‘No one should act surprised,' says UN expert who warned of starvation in Gaza last year

The Guardian

15 hours ago

The UN expert who first warned that Israel was orchestrating a campaign of deliberate mass starvation in Gaza more than 500 days ago, has said that governments and corporations cannot claim to be surprised at the horror now unfolding.
'Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it's always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024,' Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian.
'Israel is starving Gaza. It's genocide. It's a crime against humanity. It's a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, I feel like Cassandra,' said Fakhri, referring to the Greek mythological figure whose warnings and predictions were ignored.
On 9 October 2023 – two days after the deadly Hamas attack – Israel's then defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a 'complete siege' of Gaza and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel. By December 2023, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger, according to UN and international aid agency figures.
Now, widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving the sharp rise in hunger-related deaths across Gaza, with more than 20,000 children hospitalized for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative that provides real-time data on hunger and famine for the UN and aid groups.
The 'worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out' across the Gaza Strip, the IPC warned in an alert earlier this week.
Fakhri was among the first to warn about the impending famine – and the need for urgent action to stop Israel from starving 2 million people in Gaza.
In an interview with the Guardian published on 28 February 2024, Fakhri said: 'We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts … ​​Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian … this is now a situation of genocide.'
The following month, the international court of justice recognized the risk of genocide in Gaza and drew attention to the 'spread of famine and starvation'. The ICJ said that Israel must immediately take all necessary and effective measures, in cooperation with the UN, to ensure unfettered access to humanitarian aid including food, water, shelter, fuel and medicines.
In May, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Gallant became the first ever individuals to be formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation, which is a war crime.
In July 2024, a group of UN experts including Fakhri declared a famine after the first deaths from starvation were reported in Gaza. Fakhri also published a detailed report for the UN into Israel's decades-long control over food production and supplies to Palestinians, a stranglehold which meant 80% of people in Gaza were dependent on aid when Gallant announced the current siege in October 2023.
Yet there has been little or no action to stop Israel starving Palestinians, which it has achieved by systematically destroying local food production (greenhouses, orchards, farmland) and blocking aid – in violation of international law.
According to Fakhri, this is why famine has now taken hold in Gaza.
'Famine is always political, always predictable and always preventable. But there is no verb to famine. We don't famine people, we starve them – and that inevitably leads to famine if no political action is taken to avoid it.
'But to frame the mass starvation as a consequence of the most recent blockade, is a misunderstanding of how starvation works and what's going on in Gaza. People don't all of a sudden starve, children don't wither away that quickly. This is because they have been deliberately weakened for so long. The state of Israel itself has used food as a weapon since its creation. It can and does loosen and tighten its starvation machine in response to pressure; it has been fine-tuning this for 25 years.'
Despite stark images of skeletal Palestinians, the Israeli government and some of its allies have continued to insist that the hunger is the result of logistical problems, not a state policy. Last week Netanyahu said: 'There is no policy of starvation in Gaza. There is no starvation in Gaza.'
Unicef is among multiple aid agencies to confirm that malnutrition and starvation have escalated since early March 2025 – when Israel unilaterally violated a ceasefire agreed after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Israel reinstated a total blockade after allowing some aid trucks in during the ceasefire, though UN agencies and charities on the ground said it was never enough to fully meet the needs of the starved, sick and weakened population.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaque logistics group backed by Israel and the Trump administration, began operations in May, with armed security provided by private contractors and the Israeli military. It was authorized to replace 400 UN distribution hubs with just four across Gaza, in response to unproven claims that international aid was being diverted by Hamas.
The UN and hundreds of aid groups condemned the move as a weaponization of aid that violated long-established humanitarian norms. On 1 June, Israeli soldiers killed 32 people at GHF sites, and since then more than 1,300 starving Palestinians have been killed trying to access food. Israel has long sought to discredit and weaken the UN and other international mechanisms including the courts, which it sees as hostile to its ongoing de facto annexation of Palestinian territories, accusing them of antisemitism.
'This is using aid not for humanitarian purposes, but to control populations, to move them, to humiliate and weaken people as part of their military tactics. The GHF is so frightening because it might be the new militarized dystopia of aid of the future,' Fakhri said.
In a statement, GHF rejected the reports of Palestinian deaths as 'false and exaggerated statistics' and accused the UN of not doing enough. 'If the UN and other groups would collaborate with us, we could end the starvation, desperation and violent incidents almost overnight. We could scale up, add more distribution sites and ramp up direct-to-community delivery which GHF is piloting now,' a spokesperson said.
The Israeli government did not respond to request for comment.
The deaths from starvation and aid-hub massacres come on top of at least 60,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs and tanks. Studies have concluded that the real death toll is almost certainly much higher, and Israel has continued to deny international researchers and journalists entry into Gaza.
Fakhri and other UN experts have repeatedly urged member states and corporations to act to stop the bombs and famine by cutting financial and military aid and trade with Israel, as well as broad-based economic and political sanctions.
'I see stronger political language, more condemnation, more plans proposed, but despite the change in rhetoric, we're still in the phase of inaction. The politicians and corporations have no excuse, they're really shameful. The fact that millions of people are mobilizing in growing numbers shows that everyone in the world understands how many different countries, corporations and individuals are culpable.'
Fakhri argues that in light of the US persistent vetoing of ceasefire resolutions at the UN security council, it is incumbent on the UN general assembly to call for peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys into Gaza.
'They have the majority of votes, and most importantly, millions of people are demanding this. Ordinary people are trying to break through an illegal blockade to deliver humanitarian aid, to implement international law their governments are failing to do. Why else do we have peacekeepers if not to end genocide and prevent starvation?'