In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”
The group accused Israel of “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”.
“It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction – which is part and parcel of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty said.
Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians and turned Gaza into rubble since it launched its military offensive on October 7, 2023. Campaigners and rights organisations have called it a war of vengeance and identified Israeli actions as a genocide.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes .
Nearly one million Palestinians in Gaza City, many of whom have been displaced multiple times in the past two years, face forced displacement as Israel has intensified its attacks on the enclave’s main urban centre.
Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation.
More than 260 Palestinians, including over 110 children, have died of malnutrition during the war due to the Israeli blockade. The enclave – home to 2.1 million people – had already been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, but since the war began, Israel has tightened it, at times stopping all aid from entering and now allows only a trickle of supplies into the Strip.
