UN expert demands sanctions on Israel to end genocide on Gaza

Michael Fakhri, the Special Rapporteur for the UN on the right to food, stated on Sunday that putting sanctions on Israel is the only option to put an end to genocide in the Gaza Strip. 

"Israel has been purposefully starving the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year," Fakhri stated in a post on X. 

He emphasised that "the only way to prevent starvation in the Gaza Strip is an immediate ceasefire," implying that "famine may very well be already occurring." 

The Israeli authorities have cut off the Gaza Strip's essential supplies of fuel, electricity, food, water, and medication since the beginning of their catastrophic conflict there around five months ago, leaving about two million and 300 thousand Palestinians suffering catastrophic humanitarian conditions. 

Israel has been imposing a suffocating siege on Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip by blocking access to food aid in these areas, resulting in the depletion of all food and potable water, and has so far led to the death of 15 children as a result of hunger, malnutrition and dehydration. 

Nutrition checks at health centers and shelters found last January that nearly 16% of children under the age of two, or about one in six infants, were suffering from acute malnutrition or wasting in northern Gaza, where about half a million people are trapped with almost no food aid allowed. 

Of these, nearly 3% suffer from severe wasting and serious medical complications or even death without urgent assistance, according to a recent UN report. 

Reports have demonstrated parents feeding their children animal feed in hope of keeping them alive. In Rafah in the south, 5% of children under two years old suffer from acute malnutrition. 

Israel’s brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip left 30,410 killed and 71,700 wounded, most of them are children and women, in addition to thousands missing under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.