DErupted on October 7, 2023, Israel led a war of reprisals against Hamas in this territory. A war which, to date, has made more than 52,400 people there, for most civilians, according to figures from the Ministry of Health of the Government of Hamas.
Faced with this massacre, the Hebrew State replied by a rhetoric of self -defense. But self-defense justify the total seat of a territory of 2.4 million human beings and the bombing of refugee, hospitals and school tents.
Does self-defense justify deliberately starving a population? Indeed, since March 2, 2025, Israel has been blocking any humanitarian aid entry in Gaza. The more a truck, the more a box of medicines, the more a bag of flour passes.
Objective: forcing Hamas to release the hostages always retained in the enclave. A pressure strategy, it is said.
But who? Because it is civilians (women, children, old people) who pay the price. Should we remember that it is prohibited, by international humanitarian law, to use famine as a weapon of war?
And yet, that’s exactly what’s going on. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also sounded the alarm: “Humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip are on the verge of total collapse”.
Collective kitchens, often the only recourse for a daily meal, are likely to stop in the coming weeks. Hospitals, for lack of medication, are on the verge of rupture.
The global food program announces that it has “exhausted all its stocks”. The bakeries close one after the other, for lack of flour. Famine is no longer a fear: it is a reality.
Mike Ryan, deputy director general of the world Health Organization, has broken the usual diplomatic tone. In Geneva, on May 1, he launched, with a tight gorge: “What is happening in Gaza is an abomination”.
And to add, in a rare cry of anger for a senior international official: “We break the body and mind of the children of Gaza. We embrace the children of Gaza (…) If we do not act, we will be accomplices of what is happening before our eyes ”.
This silent complicity, Amnesty International also denounces it without detour. In its annual report published on April 29, the NGO speaks of “live genocide” and accuses Israel of acts which fall under the worst crimes against humanity: murders, serious attacks on physical or mental integrity, forced displacements and deliberate destruction of living conditions.
“The world is witnessing its screens on a live genocide (…) the States looked at, as if they were helpless, Israel killing thousands of Palestinians and Palestinians, massacring entire families over several generations and destroying dwellings, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” writes Agnès Callamard.
Of course, Israel vehemently rejects these accusations, calling Amnesty’s words as “baseless lies”.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who does not recede before any round effect, says that his “supreme objective” is the defeat of Hamas. But to see the photos of amputated babies, the videos of women crying their children and screaming in front of the ruins of their house, as well as these long lines of skeletal men and a little water or a dressing, we wonder if it is really the Tsahal target.
What about the international community?
And the international community, what does it do? She looks, punctuates her inaction of bland press releases and multiplies the calls without follow -up. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, may denounce a “humanitarian disaster” and recall that “any recourse to famine as a war method constitutes a war crime”, its words are inaudible and the children continue to die.
Meanwhile, the United States, the main ally of Israel, block any binding resolution in the UN. Europe, stuck in its contradictions and its poor historical conscience, blows hot and cold at the same time: symbolic condemnations on the one hand, sales of arms and military cooperation with Israel, on the other.
In short, what is happening in Gaza is no longer a war. It is a process of methodical extermination of an entire people. It is, as Amnesty says, a live genocide. Which, far from securing Israel, prevents all reconciliation and feeds lasting hatred.
F. Ouriaghli
