Gaza is being called the hungriest place in the world by the UN after Israel blockaded the enclave when the ceasefire deal was abruptly ended in March by Israel. Images continue to beam around the world of starving children in Gaza alongside the long queues as desperate Gazans try to get food in the few food distribution centres in Gaza. Over 20 months Israeli airstrikes have destroyed food infrastructure, such as bakeries, mills, and food stores, and there is a widespread scarcity of essential supplies. According to a group of UN experts, as of July 2024 Israel’s ‘targeted starvation campaign’ had spread throughout the entire Gaza Strip, causing the death of children.[1] Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, accused Israel back in March 2024 of war crimes due to placing restrictions on the entry of aid.[2] The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 21st November 2024 for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant due to ‘reasonable grounds’ that they bear criminal responsibility for ‘the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.’[3] Starvation as a war strategy has been a tactic used since ancient times, but it remains legally untested, despite the shocking images coming out of Palestine.
Starvation has been widely used as a political tool throughout history for goals that range from subjugating populations, punishing dissent and for exerting control. It’s a weapon as old and as potent as any kinetic weapon. Mass starvation killed more than three million people in Stalin-era Ukraine. The Great Irish Famine of 1845 was exacerbated by the British Empire whilst the Mongols and Romans regularly used starvation as part of their siege strategies. Starvation forms part of a siege strategy which allows the attacker to keep their own casualties low by avoiding urban combat. The goal is to force trapped fighters or a people to surrender as they can only continue fighting or keep hold of a territory if they have access to regular supplies.
Modern Starvation
Israeli officials immediately after the events of October 7th 2023 made public statements expressing their aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of food, water, and fuel. The Israeli Defense Minister at the time, Yoav Gallant ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip,” saying “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Then-Energy Minister Israel Katz said on October 16th, 2023 he opposed the opening of the blockade, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on October 17th 2023 that no aid should enter Gaza as long as Hamas held hostages. Amid a war in which tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by more direct means, Israel’s serial blockade of Gaza for long got little global media coverage but with images pouring out of malnourished children and the deaths of starving children, this has forced a number of western leaders, who continued to argue Israel has the right to defend itself, to now criticise Israel for such a policy.
The initial besiegement and aid obstruction in the first three months of the war laid the groundwork for famine risk. Then Israel intensified deprivation in northern Gaza, as security threats and Israeli policy left the north almost entirely cut off. After this there were several shifts in Israeli behaviour as international and US pressure increased. Those concessions helped to defer an imminent descent into widespread famine, but the improvements proved short-lived. Then the IDF initiated a major assault on Rafah in May 2024 and ordered a series of subsequent evacuations within so-called humanitarian zones over the summer of 2024. This caused mass re-displacement, and a huge ongoing deterioration and pushed towards the famine threshold. Then in March 2025, after a three-month ceasefire, Israel instituted a complete blockade of Gaza with aid, energy and supplies cut-off, this pushed the enclave to the point of starvation. Israel was forced to permit some aid as global public opinion began to change, including criticism from the French, Canadians and the British leaders. Israeli officials even admitted that allowing “minimal” aid into Gaza will ensure Israel has continued support from its “friends” to continue with its goal of “destroying” the Palestinian territory.
Israeli officials even admitted that allowing “minimal” aid into Gaza will ensure Israel has continued support from its “friends” to continue with its goal of “destroying” the Palestinian territory.
Settler Colonisation
Israel, as a settler colonial enterprise has since its origins seen the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians as the solution for its survival. Where Zionists found a large population of ‘undesirables’ it has used an apartheid system to maintain control and power. Whilst in the West Bank Israel has used settlements to confiscate land from the Palestinians, in Gaza the approach has been more direct.
Gaza became a refuge for Palestinians who were expelled from 1948 and it remained under Egyptian authority from 1948 until it was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war leading to the beginning of a decades long military occupation. In the 1990s the Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a limited governing authority over some territories including Gaza, initially led by Fatah until that party’s electoral defeat in 2006 to Hamas. Israel in 2005 evacuated its settlements within Gaza and redeployed its military along the border of Gaza. Ever since Israel has maintained brutal control of the strip by controlling access, the airspace, movement in and out, water, electricity and even the calories Gazans can have. Human Rights organisations have for long termed Gaza the world’s most densely populated open prison, with many considering it a concentration camp.
After October 7th Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza. There has always been speculation Israel was executing the “Generals Plan”, which is also known as the ‘starve and surrender’ plan. Near the end of October 2024 Israel announced anyone remaining in Northern Gaza would be designated as Hamas and then targeted for killing. Israel tightened its siege and cut-off aid in order to force the remaining population to flee, making Gaza uninhabited. The general’s plan is clearly genocidal in nature and the ethnic cleansing of the inhabitants has been in motion for some time.
There has always been speculation Israel was executing the “Generals Plan”, which is also known as the ‘starve and surrender’ plan.
The Prison Called Gaza
One of the reasons Israel is targeting aid coming into Gaza is due Gaza’s huge dependency on foreign aid for its survival. Israel’s brutal control of Gaza since 2005, by treating it as a concentration camp and maintaining an economic blockade that really began well before Oct 7th has resulted in an economy that cannot function on its own.
Over 80% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population relied on international aid that included food, medical supplies, fuel and basic services such as water and electricity. This was supplied by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the World Food 
Programme (WFP) and NGOs like Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) and the Red Crescent. This aid got into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing, which was the main crossing for humanitarian aid, goods, and fuel, which was controlled by Israel, with tight security inspections. There was also the Rafah Crossing, which was controlled by Egypt who synchronized with Israel and was used for medical evacuations and aid. Egypt only opened this crossing intermittently and often under political conditions. There was also the Erez Crossing, which was primarily used for people (e.g., medical patients) and occasionally for humanitarian aid controlled by Israel.
Aid Politics
Even before October 7th Israel had a firm grip on the lives of Gazans and after October 7th it utilised this to squeeze and starve the enclave into submission. Israel’s siege cut food, fuel, and water supplies. Israel targeted Gaza’s infrastructure from water systems to hospitals and bakeries. Israel has had a concerted campaign to take over the delivery of aid in order to control this aspect of Gaza.
With UNRWA, Israel accused its employees of being involved in the October 7th attack. The UN launched an internal investigation, and 9 of the 12 accused staff were dismissed before any investigation even began. Major donor countries suspended or paused funding to UNRWA. UN Secretary-General António Guterres ordered an independent review led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna. The report, released in April 2024, found no systematic ties between UNRWA and Hamas. Israel never provided any evidence of its allegations and today UNRWA has not seen its funding reach the levels prior to the allegations. Even prior to the malicious allegations Israel had struck dozens of UNRWA facilities from schools, shelters, and distribution centres. 180 UNRWA staff members have been killed—the highest toll for any UN agency in a single conflict.
Similar actions have occurred with other humanitarian organisations. Israel killed 7 aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in April 2024. This was despite the fact the convoy was clearly marked and coordinated with Israeli authorities. Similarly, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), its staff, clinics and convoys have regularly come under fire from the IDF. Doctors Without Borders have accused Israel of repeated violations of international humanitarian law, including attacks on their medical infrastructure, they are regularly forced to evacuate hospitals and suspend activities.
Even prior to the malicious allegations Israel had struck dozens of UNRWA facilities from schools, shelters, and distribution centres. 180 UNRWA staff members have been killed—the highest toll for any UN agency in a single conflict
The West’s Favourite Tactic
Although millions of civilians died in the twentieth century as a result of siege and starvation strategies, the effort to treat starvation as a war crime is surprisingly recent. Unlike other war crimes codified in the aftermath of the two world wars, the use of starvation as a weapon was not formally prohibited in international law until 1977. Since then, despite the explicit ban, prosecutions of this crime have been exceedingly rare. Most post–World War II international criminal tribunals, including the one established in the 1990s for wartime abuses in the former Yugoslavia, did not include forced starvation in their founding statutes.
The reason for this is the fact that starvation blockades were integral to Western strategic thinking as many saw it necessary to maintain the global order. During World War I, blockade planners in both Germany and the UK reasoned cutting off food imports for enemy civilians was necessary. In World War II, both the Allied and Axis powers explicitly acknowledged that their aim was to kill enemy civilians. As part of its all-out war against Japan, the US launched Operation Starvation, a submarine and air blockade cutting off food and raw materials. The West’s strategic embrace of starvation lasted well beyond Hitler’s downfall in 1945, and discussion of the tactic was notably absent from much of the architecture of postwar international law. Neither the 1948 Genocide Convention nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explicitly addressed the deliberate starvation of civilians.
starvation blockades were integral to Western strategic thinking as many saw it necessary to maintain the global order
When state representatives met in Geneva in 1949 to draft conventions for protecting victims of war, many countries sought to enshrine stronger humanitarian safeguards for armed conflict. But the US and the UK were adamant about preserving their ability to impose blockades and resisted any provisions that might limit their naval or air power.
After 1949, blockading powers were unable to formally reclaim the right to deliberately starve civilians as a lawful weapon of war. Nonetheless, they were able to create significant carve outs, in which non-intentional civilian death could be considered legally tolerable under specific circumstances. The US used starvation tactics on a large scale in the Vietnam War, with its systematic destruction of crops in areas suspected of harbouring communist guerrillas.
By the 1970s, however, a wave of newly independent countries, including in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, led a new push to further stigmatise starvation tactics, driven by direct experience of this kind of warfare by their former colonial overlords. In negotiations leading to the addition of two new protocols to the Geneva Conventions in 1977, these states pressed for robust rules against indiscriminate bombing, crop destruction, and starvation. As a result, the new international legal architecture curbed starvation tactics in interstate wars and during occupations but stopped short of fully criminalising the weapon, particularly when used by poorer states against insurgent groups in civil wars.
This outcome had dramatic consequences. Stateless or marginalised minorities remained vulnerable to famine-inducing blockades by hostile governments. Even after the Rome Statute classified starvation as a war crime, the designation applied only to interstate armed conflicts. It took until 2019 for countries, including Germany, to formally recognise starvation as a crime in civil wars, as well.
The use of starvation as a tactic by Israel and the justifications Israeli officials have offered for using it—has become a major test for international law. In its classification of war crimes, the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC, includes “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” a tactic that can involve “wilfully impeding relief supplies.” By publicly declaring Israel’s intention to impose a total siege of Gaza and then enforcing measures that deprive Gazans of food and other goods that are indispensable to civilians’ survival, the ICC alleges, Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Gallant have committed the war crime of starvation. It is the first time in history that a major court has centred a war crimes prosecution on this particular charge.
Despite Israel’s allies continuing arms exports to the country the images of starving children and long queues of people fighting over food supplies has pushed them to criticise Israel. Whilst starvation as a tactic is ancient, in the 21st century images of malnourished children are making political leaders uneasy and forcing them to condemn Israel. It remains to be seen if Israel will be punished for this rarely prosecuted war crime.
[1] U.N. experts say Gaza children dying in Israeli “targeted starvation campaign” – CBS News
