Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of committing war crime by starving people in Gaza Strip

With intense fighting continuing in Gaza, visiting US defence secretary Lloyd Austin discussed with Israeli leaders on Monday how to reduce harm to civilians and the need to ensure a “transition from higher intensity operations to lower intensity operations” and a “more surgical” approach.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch accused Israel on Monday of committing a war crime by starving people in the Gaza Strip. It said Israeli forces were deliberately blocking delivery of water, food and fuel, razing agricultural areas and depriving Gaza’s 2.3 million people of objects indispensable for their survival. “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip,” it said in a report. “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime.”

Israel denied the accusations and blamed the United Nations for a backlog of humanitarian supplies at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported that 19,500 people have been killed in the coastal strip since the war began on October 7th. It also said medical teams in Gaza had identified 350,000 patients with contagious diseases, most of them in refugee camps, and that the real numbers were likely to be higher. Israel says 1,200 people were killed on October 7th and 240 kidnapped in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which triggered the war.

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Pressure continues from relatives of the 129 hostages still held in Gaza for another deal to release the captives but Israel has rejected the main Hamas demand for a permanent end to the fighting as a condition for a new deal.

David Barnea, director of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, met in Warsaw with CIA chief William Burns and Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani in an effort to break the deadlock as Israel indicated it would consider freeing senior militants in a future deal.

Anger continues in Israel over the incident in Gaza City on Friday in which troops shot and killed three hostages after they escaped from Hamas captivity.

Avi Shamriz, whose son Alon was one of the three, said his family demanded to see the incident’s documentation. In a radio interview he said the shooting “was not a mistake, it was an execution – literally”.

“They did everything right – took their shirts off, hung a white flag and marched in broad daylight in the middle of the street and shouted for help, but in our army they don’t know how to follow the rules of engagement,” he said. “Even if it’s a terrorist, why shoot him like that? He was naked, unarmed, and even if it’s a terrorist – why not shoot him in the legs? This is against all the rules taught by the IDF.”

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday referred to the role the Palestinian Authority may play in a post-war arrangement despite the opposition of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. “The new authority, which Israel and its allies are striving for, is a security and administrative authority,” Mr Shtayyeh said. “We want a Palestinian National Authority which fights for the establishment of a state and the end of the occupation.”

Mr Austin, during his talks in Israel on Monday, said Iran’s support of the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels from Yemen must stop. “We are leading a multinational taskforce in the Red Sea to support the basic principle of freedom of navigation.”

His comments came after oil giant BP announced it was joining other oil and freight companies in stopping all shipments through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal in response to the attacks by Houthi rebels.