“It is weaponised hunger. It is forced displacement,” said one UN human rights official. “All combined, it appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life from Gaza.”

After more than 20 months of  Israel using a blockade on humanitarian aid as a “method of war”, as one leading human rights group said earlier this month, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday [24 June] that Israel-backed aid operations have also amounted to a “weaponisation of food” – and constitute a war crime.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 410 Palestinians had now been killed by the Israel Defence Forces while trying to retrieve food aid from distribution points set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US- and Israel-backed group staffed by US security forces.

The GHF has been opposed by the UN and humanitarian groups that have long served Palestinians in Gaza, with advocates warning the group’s plan, to require civilians to travel on foot across the war-torn enclave to retrieve food boxes at hubs guarded by the IDF, violates basic principles of neutrality in humanitarian aid.

Thameen Al-Keetan, spokesperson for the OHCHR,  said that after nearly a month in operation, the UN had determined that the “militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism is in contradiction with international standards on aid distribution”.

“The weaponisation of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime and, under certain circumstances, may constitute elements of other crimes under international law,” said Al-Keetan.

The statement came after at least 51 Palestinians were  killed at aid sites in the IDF’s latest attacks on Tuesday. The killings were among those that took the total death toll of Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has been called a genocide by leading experts and human rights groups, past 56,000.

“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food.”

While the GHF’s food boxes are “leaving unaddressed the critical needs of those who have so far survived”, according to the latest update from the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, hundreds of Palestinians had been either “shelled or shot” by the IDF while trying to reach GHF hubs.

Numerous  reports have surfaced of Israeli soldiers shooting at crowds of Palestinians when they have deviated from “designated access routes” or moved toward the IDF at GHF distribution points.

At least 3000 Palestinians have also been injured in attacks while trying to access aid.

“Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food,” said the OHCHR.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Whittall, the head of office in the occupied Palestinian territories for the OCHA, noted that the UN and other experienced aid agencies stand ready to provide sufficient humanitarian aid to the enclave’s more than 2 million people – 1 in 5 of whom were facing imminent starvation last month when the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification released its latest assessment.

“It is weaponised hunger,” said Whittall of the current conditions inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli Government. “It is forced displacement. It’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive. All combined, it appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life from Gaza.”

The UN and other aid providers currently rely on Israel to facilitate all humanitarian relief missions, and over the weekend, said the OHCHR, only eight out of 16 operations were approved.

“Half of [the missions] were denied outright, hindering the tracking of water and fuel, the provision of nutrition services, and the retrieval of the bodies,” said Alessandra Vellucci, director of information services at UN Geneva.

Al-Keetan  told Reuters that the legal determination regarding whether Israel is guilty of a war crime related to its reported targeting of civilians at aid sites “needs to be made by a court of law”.

South Africa has a  case pending at the International Court of Justice regarding its allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and the International Criminal Court  issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, as well as as a Hamas commander who is now dead, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The UN’s statements on Tuesday came a day after 15 rights groups wrote to the GHF, warning the privatised group that its contractors working with the IDF risk “aiding and abetting or otherwise being complicit in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide,” and could be liable in a court of law in the US or internationally.

“By obliging starving, exhausted Palestinians to walk long distances through militarised zones, or by effectively forcing them to relocate in order to obtain food and aid under a system overseen by Israeli forces and US private military contractors, the scheme creates an immediate risk of forced displacement that may violate the prohibition on forcible displacement of civilians,” said the groups, including Al Haq, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

“By instrumentalising humanitarian aid for political or military ends,” said the groups, “the scheme risks rendering its participants complicit in collective punishment, the starvation of civilians, and other acts prohibited under customary international law, the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the Genocide Convention.”

Republished from Common Dreams, 24 June 2024

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.