THERE is “nothing natural” about the famine in Gaza and Western pressure on Israel through a total arms embargo is urgent, left MPs and campaigners said today.
They spoke out as the UN’s top human rights official said Tel Aviv could be using starvation as “a weapon of war” in the overcrowded territory as its invasion enters its fifth month.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told the BBC that if the intent to do this was proven it would amount to a war crime.
Mr Turk condemned the Hamas attack of October 7, during which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 others were taken hostage. But he also said that no side in the war should evade accountability for its actions, including for any attempt to withhold aid supplies from the people who need it in Gaza.
He told the BBC: “All of my humanitarian colleagues keep telling us that there is a lot of red tape. There are obstacles. There are hindrances. Israel is to blame in a significant way.”
“When you put all kinds of requirements on the table that are unreasonable in an emergency that brings up the question, with all the restrictions that we currently see, whether there is a plausible claim to be made that starvation is, or may be used as, a weapon of war.”
Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, blasted Mr Turk’s warnings as “total nonsense,” adding that it was “a totally irresponsible thing to say.”
He said the blame for aid not reaching the Palestinians lay with the UN’s failure to distribute it.
But Mr Turk was supported by the UNRWA, which has been the backbone of the humanitarian response for Palestinians since it was set up in 1948.
In a post on the X social media site UNRWA said “the clock is ticking fast towards famine in Gaza... [its] food convoys are prevented from reaching the north, where famine is imminent.”
The UN agency’s senior communications manager Jonathan Fowler said: “Northern Gaza is the epicentre of the famine, we simply need to have access to get food supplies in.”
UNRWA saw its funding halted by a number of nations after Israel made an unsubstantiated accusation in late January that 12 of its staff took part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack.
However, on Wednesday Germany joined a growing number of countries that have restarted funding for UNRWA because of Israel’s continued failure to provide evidence. British funding is still frozen.
In Britain activists lined up to demand the aid be let in.
“There is nothing natural or accidental about the famine, water shortage or medical emergency in Gaza,” former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn stressed. “Arms exports must cease, the occupation and settlement policy must end.”
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson called on the UN security council to “enforce its resolution” demanding an immediate ceasefire, passed on Monday but ignored by Israel. “The aid must be allowed in — our government must do more to make that happen,” she insisted.
Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott denounced the “tragedy” of the “Israeli genocide in Gaza, while No Cold War Britain’s Fiona Edwards said Israel had created “apocalyptic conditions” in the strip.
Communist Party international secretary Kevan Nelson said the Israeli government stood “condemned in the eyes of the world.
“Nothing short of a total economic embargo of Israel, including an immediate end to arms sales is a sufficient political response to this barbarism.”
The official death toll from Israel’s invasion now stands at 32,414 Palestinians killed and over 75,000 wounded. Around two-thirds of the dead are women and children.
Ireland showed its growing concern on Wednesday when announcing it intends to intervene in the case led by South Africa against Israel to the International Court of Justice.
The case, brought before the court in January, will eventually decide whether Israel is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians. Israel denies the charge.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Michael Martin condemned the actions of Hamas on October 7 but added: “Half the population of Gaza face imminent famine and 100 per cent of the population face acute food insecurity.”
The ICJ ruled in January that Israel must take all measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza but a final judgement in the case is likely to be years away.
Meanwhile an international team of doctors visiting a hospital in central Gaza said the gruesome impact Israel’s assault on Gaza is having on Palestinian children still left them stunned.
Roughly half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are 17 or younger, the UN’s agency for children estimates.
After a 10-hour night shift at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive-care doctor from Jordan, said one toddler died from a brain injury caused by an Israeli strike that fractured his skull.
His cousin, an infant, is still fighting for her life with part of her face blown off by the same strike.
Dr Haj-Hassan said: “I spend most of my time here resuscitating children.
“What does that tell you about every other hospital in the Gaza Strip?”
Mustafa Abu Qassim, a nurse from Jordan who was part of the visiting team, said he was shocked by the overcrowding.
“When we look for patients, there are no rooms,” he said. “They are in the corridors on a bed, a mattress, or on a blanket on the floor.”
Israel holds Hamas responsible for the deaths of “non-combatants,” saying that they operate from within civilian areas.
