Israel's prime minister dismisses accusations that his regime is starving Gazans

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

Israel 's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 'if we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon' amid a growing war of words over starvation in Gaza.
In a press conference, he rebutted accusations of deliberately starving civilians.
Netanyahu has consistently denied claims that his forces are committing genocide in the Gaza strip, or imposing a policy of starvation, and has said that Israel tries to avoid civilians who are put in harm's way by Hamas.
The remarks came during press conferences in Jerusalem as he defended his government's latest military push into Gaza City.
The planned offensive, he said, is aimed at defeating Hamas, but it has drawn condemnation from some of Israel's closest allies and the United Nations, who say it 'will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza'.
Netanyahu also rejected accusations that Israel had pursued a starvation policy, insisting on Sunday: 'There is no starvation. There hasn't been starvation. There was a shortage. And certainly, there was no policy of starvation.
'If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, two million Gazans wouldn't be living today after 20 months.'
However, humanitarian organizations have warned of 'imminent famine' in the region.
Reports from Gaza of civilians starving to death has inflamed tensions with Israel's partners around the world and inspired backlash at home and abroad.
Speaking on Sunday, Netanyahu also challenged claims that humanitarian aid had been fully cut off. At the press conference, he said: 'We never said we were stopping all entry of humanitarian aid.
'What we said was that, alongside halting the trucks that Hamas was seizing - taking the vast majority of their contents for itself, then selling the leftovers at extortionate prices to the Palestinian population… we would stop this.'
Netanyahu also laid out his vision of victory in Gaza following 22 months of war, with the military ordered to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the central camps further south.
With a pre-war population of some 760,000, according to official figures, Gaza City was the biggest of any municipal area in the Palestinian territories.
But following the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that sparked the war, its population has only swelled, with thousands of displaced people fleeing intensive military operations to the north.
Gaza City itself has come under intense aerial bombardment, and its remaining apartment buildings now rub shoulders with tents and other makeshift shelters.
Amir Avivi, a former Israeli general and head of the Israeli Defense and Security Forum think tank, described the city as the 'heart of Hamas's rule in Gaza'.
'Gaza City has always been the center of government and also has the strongest brigade of Hamas,' he said.
The first challenge for Israeli troops relates to Netanyahu's call for the evacuation of civilians - how such a feat will be carried out remains unclear.
Unlike the rest of the Strip, where most of the population has been displaced at least once, around 300,000 residents of Gaza City have not moved since the outbreak of the conflict, according to Avivi.
Israel has already tried to push civilians further south to so-called humanitarian zones established by the military, but there is likely little space to accommodate more arrivals.
'You cannot put another one million people over there. It will be a horrible humanitarian crisis,' said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli former military intelligence officer.
Israel continues to face major backlash over the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in the strip.
Dozens of people are reported to have died from starvation in recent weeks. The Israeli government claims the reports are unfounded, and says Hamas is harnessing a famine narrative for leverage in ceasefire talks.
In July, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it would open humanitarian corridors to let in aid convoys into Gaza to deliver food and medicine. It also said there would be a 'local tactical pause in military activity' for humanitarian purposes.
But international groups and journalists on the ground continue to report dire conditions inside the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
Last week, it was reported that the Israeli prime minister and the U.S. president Donald Trump, had a heated phone call after Netanyahu denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza.
According to people familiar with the conversation, Trump cut him off and shouted at him. He also told him his aids had presented evidence that many children were starving.
However, Netanyahu's office denied the reports and said it was 'fake news'.
While Gaza's population continues to bear the brunt of the war, Israel is gearing up for a major push into Gaza City and continues to pound the strip.
An Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, 28, and several of his colleagues outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on August 10.
The network said the journalists were in a tent set up for media crews when it was hit.
The Israel Defence Forces said al-Sharif was a Hamas operative who 'posed as a journalist', accusing him of running a 'terrorist cell' involved in rocket attacks, allegations that remain unverified and have been rejected by Al Jazeera.
Local journalists who knew him say that earlier in his journalism career, he had worked with a communications office run by Hamas.
Press freedom groups and the UN human rights agency condemned the strike, calling it a possible grave breach of international humanitarian law.
On Monday, several Gazans gathered to pay their respects to Sharif and his four colleagues who also died in the attack.
Media freedom groups and international organizations condemned the killing.
A posthumous message written by the journalist in the eventuality of his death said he had been silenced and urged people 'not to forget Gaza'.
Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to take control of the remaining parts of Gaza, including large sections of Gaza City and Al-Mawasi, an area designated by Israel as a safe zone but now crammed with displaced Palestinians.
The plan has triggered further criticism abroad, with Germany suspending some arms exports to Israel and Australia joining other Western nations in recognizing a Palestinian state.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 61,499 people have been killed in the territory since Israel's campaign began, figures the United Nations deems credible.
Hamas's October 2023 assault on Israel left 1,219 people dead, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.