Since Israel’s breach and rejection of the ceasefire, and resumption of aerial bombardments on Gaza, Israel has escalated its mass killings (at least 50,810 Palestinians have been killed and 115,688 injured since 7 October 2023), mass forced displacements, and total destruction and annihilation of Gaza. Israel is starving Palestinians in Gaza seeking their total erasure in what has been described as “the fastest starvation campaign in modern history”.
Since 2 March 2025, when the second phase of the ceasefire was due to begin, Israel has, in blatant violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and as a core element of its campaign of genocide, blocked the entry of all goods and humanitarian aid into Gaza, including fuel, medical equipment and other essential supplies. Electricity has been cut off. The United Nations Reliefs Works Agency (UNRWA), the largest United Nations (UN) agency in Palestine and the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza, remains banned under Israeli law from operating in Israel, preventing access to Gaza. On 6 March 2025 UN Experts warned that “Israel has resumed weaponising starvation in Gaza by its decision to break from the ceasefire agreement and block humanitarian aid […] This flagrantly breaches international law and any prospects of peace”.
On 28 March 2025, as Israeli attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza continued to escalate, UN OCHA’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator reported to the UN Security Council:
We reported that for 10 terrible days, Israeli airstrikes in densely populated areas have killed hundreds of children and other civilians. Patients killed in their hospital beds. Ambulances shot at. First responders killed. […] More than 142,000 people have been ordered to move, once again, with no safe place to go and no means to survive. For many there is no electricity, no water, no food, no safety.
Over 280 UN staff have been killed, including by Israeli tank fire on a clearly designated UN building last week.
All entry points into Gaza are closed for cargo since early March. At the border, food is rotting, medicine expiring, and vital medical equipment stuck. Inside Gaza, Israeli authorities deny humanitarian access to people in need.
International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks, obstruction of life-saving aid, destruction of infrastructure indispensable for civilians’ survival, and hostage-taking. The International Court of Justice’s provisional measures in the case on the application of the Genocide Convention remain in place. And yet, this continues without accountability.
Reiterating the threat which the impunity afforded to Israel in its genocidal conduct in Gaza poses to the international legal framework as a whole, the statement warned that “if the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act while it can to uphold them.”
Report after report of Israel’s unlawful conduct reaches the Security Council without response. On 3 April 2025, against the backdrop of the killings of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian aid workers in Gaza by the Israeli military, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told the Security Council that since 1 March, Israeli military operations have killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, including at least 320 children: “The blockade and siege imposed on Gaza amount to collective punishment and may also amount to the use of starvation as a method of war”. On 5 April 2025, the Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reported that:
No aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since 2 March 2025 – representing the longest period of aid blockage since the start of the war – leading to shortages of food, safe water, shelter, and medical supplies. Without these essentials, malnutrition, diseases and other preventable conditions will likely surge, leading to an increase in preventable child deaths […] For the sake of more than 1 million children in the Gaza Strip, we urge the Israeli authorities to ensure, at a minimum, people’s basic needs are met, in line with its obligations under international humanitarian law. [This includes their legal responsibility to ensure that families are supplied with the food, medical and other essential supplies they need to survive.]
On 7 April 2025, the heads of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNICEF, the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), UNRWA, the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Organization for Immigration (IOM) issued an urgent appeal to world leaders to act firmly and urgently to save Palestinians in Gaza. In their statement, the UN officials again warned:
For over a month, no commercial or humanitarian supplies have entered Gaza. More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck. Over 1,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured in just the first week after the breakdown of the ceasefire, the highest one-week death toll among children in Gaza in the past year. Just a few days ago, the 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme during the ceasefire had to close due to flour and cooking gas shortages.
They also stressed that “assertions that there is now enough food to feed all Palestinians in Gaza are far from the reality on the ground,” warning that key commodities, including essential medical and trauma supplies, are rapidly running out. Underscoring the urgency of the present situation, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, stated that “we are being deliberately blocked from saving lives in Gaza, and so civilians are dying”. Also on 7 April 2025, UN Experts stressed that “We are witnessing the destruction of Palestinian life […] If they are not killed by bombs or bullets, they slowly suffocate for lack of basic means of survival. The only difference is the means and speed of death”.
In its latest regular update (Humanitarian Situation Update #278 | Gaza Strip) of 08 April 2025, UN OCHA warns of “A significant reduction in water supply through pipelines from Israel, coupled with the lack of power, fuel, spare parts and access, is likely to further jeopardize people’s access to safe drinking water across the Gaza Strip and expose them to conditions that threaten their survival and dignity”. Power cuts by Israel have reduced by 85% the capacity of the main desalination plant in southern Gaza. Israel refuses permission for safe access to make repairs to the non-functional water pipeline in Deir al Balah (Bani Saeed), while a second pipeline to northern Gaza (Al Muntar) has stopped functioning since 3 April 2025, leaving only one of the three Mekorot water pipelines from Israel to Gaza is functional—the Bani Suheila connection in Khan Younis. The update, among many other attacks, records that “On 5 and 7 April, two food charity distribution points (Tekiya) were hit in Khan Younis, resulting in the killing of three Palestinian men on 5 April and seven Palestinians, including two children, among them a girl, on 7 April”.
On 8 April 2025, responding to Israeli military demands that it have full control over any aid being provided to occupied Gaza, the UN Secretary-General stated that “We will not participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect the humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality”. Reaffirming that “As the occupying power, Israel has unequivocal obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” Guterres said “As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have reopened. Gaza is a killing field – and civilians are in an endless death loop”.
Israel is Breaching the Provisional Measures Orders in the South Africa v Israel case
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), on 26 January 2024, in response to Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza, in the case of South Africa v Israel, issued the first of three provisional measures orders under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Each of these orders emphasised Israel’s obligations to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has rejected each of these orders, choosing instead, reliant on its impunity from sanction, to intensify the suffering and destruction of the Palestinians. Israel has ignored, and is being permitted by global inaction to ignore, the three sets of Provisional Measures orders of the ICJ, and is continuing its escalation of military attacks and manufacture of famine. The ICJ’s initial provisional measures order required that Israel, inter alia, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in particular, to prevent the killing of Palestinians in Gaza, to prevent the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza, to prevent the deliberate infliction on the Palestinians group in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part”, and “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.
Israel ignored, and was permitted by global inaction to ignore, these orders, and continued its escalation of military attacks and manufacture of famine. South Africa requested additional provisional measures from the ICJ, which on the 28 March 2024, granted this application, issuing further provisional measures, unanimously requiring that Israel “in conformity with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation” shall “Take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.
Israel again ignored, and was permitted by global inaction to ignore, these orders, and continued its escalation of attacks and manufacture of famine. South Africa again requested additional measures, which the ICJ issued on 24 May 2024, focusing on Israel’s military assault on the Rafah Governorate of Gaza, ordering that Israel “Immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” and to “Maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.
International Arrest Warrants issued for Starvation
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court announced the issuance of arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Banjamin Netanyahu, and then Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant. Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC found “reasonable grounds” to believe that both Netanyahu and Gallant bear “criminal responsibility for [...] the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. The Chamber further decided that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that [they] each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”:
The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity, from at least 8 October 2023 to 20 May 2024. This finding is based on the role of Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant in impeding humanitarian aid in violation of international humanitarian law and their failure to facilitate relief by all means at its disposal. […]
Furthermore, the Chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that no clear military need or other justification under international humanitarian law could be identified for the restrictions placed on access for humanitarian relief operations. Despite warnings and appeals made by, inter alia, the UN Security Council, UN Secretary General, States, and governmental and civil society organisations about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, only minimal humanitarian assistance was authorised. In this regard, the Chamber considered the prolonged period of deprivation and Mr Netanyahu’s statement connecting the halt in the essential goods and humanitarian aid with the goals of war […]
The Chamber found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies, created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza, which resulted in the death of civilians, including children due to malnutrition and dehydration.
International Law Requires Sanctions on Israel for Blocking of Food
As the body mandated under the UN Charter with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2417 in 2018 recognising the link between armed conflict, violence and food insecurity and the threat of famine. Resolution 2417 strongly condemned international humanitarian law violations such as the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, the forced displacement of civilians, the unlawful denial of humanitarian access, and the deprivation to civilians of objects indispensable to their survival. Critically, Resolution 2417 urged “those with influence over parties to armed conflict to remind the latter of their obligation to comply with international humanitarian law” and recalled that the Security Council “has adopted and can consider to adopt sanction measures, where appropriate and in line with existing practice, that can be applied to individuals or entities obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance, or access to, or distribution of, humanitarian assistance”. Welcoming the Security Council’s August 2023 reaffirmation of its commitment to Resolution 2417, the USA, a key ally in Israel’s genocide, condemned the use of starvation as a method of warfare.
That the Israeli military is acting in utter disregard for even the basic principles of international humanitarian law, and is manufacturing famine and starvation conditions, through the denial of humanitarian aid, with the intent to destroy the Palestinian population of Gaza has been made clear to the world, and to the Security Council. Israel’s impunity has been a long-standing reality. Palestinian efforts at securing justice and accountability are consistently challenged and frustrated by those who claim to be stalwart adherents to the framework of international law. The present context needs be framed by the acknowledgment that Israel considers itself beholden to no law. While Israel’s courts reject petitions that Israel incurs positive obligations to ensure that aid is provided and distributed in Gaza, on the false logic that the Palestinians of Gaza are not subject to Israeli occupation, the Israeli state is introducing restrictions on civil society and humanitarian organisations that will further accelerate the violation of Israel’s duty to facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, equipment, and personnel. Israel’s capacity to perpetrate genocide with impunity, and the military, logistical, political, and economic support it continues to receive as it expands its genocidal conduct, including by way of starvation, across all the occupied Palestinian territory, is ultimately reliant on the wrecking of the international legal system.
Al-Haq calls on the UN Security Council:
- Order the complete cessation of hostilities and the total and immediate withdrawal of Israeli Occupying Forces from Gaza;
- Ensure the provision of food, water, electricity and humanitarian aid at scale into and throughout Gaza, opening all crossings;
- Apply full sanctions on Israel, including individual sanctions on political and military leaders preventing the transport of aid into Gaza;
- Implement a three-way arms embargo on Israel;
- Mandate the free and unimpeded access of UNRWA and other organisations into Gaza, including criminal investigators;
- Recommend the expelling of Israel from the UN General Assembly under Article 6 of the UN Charter.