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forensic architecture
Report Details Israel's 'Architecture of Genocidal Starvation' in Gaza
The new report comes as the world's top authority on hunger crises officially declared a full-blown famine in the Palestinian territory.
Aug 22, 2025
As the world's leading authority on hunger crises officially declared a catastrophic famine in Gaza, a report published Friday details how Israel has dismantled the time-tested civilian aid distribution model and replaced it with a military-based system in which many Palestinians are not only dying from starvation but are also being killed while trying to obtain food.
Forensic Architecture (FA)—a multidisciplinary research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London—and World Peace Foundation (WPF), a philanthropic organization affiliated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts—published The Architecture of Genocidal Starvation in Gaza, March-August 2025, "revealing how... Israel has dismantled the proven and internationally-backed 'civilian model' of aid distribution, replacing it with a 'military model' which furthers Israel's military and political objectives in Gaza while starving the region's civilian population."
"Aid can be lethal when used in a manipulative way," an introduction to the report states. "We have unpacked the architecture of starvation imposed by Israel in Gaza. It is composed of acts of construction and destruction: the destruction of Palestinian agriculture and food sovereignty, the destruction of Palestinian civil society, and the construction of death traps."
A report by @forensicarchi.bsky.social & WPF examines two models for aid in #Gaza, showing how Israel has dismantled the internationally-backed ‘civilian model’, replacing it with a ‘military model’ which furthers Israel’s objectives while starving civilians.Read more here: shorturl.at/DYpkA
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— World Peace Foundation (@worldpeacefdtn.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 5:07 AM
The report opens by noting a March 2024 provisional order by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—a product of the tribunal's ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—directing the Israeli government to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel ignored the order and ramped up its forced starvation of Gaza.
"In Gaza, under the Israeli system of aid distribution, intentional mass starvation is happening on two levels, the biological starvation of individuals through the provision of starvation rations, or no rations at all," the report's authors wrote, as well as "the destruction of the group as a whole, through collective dehumanization, separating the population from its land, and the disintegration of a functioning Palestinian society in Gaza."
According to the report, Israel has dismantled the "civilian model" of aid distribution by:
- Attacking essential aid infrastructure like warehouses, distribution points, kitchens, and bakeries;
- Restricting the supply of aid into Gaza by international humanitarian organizations; and
- Creating the conditions for aid diversion, including attacking groups tasked with securing aid routes, and failing to intervene in the diversion of aid in areas controlled by the Israeli military.
The report says Israel has implemented a "dangerous and deadly" system in which there are only four ration stations run by the US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), "all located in military zones."
Described by many as "death traps," GHF's aid points have been the sites of regular Israeli massacres of desperate Palestinian aid-seekers. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded while trying to obtain aid in Gaza, including more than 850 people slain at or near GHF centers. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) whistleblowers have said they were ordered to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of desperate aid-seekers, even when they posed no security threat—accounts corroborated by a former US special forces colonel who resigned from GHF.
The new report found at least 64 incidents of Palestinian civilians "being attacked by the Israeli military while seeking aid, including 25 incidents at and around GHF ration stations," as well as dozens of attacks on aid infrastructure, humanitarian workers, and police.
Gaza's Government Media Office said earlier this year that more than 1,500 humanitarian workers were killed in Gaza since October 2023, including medical and civil defense personnel. The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said this week that 181 aid workers were killed while working in Gaza last year—accounting for nearly half of all such fatalities worldwide. Israel has baselessly accused many of these slain aid workers—especially employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—of being members of Hamas or other militant groups.
The new report also notes that "airdropped aid landed in active combat zones, or in densely populated areas, where airdrops have killed people, and destroyed shelters." Palestinians have also drowned while trying to reach aid airdropped into the Mediterranean Sea, which the IDF has prohibited Gazans from entering under penalty of death.
Furthermore, the report's authors found that Palestinians must walk an average of more than three-and-a-half miles to the nearest GHF aid point, with such centers being open for an average of just 10 minutes at a time between June 19 and July 4.
The publication also highlights the 58 evacuation orders to which Gazans have been subjected. Critics have called "evacuation" a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Israeli operations, including Gideon's Chariots and the newly launched Gideon's Chariots 2, are aimed at conquering Gaza and ethnically cleansing its residents to locations including a proposed concentration camp that would be built over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.
The report concludes that Israel is "instrumentalizing aid" in order to:
- Enforce displacement and reconcentration;
- Make reaching aid deadly and dangerous;
- Undermine civil order, dismantle the social fabric of Palestinian society, and dehumanize Palestinians; and
- Permit and enable the diversion of aid.
"The dehumanization of Palestinians, the stripping of basic dignity, and the tearing apart of the fabric of the community are not accidental byproducts of the mass starvation inflicted on the people of Gaza," the report's authors assert. "There is every reason to believe that these are what Israel intends through its militarized ration system."
The report's publication adds to the body of research on Israel's weaponized starvation—one of the alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Earlier this week, Amnesty International—one of a growing number of human rights defenders around the world accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza—said the country's government is "carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life."
Last month, WPF executive director Alex de Waal, a leading global authority on famine, asserted that "there is no case since World War II of starvation that is being so minutely designed and controlled" as Israel is doing in Gaza.
"This is preventable starvation. It is entirely man-made," de Waal added. "And every stage of this has been predicted, and at every stage action could have been taken—by Israel, by the international authorities, [the] international community, those who back Israel—to prevent what is happening now... Those steps have simply not been taken."
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Hind Rajab Killing: Analysis Finds Israeli Tank Fired 335 Bullets Into Car at Close Range
"It's not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children," an investigation of the five-year-old Palestinian girl's death found.
Jun 22, 2024
An Israeli tank or tanks likely fired the bullets that killed five-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and six relatives as they sat in a car in northern Gaza in January, according to an analysis released Friday that adds to evidence of the Israeli military's role in an indiscriminate killing which galvanized anti-war protests around the world earlier this year.
A tank had to have been positioned between 13 and 23 meters from the family car when it fired the shots that killed Layan Hamada, Hind Rajab's 15-year-old cousin, and it's "not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children," wrote the authors of the analysis, which was completed by U.K. research agency Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, with Earshot, an NGO, and Al Jazeera journalists.
The investigators found 335 bullet holes on the body of the Kia Picanto the family was using.
An Israeli tank also likely killed the two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics who came to the scene, the analysis found. The new analysis refutes Israel's contention that its forces were not responsible for the killings, which caused an international outcry.
More amazing investigative journalism by my colleagues @ForensicArchi on the murder of #HindRajab by Israeli forces: "it is not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians". No UK media outlet has picked it up yet https://t.co/GLSpgVdKps
— Des Freedman (@lazebnic) June 22, 2024
On January 29, seven extended family members including the young Rajab tried to flee Gaza City by car. Rajab remained alive for at least three hours after the other six had been killed, and was on the phone with the PRCS, pleading for help. "I'm so scared, please come," she said, according to The Guardian.
Hamada, the 15 year old, had herself been on the phone with the PRCS when she was killed. A released audio recording of her final moments, in which she explains that a tank is next to the car and shooting at them, went viral.
⏺️Audio recording of the moment gunfire was directed at 15-year-old Layan Hamadeh while she was speaking on the phone with the Palestine Red Crescent team.
💔Layan was killed, and 6-year-old Hind remained trapped inside the car surrounded by the occupation tanks and soldiers.… pic.twitter.com/iMHGdoRcni
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) January 30, 2024
The bodies of the seven family members and two paramedics, whose vehicle was attacked nearby, were found 12 days later, on February 10.
The new analysis broadly fits with findings of an in-depth investigation of the family's killing conducted by The Washington Post in April, adding new details and strengthening the case that Israeli forces were culpable. Following the new release, Medhi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, argued that those who continue to support the killing of Palestinian children are sociopaths.
Columbia student protesters honored Rajab by naming an occupied academic building "Hind's Hall" in late April. Rajab was generally reported as having been six years old at the time of her death, but The Guardian issued a correction in May stating that she had been just five years old.
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Ecocide a 'Critical Dimension of Israel's Genocidal Campaign' in Gaza: Probe
Analysis by a research group found that roughly 40% of Gaza land that was previously used for food production has been destroyed by Israeli forces.
Mar 29, 2024
The widespread destruction Israel's military has inflicted on Gaza's farmland and agricultural infrastructure amounts to a "deliberate act of ecocide," according to a new investigation that uses satellite imagery to survey the extent of the damage.
Released Friday ahead of Palestine's Land Day, the analysis by the London-based research group Forensic Architecture (FA) shows that Israel's ground forces—including tanks and other military vehicles—have advanced over half of Gaza's farms and orchards, critical food sources that the besieged enclave's population has worked tirelessly to cultivate in the face of decades of occupation.
"Since 2014, Palestinian farmers along Gaza's perimeter have seen their crops sprayed by airborne herbicides and regularly bulldozed, and have themselves faced sniper fire by the Israeli occupation forces," FA said. "Along that engineered 'border,' sophisticated systems of fences and surveillance reinforce a military buffer zone."
Comparing satellite imagery from prior to Israel's invasion and the present, FA found that roughly 40% of Gaza land that was previously used for food production has been destroyed by Israeli forces. Nearly a third of Gaza's greenhouses have been demolished, according to the investigation.
"In total, Forensic Architecture has identified more than 2,000 agricultural sites, including farms and greenhouses, which have been destroyed since October 2023, often to be replaced with Israeli military earthworks," the group said. "This destruction has been most intense in the northern part of Gaza, where 90% of greenhouses were destroyed in the early stages of the ground invasion."
It is no surprise, then, that northern Gaza is currently experiencing famine conditions, with most of the population there at imminent risk of starvation as Israeli forces impede the flow of humanitarian assistance and continue their relentless bombing campaign.
Leading human rights organizations have accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, pointing to the decimation of the territory's agricultural sector and attacks on aid convoys. The United Nations warned less than two months into Israel's assault that "in the north, livestock is facing starvation and the risk of death due to shortage of fodder and water."
NEW INVESTIGATION: Since Oct '23, the Israeli military has systematically targeted agricultural land and infrastructure in Gaza. To mark Land Day in Palestine, we present our analysis of this widespread destruction as an act of ecocide that supports Israel’s genocidal campaign. pic.twitter.com/sgnmAsqdwa
— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) March 29, 2024
The new investigation was published amid growing global momentum to formally codify ecocide as an international crime alongside genocide, which Israel also stands accused of committing against Palestinians in Gaza.
An expert panel convened by Stop Ecocide International has defined ecocide as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts."
Ecocide is officially recognized as a crime in at least 10 countries, including France, Ecuador, Russia, and Ukraine. Earlier this week, the European Council adopted new rules that include a provision criminalizing acts deemed "comparable to ecocide."
FA's analysis argues that Israel's latest military assault on the Gaza Strip and the intentional targeting of the enclave's agriculture is "a critical dimension of Israel's genocidal campaign," fueling both a humanitarian and environmental disaster.
"The targeted farms and greenhouses are fundamental to local food production for a population already under a decades-long siege," the research group said. "The effects of this systematic agricultural destruction are exacerbated by other deliberate acts of deprivation of critical resources for Palestinian survival in Gaza."
"These acts include the well-reported, catastrophic, and Israeli-made famine ongoing in Gaza, continued obstruction of humanitarian aid destined for Gaza, the destruction of medical infrastructure, the destruction beyond repair of other areas of civilian infrastructure, including bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, and cultural heritage sites," the group added.
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