• Volker Turk: Deadly attacks on civilians trying to access ‘paltry amounts’ of food aid ‘unconscionable’
• System meant to circumvent UN mechanism ‘endangers lives and violates international standards on aid distribution’

Ephrem Kossaify

NEW YORK: Israel’s actions in Gaza “constitute elements of the most serious crimes under international law,” the UN human rights chief warned on Tuesday.

“The wilful impediment of access to food and other life-sustaining relief supplies for civilians may constitute a war crime,” Volker Turk said.

“The threat of starvation, together with 20 months of killing of civilians and destruction on a massive scale, repeated forced displacements, intolerable, dehumanizing rhetoric and threats by Israel’s leadership to empty the strip of its population, also constitute elements of the most serious crimes under international law.”

For the past three days, scores of starved Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire as they were attempting to procure food at an aid point run by the controversial, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Deadly attacks on distraught civilians trying to access the “paltry amounts” of food aid in Gaza are “unconscionable,” said Turk, calling for a “prompt and impartial” investigation into each of these attacks, and for the perpetrators to be held to account.

“Attacks directed against civilians constitute a grave breach of international law, and a war crime,” he said, adding that Palestinians have been presented “the grimmest of choices: die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available through Israel’s militarized humanitarian assistance mechanism.”

This militarized system to distribute aid, which is meant to circumvent the UN mechanism in Gaza, “endangers lives and violates international standards on aid distribution,” he said.

Turk recalled that in 2024, the International Court of Justice “issued binding orders on Israel to take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza. There is no justification for failing to comply with these obligations.”