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kaja kallas
Famine Expert: Israel's Starvation of Gaza Most 'Minutely Designed and Controlled' Since WWII
"This is preventable starvation," said Alex de Waal. "It is entirely man-made."
Jul 22, 2025
A leading global authority on famine on Monday accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip, remarks that came amid a steadily rising death toll from malnutrition caused by the 654-day U.S.-backed Israeli siege and obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.
"I've been working on this topic for more than four decades, and there is no case since World War II of starvation that is being so minutely designed and controlled," Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Al Jazeera.
"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."
The Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—said Tuesday that 15 more Palestinians, including four children, died from malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of starvation deaths in the coastal enclave to at least 101, including 80 children, since October 2023. The ministry said that 21 Gaza children have starved to death over the past three days alone.
When combined with lack of medicine, malnutrition has claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives in Gaza, according to officials there.
"I am so hungry," Ruwaida Amer, a 30-year-old Gaza woman, wrote for +972 Magazine Monday. "We are starving. My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza's children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them."
Another Gaza woman, Amina Badir, told Amer while clutching her starving 3-year-old: "Tell me how to save my daughter Rahaf from death. For a week she's eaten nothing but a single spoon of lentils each day."
"She's suffering from malnutrition. There's no treatment, no milk at the hospital," Badir added. "They've taken away her right to live. I see death in her eyes."
Gaza medical officials say 17,000 children are severely malnourished in the strip. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, also known as the IPC scale, at least 244,000 people in Gaza are in Phase 5, defined as such "an extreme deprivation of food" that "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident."
The "complete siege" imposed on Gaza immediately following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel has fueled widespread starvation and disease, and has been condemned as a war crime. The International Criminal Court last year ordered the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged murder and forced starvation of Gazans. The International Court of Justice is also weighing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa.
Amid intense international pressure, Israel partially lifted its siege of Gaza in May. However, de Waal and others say the move is wholly inadequate to prevent the famine taking hold in the strip.
"The partial lifting was not to bring in the kind of humanitarian program that we have been familiar with as humanitarians over the decades," de Waal told Al Jazeera Monday. "It was to bring in a type of rationed program that is simply an arm of the Israeli military."
Israel has also come under intense criticism for its method of delivering aid in Gaza via the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose distribution points have been the sites of near-daily massacres. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and troops say they were ordered to shoot and shell desperate aid-seekers at GHF distribution centers. Officials said at least 10 aid-seekers were killed on Tuesday alone.
"The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible."
"As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near [United Nations] and other humanitarian organizations' aid convoys," U.N. human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told Agence France-Presse.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said Tuesday that "the killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible," adding that the "IDF must stop killing people at distribution points."
Overall, at least 59,029 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 142,000 others have been wounded, and at least 14,000 more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.Other international humanitarian experts also weighed in on the growing Gaza famine, with Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, telling Al Jazeera Monday that the "man-made" starvation in the strip "is a war crime."
"Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians and has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid," he said. "What we're seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israel's 20-month starvation campaign."
"What we're seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israels starvation campaign... Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians & has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid..."Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food
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— Saul Staniforth (@saulstaniforth.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters Tuesday that "our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left."
"Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in," he explained. "That's why we are so angry. Because our job is to help."
"Israel is not yielding," Egeland added. "They just want to paralyze our work."
This article has been corrected to state that 244,000 Palestinians in Gaza were in Phase 5 of starvation in May 2025. A previous version incorrectly stated that 85% of the population was in Phase 5.
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Outrage After Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot Live Rounds at Foreign Diplomats in West Bank
Among those shot at were representatives of three nations that threatened "concrete actions" if Israel doesn't end its assault and siege on Gaza and others that support a genocide case against the country.
May 21, 2025
Israeli occupation forces fired what they called "warning shots" at a large delegation of international diplomats visiting the besieged Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on Wednesday, an incident many critics said was an attempt to intimidate countries that just two days earlier issued an ultimatum to stop annihilating Gaza and others that have joined a genocide case against Israel.
Palestinian officials were briefing a group of more than 20 diplomats about the crisis in the illegally occupied West Bank—where Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians including hundreds of children since October 2023 while pushing ahead with massive land theft and colonization—when they came under fire.
According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the delegation "deviated" from the route approved by Israeli occupation authorities "and entered an area where they were not authorized to be," prompting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers to fire "warning shots to distance them away."
"The IDF regrets the inconvenience caused," the ministry added.
Israeli soldiers intentionally fired at a delegation of about 30 Arab & EU diplomats, ambassadors and consuls, visiting Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank. Israel claims "it was an accident" and that they fired "warning shots" because they "felt in danger". Israel was trying to intimidate them.
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— Anonymous ( @youranoncentral.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Israeli media reported IDF troops fired shots in the air. However, video footage of the incident appears to show soldiers aiming their guns and firing straight ahead in the direction of the diplomats as they scrambled for cover. Israeli officials have often been caught lying about the actions of IDF troops in Palestine.
The delegation included diplomats from the European Union and countries including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
On Monday, three of those countries—France, the United Kingdom, and Canada—issued a rare joint statement condemning Operation Gideon's Chariots, the ongoing Israeli campaign to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population.
On Tuesday, the U.K. announced it is suspending negotiations with Israel on a free trade agreement, explaining that "it is not possible to advance discussions on a new, upgraded FTA" with a government "that is pursuing egregious policies in the West Bank and Gaza."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza including extermination and forced starvation.
The U.K. additionally sanctioned three far-right Israeli extremists, including settler leader Daniella Weiss, as well as three illegal settlement outposts and two groups "that have supported, incited, and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank."
Also on Tuesday, European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas—who is the E.U.'s foreign policy chief—said the 27-nation bloc would review its political and economic agreement with Israel in light of the "catastrophic" situation in Gaza.
Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, Spain, and Turkey have either joined or expressed support for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—which last year found that Israel's 58-year occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible.
Israel's 592-day assault and siege on Gaza has left more than 189,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and over 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned what it called Wednesday's "heinous crime" against the diplomats.
"The delegation was undertaking an official mission to observe and assess the humanitarian situation and document the ongoing violations perpetrated by the occupying forces against the Palestinian people," the ministry said. "This deliberate and unlawful act constitutes a blatant and grave breach of international law and of the fundamental principles of diplomatic relations as enshrined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."
Kallas said Wednesday that "any threats on diplomats' lives are unacceptable."
"Israel is also a signatory to the Vienna Convention, I mean the obligation to guarantee the security of all foreign diplomats," Kallas noted. "We definitely call on Israel to investigate this incident and also hold accountable [those] who are responsible for this."
The governments of other countries whose diplomats were targeted on Wednesday condemned the incident, with some, including France and Italy, summoning their Israeli ambassadors.
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