Despite ceasefire, Israel openly uses aid as weapon against Palestinians
Nearly a year after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over war crimes charges, including using starvation as a weapon of war, the Israeli prime minister continues to threaten Palestinians with restricting aid.
On Sunday, the Israeli government temporarily halted the flow of humanitarian assistance, and for days, it has been partially blocking the aid to pressure Hamas to locate and transfer the bodies of slain captives.
Blocking aid appears to be a clear violation of the ceasefire. It is also a breach of international humanitarian law.
The ICC Statute bars “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions”.
Moreover, UN investigators concluded in a report last month that Israel was using hunger as part of its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
“Israel’s use of starvation as a method of war through the total siege on the Gaza Strip has had devastating impacts on children as well, resulting in starvation, alarmingly high rates of acute malnutrition, increasing risks of outbreak of diseases such as cholera and chronic diarrhoea and significant excess mortality,” the report said.
Even after the ceasefire, Israel has continued to block aid to Gaza, while blaming other parties, including Hamas and the UN, for the humanitarian crisis in the territory.
Palestinians ‘don’t have the wherewithal’ to prevent resumption of genocide
Human rights advocate and former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness highlights the difficulty of retrieving the bodies of slain captives in Gaza, and stresses that Palestinians have little power to stop the resumption of the genocide.
“In this respect, the deal was set up to fail, right? Because there were so many bodies under so much rubble, there was so much confusion after two years of genocide, it was going to be very difficult for anybody to deliver the bodies of the captives,” Gunness told AJ+.
“So Israel has a pretext to call off the plan, to reimpose the blockade, to restart the genocide if it wants to, and the Palestinians in Gaza really don’t have the wherewithal to prevent it.”
Rights group shares names of family killed in Israeli attack
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has shared details of an Israeli attack that killed 11 members of the same family in Gaza on Friday, including the names of the victims.
They are: Sufian Sha’ban; his wife, Samar Mohammed Nasser Sha’ban, and their children Karam,10, Anas, 8, and Nesma,12; as well as Ihab Mohammed Nasser Abu Sha’ban, 38, his wife, Randa Majed Mohammed Sha’ban, 36, and their children Nasser, 13, Jumana, 10, Ibrahim, 6, and Mohammed, 5.
“The family was moving from the southern Gaza Strip to Gaza City in a vehicle with an open rear roof, clearly indicating its civilian nature,” the PCHR wrote in a report detailing the attack.
“This crime is not an isolated incident but rather part of a recurring Israeli pattern of airstrikes, drone fire, and intermittent artillery shelling targeting Palestinian civilians without any military necessity,” the PCHR added.
