DaysofPal—United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stated that “Israel” bears direct responsibility under international humanitarian law, which obligates the occupying power to ensure the well-being of the civilian population, noting that by blocking aid convoys, restricting entry of food and medicine, and targeting humanitarian workers, Guterres said, “Israel” is actively engineering famine conditions.
Guterres declared that the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza has reached unprecedented and unimaginable levels, surpassing all known tragedies in recent history.
Speaking from New York, Guterres said the crisis is no longer confined to images of destroyed buildings and displaced families but now includes a new and chilling reality: famine.
He emphasized that the word “famine” is not just a technical classification but a moral indictment of the international community’s failure to act.
“What is happening in Gaza has gone beyond any humanitarian tragedy we have known. This is not a natural disaster. It is a catastrophe deliberately created by human hands,” Guterres said, in a direct reference to “Israel” as the occupying power.
According to Guterres, the famine in Gaza is not merely about the absence of food but represents a systematic collapse of every essential service needed for human survival, where hospitals have been destroyed or rendered dysfunctional, clean water is virtually unavailable, power grids have collapsed, and supply chains are deliberately strangled.
He warned that children, women, and the elderly are now paying the heaviest price: “Entire generations are at risk of disappearing before our eyes, not because of earthquakes or floods, but because of choices made by human beings.”
Humanitarian agencies, including UNRWA and the World Food Program, have reported that nearly 514,000 people in Gaza are already experiencing famine conditions, with the number expected to rise sharply if unrestricted aid does not reach civilians immediately. Images of desperate crowds chasing food trucks, often under fire, have become emblematic of what Guterres called “a collective descent into inhumanity.”
He further criticized the international community’s paralysis, describing it as an “ethical failure of historic proportions.”
He also called for immediate action to ensure safe humanitarian access, an end to the blockade, and a sustainable ceasefire.
“History will not forget this moment. Future generations will ask how we allowed Gaza to starve in plain sight.” Guterres concluded
For months, the Israeli forces have prevented food from entering Gaza except in extremely limited and insufficient quantities that fail to meet even the bare minimum needs of the population. It then allows sporadic shipments to pass through, only to leave them exposed to looting and chaos. In this way, the world witnesses scenes reminiscent of “zombie imagery” with thousands of starving people crowding around food trucks in harrowing displays of human desperation, dignity lost, and social order collapsing.
Moreover, Israeli forces have killed and injured hundreds of starving civilians as they attempted to secure food, turning the quest for a loaf of bread into a deadly gamble that often ends in death or injury. In this grim reality, only the strongest manage to survive, while the most vulnerable groups, children, widows, orphans, the wounded, and the elderly, are left to face death by starvation.
Israel also prevents the United Nations and international relief agencies from fulfilling their humanitarian duty of distributing food fairly and systematically. Worse still, it deliberately targets and kills local security teams that attempt to deliver aid to international institutions, leaving distribution operations vulnerable to looting and chaos in a calculated tactic that deepens the humanitarian catastrophe.
Thus, famine in Gaza has become a weapon of war deliberately engineered by the Israeli occupation, a tool to dismantle the social fabric and eradicate the most vulnerable groups, in a flagrant violation of all international and humanitarian laws.
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