Latest news with #MichaelFakhri
Saba Yemen
2 days ago
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
UN official: Gaza seeing genocide, starvation, crime against humanity
New York - Saba: What is happening in the Gaza Strip is "genocide, starvation, a crime against humanity, and a gross violation of human rights", the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said on Thursday. "The Zionist enemy has brought Gaza to the most dangerous stages of starvation, and the effects will last for generations," Michael Fakhri added in a press statement. He stated that what he has witnessed during the past months of war clearly reveals Israel's plan for the Gaza Strip. "Israel's plan has always been to inflict the greatest possible damage and destruction, and to inflict the highest possible number of deaths, in order to achieve its primary goal, which is to occupy and annex all of Gaza." "Israel has declared its intentions since the beginning of the war, in one way or another. The situation is constantly deteriorating, and we are witnessing a tangible, systematic escalation of violence on the part of Israel," he added. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
Saba Yemen
4 days ago
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
UN: Israel's Plan for aid distribution in Gaza is illegal & unethical
Gaza – Saba: The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, stated on Monday that the Zionist plan for distributing aid in the Gaza Strip is both illegal and unethical, aiming to displace Palestinians from their land. Fakhri emphasized in his remarks that the Zionist plan fails to meet the minimum humanitarian principles and is intended to control Gaza rather than deliver urgent aid. He stressed that "Israel" is using starvation as part of its military strategy to kill as many Palestinians as possible. The UN official also dismissed Israeli accusations against UNRWA, describing them as baseless and a pretext to starve the people of Gaza. On Sunday, the Zionist enemy army's radio announced that the new mechanism for aid distribution in Gaza would begin operating on Monday, in cooperation with private American companies. The military source claimed that four aid distribution centers would be established—three in Rafah and one in central Gaza. The UN rejects the Zionist aid distribution plan, arguing that it will lead to further displacement, endanger thousands, limit aid to only one part of Gaza, fail to address urgent needs, and tie humanitarian assistance to political and military objectives—effectively using starvation as a bargaining tool. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
Yemen Press Agency
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yemen Press Agency
UN official warns of potential death of 14,000 infants in Gaza, breaking his silence to reveal series of Israeli crimes
GAZA, May 22 (YPA) – The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, warned on Thursday that 14,000 infants in the Gaza Strip could die if aid does not enter the Strip now. In an article in The Guardian, Fakhri called on the UN General Assembly to break the illegal blockade and stop the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians. Israel uses hunger as a weapon against civilians Fakhri pointed out that the World Food Programme's stock of food allocated to Gaza kitchens ran out on April 25, while the World Central kitchen closed its operations on May 7. He emphasized that this is not a new development, as Israel has been using starvation as a weapon against civilians in Gaza since 2000. When Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 1 that 'the entry of all goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip [would] be halted,' Fakhri pointed out that Netanyahu was blatantly defying international law, ignoring the International Criminal Court's warrant calling for his arrest for the war crime of starvation, and the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice in March 2024, which recognized that famine and starvation were widespread in Gaza, creating a risk of genocide. He confirmed that Israeli officials, along with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, had made the release of the hostages a condition for Hamas to provide humanitarian relief to Palestinian civilians. He added, 'While hostage-taking is prohibited under international law, there is no situation in which humanitarian aid to civilians can be used as a bargaining chip.' The UN official pointed out that 50% of Gaza's population was suffering from hunger before October 2023, and 80% of them were dependent on humanitarian aid, at a time when 500 trucks loaded with supplies were arriving daily. He emphasized that Palestinians in Gaza, after 19 months of starvation, need far more than 500 trucks daily. He pointed out that Israel presented an aid plan for Gaza that the UN Secretary-General described as not based on the international legal principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality, but rather a system of 'ruthless control and restriction of aid, down to the last calorie and grain of flour.' An attempt to 'weaponize aid' Fakhri recognized that the Israeli aid plan is designed to forcibly relocate Palestinians, concentrating them in southern Gaza under strict oversight by mercenaries or armed Israeli troops. He noted that the United Nations has labeled this plan a military strategy and a deliberate effort to use aid as a weapon. He also cited UNICEF's statement that 'Israel uses aid as bait to lure civilians into military zones, forcing them to choose between displacement and death.' Fakhri noted that the United States may take over the aid plan in Israel, but that the U.S. government's operation will be managed by a private foundation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, with support from the Israeli military. He criticized the foundation, noting that it is opaque and lacks clear details about its source of funding or how it operates in Gaza. Regardless of who runs it, the United Nations has rejected this 'made in Israel' plan, and UN-backed experts have determined that it will not prevent famine. 'Political threats are flimsy' The UN rapporteur explained that hundreds of UN aid trucks were ready to enter Gaza amid the Israeli occupation's shelling of a civilian ship attempting to deliver aid. Fakhri emphasized that the occupation's brutality and the harshness of American support are consistent with their statements, while the international response has been slow and disappointing. He recalled the statements of several countries, with the United Kingdom, France, and Canada threatening to take action if Israel does not halt its attacks and lift its restrictions on aid. He also pointed to the United Kingdom's suspension of trade negotiations with Israel, adding that monitoring the situation in Gaza over the past 19 months has demonstrated the impact of hunger on children. He considered the current threats and trade suspension to be futile. 'When the Security Council is unable to take action due to a veto, the UN Charter authorizes the General Assembly to intervene under the 'Uniting for Peace' clause,' said Fakhri. This enables the General Assembly to issue a resolution calling on peacekeeping forces to escort humanitarian convoys to Gaza. He accused Israel of planning to harm the population of Gaza after launching an intensive ground offensive dubbed 'Operation Gideon's Wagons.' He pointed to the escalation of Israeli violence after the blockade of food and water for more than 75 days, which led to a sharp increase in child malnutrition by more than 80% in March and a 3,000% increase in the price of wheat flour since February.
Middle East Eye
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Israel is starving Gaza to death, and still the world does nothing
Israel is starving the entire population of Gaza - to the point of death, for a growing number of Palestinians. There is not a single place in the world where starvation is an inevitability: not after major environmental disasters, amid drought and crop failure, or during armed conflict and genocide. Starvation is an act of either intentional violence or indifferent neglect, both of which are made possible by our collective inaction. Nowhere is this more evident than in Gaza, where Israel's occupation, blockade and now-total siege were designed to exert full control over the Palestinian population, deliberately depriving them of the most basic means to sustain life. Starvation is a strategy as old as warfare itself. It is deployed as a weapon of mass destruction to inflict maximal harm, and always with calculated disregard for those who suffer and die as a result. So horrific is this particular form of violence that it is distinguished as a specific war crime in the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In addition, UN Resolution 2417 condemns both the 'starvation of civilians as a method of warfare' and the practice of 'depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival'. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Despite the multitude of legal protections, it has now been more than a year since the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, observed that experts on starvation had never seen a civilian population subjected to hunger so quickly and so completely as in Gaza. Throughout the early months of 2024, B'Tselem, representatives of Medical Aid for Palestinians, the EU's foreign policy chief, and many others issued similar warnings that Israel was intentionally and systematically starving the Palestinian population in Gaza. Persistent risk of famine These warnings were informed by the first report of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an initiative established in 2004 to improve evidence-informed projections and targeted responses in situations of food insecurity. The IPC's December 2023 report warned of a growing risk of famine as a result of critical levels of food insecurity affecting the entire population of Gaza. More than two million people were enduring 'crisis or worse' levels of food insecurity - the highest proportion in a single territory that the IPC had ever identified in nearly two decades of operations. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war A piecemeal humanitarian performance ensued as the situation in Gaza continued to deteriorate. By February 2024, the Jordanian government began dropping food aid into besieged northern Gaza, after which the World Central Kitchen - an NGO that participated in the airdrops - declared it was 'redefining the boundaries of humanitarian aid'. Throughout last year, experts continued to describe an extremely grave situation in Gaza, repeatedly warning of either a high risk, or the imminent onset, of famine. By October, the US government had called on the Israeli regime to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Despite this apparent diplomatic pressure, in December, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (an initiative comparable to the IPC but funded by the US government) warned that a 'famine scenario' was unfolding in northern Gaza. Rather than forcing Israel to end its torturous policies of deprivation and military violence, US officials instead had the report retracted. Starvation can't be reversed with food aid alone. Those who starve others must be held accountable for their crimes The starvation of the people of Gaza did not begin in October 2023, nor when Israel repeatedly breached and then broke the ceasefire agreement on 18 March 2025. Throughout Israel's protracted occupation and blockade of Gaza, babies born with low birth weight, along with stunting in children during the early years of life, have become commonplace. Anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies are prevalent too. Each of these nutritional indicators is determined by Israel's tight control over the availability and diversity of food permitted into Gaza. When Israel intensified its blockade of Gaza in 2007, it implemented a concerted policy of systematic deprivation, ostensibly to turn Palestinians against the elected government. No attempts were made to disguise this approach; Dov Weissglas, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, then Israel's prime minister, openly stated in 2006: 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' Following a three-year legal case, Israel's defence ministry was forced to release an official policy document in 2012 that detailed how it calculated daily calorie requirements to reduce the supply of food into Gaza to a 'humanitarian minimum'. Today, the Israeli regime has completely abandoned the illusion of respect for even the lowest of humanitarian standards. Reclaiming political obligations Last month, more than 3,600 children in Gaza were admitted to health facilities with acute malnutrition, marking a sharp increase from February. Once admitted, many children do not receive the treatment they need, as nearly half of Gaza's nutrition treatment sites are no longer functioning. Since 2 March, the Israeli regime has blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza, including food and water. On 16 April, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz brazenly declared: 'In the current reality, no one is going to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza.' By 25 April, the World Food Programme declared it had run out of its remaining food supplies. Israel's military has simultaneously destroyed Gaza's agricultural production capacity and decimated Palestinians' livelihood reserves. Gaza's fragile food basket, bakeries, fishing boats, food storage warehouses, and emergency kitchens have all been targeted. In Gaza dying of starvation is much worse than dying from bombs Read More » At least 82 percent of Gaza's croplands have been damaged, 75 percent of its olive trees have been destroyed, and 95 percent of cattle have died. Amid Israel's renewed attacks, even more land has been occupied and may be subject to annexation. At the same time, chemicals released by Israeli missiles, coupled with untreated sewage from destroyed sanitation systems, has polluted the soil and groundwater reserves. As physicians who have worked in Gaza during Israel's occupation, blockade, repeated military assaults, and now genocide, we hold complicit every state that continues to actively and passively support Israel. The Israeli regime has resolutely exposed the 'logic of elimination' inherent to its settler-colonial ambitions. Only immediate and concerted action will protect the Palestinian people from this latest stage in Israel's campaign of genocidal eradication. Evidence of scorched-earth strategies, famine warnings, and declarations of plausible genocide were all designed to provoke action. Despite their grave implications, these terms have been repeatedly manipulated and misinterpreted for political gain. Rather than invoking concerted action, 'risk of famine' warnings have been distorted to imply that the situation isn't as dire as experts have claimed. Similarly, declarations of 'plausible' genocide have been manipulated to obscure the immediate obligations of the international community with drawn-out judicial processes and the seemingly endless pursuit of ever-more irrefutable evidence. It is not too late to reclaim the political obligations attached to these terms. The imminent onset of famine demands collective action. Starvation can't be reversed with food aid alone. Those who starve others must be held accountable for their crimes, and those who have been starved must be afforded justice. It is not too late to protect Palestinians in Gaza from those who continue to orchestrate and celebrate Israel's depraved policy of extermination by starvation. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Saba Yemen
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
UN: Sanctions are most effective way to force Israel to bring aid to Gaza
New York - Saba: The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, said on Friday that sanctions are an effective way to "force Israel to bring aid to Gaza Strip." "Israel is responsible for paying the necessary compensation for what it is doing in Gaza, and Arab countries should sever ties with it," Fakhri said in a statement. "The people of Gaza have been suffering from a policy of starvation for more than 20 years and what is happening now is the worst famine in history," he said. Fakhri emphasized that "Israel is responsible for ensuring the entry of humanitarian aid and is trying to blame other countries." About 1.5 million of Gaza's 2.4 million Palestinians have become homeless after the genocidal war destroyed their houses, and Gaza Strip has entered the stage of famine due to the closure of the crossings to humanitarian aid. Since October 7, 2023, enemy forces, with absolute American support, have been committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip, leaving more than 167,000 Palestinians dead , wounded, most of them children , women, and more than 14,000 missing. Whatsapp Telegram Email more of (International)
