Key Points
- Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has accused Israel of starving Gaza.
- An Israeli official told Reuters it's a blood-libellous, delusional level of allegations.
- The UN World Food Programme says half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million is starving.
The Palestinian foreign minister accused Israel of starving Gaza, a charge swiftly rejected by an Israeli official, as the UN human rights chief said the battered enclave was on the verge of finding itself "well beyond breakdown".
The UN World Food Programme says half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million is starving as the expansion of Israel's military assault on the southern part of the Gaza Strip, in response to October's bloody cross-border rampage by Hamas militants, has cut people off from food, medicine and fuel.
The World Health Organisation said only 11 of Gaza's 36 hospitals were partially functional, one in the north and 10 in the south of the enclave.
"As we speak, at least 1 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, half of them children, are starving, not because of a natural disaster or because of lack of generous assistance waiting at the border," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told a UN event to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"No, they are starving because of Israel's deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against the people it occupied."
In response, an Israeli official told Reuters in Jerusalem: "This is, of course, obscene ... a blood-libellous, delusional level of allegations."
Israel was encouraging increased shipments of food into Gaza from Egypt, which also borders the Palestinian enclave, the official said, blaming lags on a "bottle neck".
Israel says its instructions to people to move to areas it says are safer are among measures it is taking to protect civilians as it tries to root out Hamas militants. Source: Getty / NurPhoto
In Geneva, al-Maliki said: "We are living through this dystopian reality that excludes Palestinians from the basic, most basic rights afforded to all human beings."
He described this as an "utter international failure" to protect Palestinians.
Asked if he agreed with al-Maliki's assessment, UN High Commissioner Volker Turk described the situation in Gaza as "on the verge of well beyond breakdown".
"This is a clarion call for everyone and for the international institutions that deal with it, to take it very seriously and act on it," he said.
In remarks to reporters, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, criticised al-Maliki's address for making no mention of Hamas and its deadly attacks on Israel.
"Nothing about 7 October, nothing about the atrocities that were committed by Hamas," she said, speaking alongside the mother of US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Israel says its instructions to people to move to areas it says are safer are among measures it is taking to protect civilians as it tries to root out Hamas militants who killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostage in the 7 October attack.
Israel's retaliatory assault has killed at least 18,205 people and wounded nearly 50,000, according to the Gaza health ministry, which says many thousands more dead are uncounted under the rubble or beyond the reach of ambulances.
