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Shameful. That was the word that Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, used to describe proceedings at the international court of justice (ICJ) last Monday. The United Nations asked the court to determine whether Israel must allow aid to enter Gaza, two months after it cut it off again just before the ceasefire deal collapsed. Supplies are running out. Unicef says that thousands of children have already experienced acute malnutrition.
Mr Sa’ar’s complaint is that Israel is unfairly targeted. The separate international criminal court case against Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, the former defence minister, also focuses on the alleged starvation of civilians. It is true that withholding food is a common weapon in war, yet has rarely been the focus of international legal cases, in part because intent is hard to prove. It is the rhetoric of Israeli officials, suggests Dr Boyd van Dijk, an expert on the Geneva conventions, which has changed that.
Last summer, Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, remarked that it might be “justified and moral” to starve people if it brought home Israeli hostages seized in the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, but that “no one in the world will allow us”. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said last month that its “policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza”. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, insisted that “there is no reason for a single gram of food or any aid to enter” until hostages were freed. An aid ship destined for Gaza was attacked by drones and disabled on Friday. More than 52,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to its health authorities. Unicef says they include 15,000 children, with hundreds of deaths since the new Israeli offensive began in March. But withholding food kills just as bombs do. Farmland is devastated. Flour is said to cost 30 times more than before the war. Aid warehouses are empty. UN World Food Programme bakeries closed a month ago when supplies ran out; essential community kitchens are now following.
Israeli officials have said they need to stop Hamas getting their hands on aid. It’s obvious that men with guns will secure food long after others have starved. Donald Trump says that he has told Mr Netanyahu to allow aid in. Yet the US told the ICJ that Israel’s security needs override its obligation to do so. The strong legal consensus is that occupying powers have an absolute duty under the Geneva conventions to permit food to be given to a population in need.
Israel is reportedly planning to resume aid delivery “in the coming weeks”, but via a radically new mechanism. It claims the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, essential to humanitarian efforts, has been mass-infiltrated by Hamas – an allegation strongly disputed by the UN and others. The proposed alternative, of international organisations and private security contractors handing out food to individual families, looks both unworkable and dangerous for civilians.
As Israel and the US attack international courts, other nations – including the UK – must do all they can to defend and bolster them. They must also press harder for the immediate resumption of aid. What is shameful about this ICJ case is the need to bring it. What is shameful is that almost half the children in Gaza questioned in a study said that they wished to die. What is shameful is that so many civilians have been killed, and so many more pushed to the brink of starvation. What is shameful is that this has, indeed, been allowed to happen.
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