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Info Service on Sustainable Agriculture Starvation as genocide The following statement was released on 4 August 2025 by the IPES-Food panel: *** Mass starvation is deliberately being used by Israel as a tool of genocide against the Palestinian people. The intentional denial of food and water in Gaza is a crime against humanity, a violation of the international human rights to food and water, and a breach of humanitarian law. IPES-Food fully condemns the actions being taken by Israel and the governments and corporations around the world fueling the deliberate and systematic weaponization of food and wateragainst the people of Palestine. This “man-made mass starvation” is the latest assault in a decades-long campaign of dispossession and oppression, which has now been acknowledged by governments around the world, the International Court of Justice, and major Israeli human rights groups. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, specifically for using starvation as a method of warfare. Earlier this year, this crisis was named “the largest and fastest starvation campaign in modern history” by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. Today, hunger in Gaza has reached its highest point since October 2023, with more people dying of starvation in the past 2 weeks than the previous 21 months. The UN World Food Programme has estimated that at least 470,000 people are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children needing urgent nutrition treatment. Since April 2025, more than 20,000 children have been admitted for acute malnutrition, with many dying of starvation and lack of humanitarian assistance. These figures are likely severely underestimated, as full assessments have remained near impossible to conduct due to ongoing violence and obstruction of humanitarian access. When food can be accessed at all, prices have skyrocketed, including an almost 3,000% increase in the cost of flour and up to a 5,000% increase in the price of staple fruits and vegetables between October 2023 and July 2025. At the same time, more than 97% of water from the Gaza Strip’s main coastal aquifer no longer meets WHO water quality standards, leaving residents dependent on Israeli-owned pipelines for most of their drinking water. Since the start of the conflict, Israel has operated these pipelines far below capacity, deliberately leaving areas of Gaza without water. The entire population of Gaza is now facing severe and lasting physical and mental harm from malnutrition and dehydration, and from the horrific increase in dispossession, destruction, and violence since October 2023. For many, survival will mean a lifetime of irreversible damage. Humanitarian aid has also been intentionally obstructed through border closures, and through attacks on aid workers and distribution routes. Between February and March 2025, Israel allowed less than a quarter of Gaza’s minimum needs for food to enter the territory. Since May 2025, the large majority of food aid allowed into Gaza by Israeli authorities has come from the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The GHF’s distribution system is deliberately designed to rely on only three food distribution points – compared to the over 100 locations permitted under the previous UN-run aid system. All three points are located in dangerous, remote, and militarized evacuation zones: between May 27 and July 21, 2025, over 1,000 Gazans were killed while attempting to access food aid, with three-quarters of those deaths occurring near GHF distribution sites. The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has called the GHF system a “death trap.” Local food systems are collapsing as part of the systematic assault on Palestinian life. Mass dispossession and displacement are being accompanied by the calculated decimation of crucial food systems infrastructure – including farmland, seed facilities, wells, markets, and shops – undermining the foundations of food production and distribution. Israeli customs officials are throwing out fruits and vegetables with pits or seeds from humanitarian aid to prevent Palestinians from growing food. Fishing has been rendered all but impossible through growing restrictions and military attacks on fishers, landing sites, and aquaculture farms. These violations also extend beyond the Gaza Strip: in July, Israeli occupation forces attacked the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) Seed Bank in the West Bank, demolishing essential storage facilities and infrastructure that held equipment, tools, and indigenous seed materials – a direct assault on Palestinian knowledge and heritage, food sovereignty, and efforts to preserve seeds and livelihoods. These atrocities are perpetuated by political and economic systems at both the national and international levels. The decisions of governments and corporations around the world – including complicity, material support, or inaction – impact Palestinians’ ability to access food and water, and live in dignity. For decades, many of these actors have directly and indirectly contributed to Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid, and ongoing genocide in Palestine. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories identifies 48 major corporate actors embedded in and profiting from “an economy of genocide,” and benefiting from the dispossession of Palestinian land and resources. In particular, agribusinesses, retailers, and logistics companies are pushing the products grown from Israeli occupation onto global markets, often through misleading or unclear labeling and little to no regulatory oversight. Global trade with and investment flows into Israel have also continued, demonstrating the country’s uninterrupted integration in the global economy. In 2024, Israel recorded USD 37 billion in imports and exports with the US and EUR 42.6 billion (USD 49.9 billion) with the EU. Many governments and institutions are also actively investing in Israel, regardless of their political statements on Israeli violence, with the EU acting as Israel’s largest investor, followed by the US, China, and Canada. Further, a 2024 report revealed the involvement of over 800 European financial institutions (e.g., banks, pension funds, asset management firms) in Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It is impossible to separate food systems transformation from the larger struggles for liberation and self-determination. IPES-Food stands in solidarity and support for the Palestinian people. Justice requires the full realization of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, right to food, rights to water and sanitation, right to remain in and return to their territories, and right to use the land, rivers, and coast to build food sovereignty. We reiterate our urgent call for a permanent end to the use of food and water as weapons of war in Gaza and in other regions, including Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen. We call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to Israel’s assault on Palestinian territories, and restoration, reparation, and accountability for the decades-long occupation, oppression, and crimes committed against the people, land, waters, and seeds of Palestine. This requires preserving and upholding international law, and guaranteeing that governments and corporations are held responsible for their complicity in this crisis, as already called for by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. This includes states’ obligation to support and take concrete measures to repair and restore the grave harm and violations caused, and the UN Security Council to take strong and enforceable action to end the genocide. We remind states, as well as public and private institutions, of their moral obligation to boycott, divest, and impose sanctions on Israel for its acts of genocide. As mandated by the 1948 Genocide Convention, states have a binding obligation to actively prevent and condemn genocide, and to ensure they are never complicit in these crimes. In this context, actively trading with, investing in, and/or providing economic support to Israel constitutes aiding and abetting genocide. Public and private entities can also be held accountable under domestic and international law for their offenses. Further, the intentional denial of food and water in Gaza represents a violation of humanitarian law, which states have binding obligations to uphold. We condemn the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution system, and its instrumentalization of humanitarian aid delivery. We call for the immediate reinstatement and strengthening of UNRWA as the central and legitimate means through which international humanitarian assistance is delivered to Palestinians, alongside a more robust UN humanitarian system free from political manipulation. We call for broader participation of governments in the Hague Group and for concrete actions to dismantle the ongoing systems of oppression and destruction of Palestinian land and life. Created in January 2025, the Hague Group is taking the much-needed steps to coordinate legal and diplomatic measures to uphold principles of international law and put an end to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. The genocide in Gaza will not be stopped by isolated state actions and rhetorical statements. United and sustained global action is urgently required.
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