken and decisions made,” Levy wrote in an opinion piece on Israeli media outlet Haaretz.

“For the first time since the war of revenge in Gaza began, it’s clear that Israel has a plan – and it’s a far-reaching one.

“This is no longer a rolling war. One can no longer accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of waging a war with no purpose. There is a purpose to this war, and it’s a criminal one. One can no longer tell army commanders that their troops are dying for no reason: They are dying in a war of ethnic cleansing.”

The article refers to the Israeli army’s plan to forcibly transfer Gaza’s entire population to a concentration zone in the south.

20  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

In Gaza’s emergency rooms, doctors now face a wave of patients suffering not from injury, but from hunger. The Ministry of Health confirmed that unprecedented numbers of people, from infants to the elderly, are arriving at hospitals in extreme exhaustion due to starvation.

The cause is not a drought or a natural disaster. It is the direct result of Israel’s full blockade, now in its 139th consecutive day. And the death toll is rising.

So far, 69 children have died from malnutrition. Another 620 patients have died due to the lack of food and medicine. Behind every number is a slow, painful process that strips the human body of life one stage at a time.

The Body’s Breakdown: A Four-Stage Collapse

Stage One: The Hunger Takes Over
In the first 48 hours without food, your body uses up its stored sugar (glycogen) from the liver and muscles. Hunger pangs hit hard. You feel anxious, irritable, and dizzy. Your stomach cramps. You may struggle to focus. Energy vanishes quickly, and even walking becomes a task. Children scream in discomfort or go silent from exhaustion.

Stage Two: Muscle Melts, Immunity Crumbles
After a few days, your body switches to survival mode. It starts breaking down fat into ketones for fuel. But when fat runs low, your muscles become the next target. You begin to lose strength. Your immune system weakens. Small infections grow dangerous. You feel cold, even when it’s hot. Simple tasks like standing or thinking become harder.

Stage Three: Your Organs Struggle to Keep Up
Now weeks in, your body is wasting away. You look skeletal. Your skin turns dry and brittle. Some parts of your body, like your belly or feet, may swell due to protein loss. Your heart rate drops. Your liver and kidneys slow down. Your mind becomes foggy. You may forget where you are. Some start hallucinating. You no longer recognize your own voice or the people around you.

Stage Four: The Final Shutdown
Eventually, your body gives up. You no longer feel hunger. Swallowing becomes impossible. You might fall unconscious or slip into a coma. Your organs (heart, lungs, liver) begin to fail. Death often comes quietly, not from hunger itself, but from a final, irreversible shutdown.

The Gaza Numbers That Should Alarm the World

In addition to the rising death toll, the Government Media Office in Gaza released staggering figures today:

• 650,000 children are now at risk of dying from hunger and malnutrition.
• 76,450 aid and fuel trucks have been blocked from entering Gaza in the past 139 days.
• 42 charity kitchens and 57 aid centers have been directly targeted by Israeli forces.
• 877 people have been killed near American-Israeli “aid centers.”
• 12,500 cancer patients and 60,000 pregnant women are also facing starvation without access to treatment or food.

A Man-Made Famine, a Global Failure

Starvation is not just physical. It destroys dignity, memory, and hope. In Gaza, it comes with the added trauma of displacement, bombardment, and abandonment by the international community.

“This is not just a humanitarian crisis,” the Government Media Office stated. “It is a deliberate policy. And the governments who support Israel or remain silent are complicit.”

The office called for immediate global action: opening the crossings, lifting the siege, and allowing unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza before more lives are lost.

But as of today, the siege remains. And every passing hour brings Gaza closer to a famine that the world could stop, but hasn’t.

18  July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 70 starved Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Friday, including 36 people trying to collect humanitarian aid, according to medical sources in Gaza hospitals.

Al-Awda Hospital reported that nine Palestinians, including a baby and a child, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in southern Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Three more bodies of aid seekers were recovered near the Netzarim corridor, south of Gaza City, according to al-Shifa Hospital.

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A separate Israeli strike hit an apartment near Al-Shaabiya intersection in Gaza City, injuring several civilians, Gaza emergency services confirmed.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it holds enough food to feed the entire population of Gaza for more than three months. But the supplies remain stuck in warehouses, awaiting Israeli permission to enter.

Some of the food is stored in Al-Arish, Egypt, ready for distribution. UNRWA stressed that its logistics are in place, but it cannot operate unless the crossings open and the siege is lifted.

The agency renewed its call to allow aid entry, saying it is ready to fulfill its humanitarian duty and support the population, including one million children.

The Gaza Ministry of Health issued a grim warning in a statement, saying:

“A deadly famine and bloody massacres near aid centers are threatening thousands of lives.”

The ministry confirmed that the Strip is facing a “real famine,” marked by a severe shortage of basic food and a surge in malnutrition.

Health teams have recorded a sharp rise in hunger-related deaths and urged immediate international intervention, warning of an “unprecedented health and humanitarian disaster.”

The spokesman for Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said that all departments are full, and medical teams can no longer admit or treat new cases.

Gaza’s healthcare system is collapsing under Israel’s siege and repeated strikes. With famine spreading and aid blocked, the situation continues to spiral toward catastrophe.

 19 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org