Israel’s total blockade of Gaza has passed its 60th day, deepening the hunger crisis in the coastal enclave, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held a third day of hearings into Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians.
The continued blockade is the longest such closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, and came as Israeli forces continued bombarding the territory, killing at least 30 Palestinians on Wednesday alone.
It has prompted warnings of famine, with the remaining charity kitchens across the Strip warning they may have to close down within days if aid is not allowed in.
“We have 70-80 community kitchens still working in Gaza … In four to five days, these community kitchens will close their doors,” Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) in Gaza, told the Reuters news agency.
Shawa put the number of operational community kitchens in Gaza before the crossings closed at about 170.
He said an additional 15 kitchens closed down on Monday.
Since March 2, Israel has barred all supplies, including food, water and medicine from entering Gaza, in a bid to force Hamas into renegotiating the ceasefire deal agreed in January.
Israel wants the Palestinian group to release the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza in exchange for humanitarian aid, an extended truce and more Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. But Hamas has insisted on an Israeli commitment to a permanent ceasefire, saying any “partial deals” will allow Israel to resume the killing in Gaza.
Israel then abandoned the ceasefire and resumed bombarding Gaza on March 18, killing at least 2,308 people in attacks on tents, hospitals and school-turned-shelters. The death toll since October 2023, when the war began, has crossed 52,000 people. Another 118,014 have been wounded.
Famine assessment under way
Amid the intensified attacks and continued blockade, the global hunger watchdog, which is known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, has begun an analysis of food insecurity and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip.
The assessment began on April 28 and will last one week, according to the United Nations’s humanitarian agency (OCHA). More than 50 trained analysts from UN agencies and aid groups, from the Gaza Strip and abroad, are taking part in the exercise, it said.
The IPC had issued at least four warnings since Israel’s genocidal actions on Gaza began, saying the territory could be teetering on the precipice of famine.
The assessment comes days after the World Food Programme (WFP) said its stocks in the enclave have been depleted. The agency had shut all of its bakeries in the Strip earlier in the month, over a lack of flour and fuel.
Most families are surviving on less than a meal a day, and are resorting to eating “whatever they can find”, even if it is not safe for consumption, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Meanwhile, the large number of dead and wounded has overwhelmed the remaining partially functioning hospitals in Gaza, and medical staff warn that many are dying due to the shortage of medical supplies, according to Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City.
“Medical staff warn there are many more dying quietly inside emergency wards of the remaining health facilities due to the shortage of medical supplies. Medications as simple as painkillers are not available,” he said.
The president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Younis al-Khatib, called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel as it “left no space for humanity to live in Gaza”.
“I can’t see my colleagues, my friends, and my staff being killed by a state that does not respect our emblem, does not respect international law,” al-Khatib told Al Jazeera.
“If any other state had done it, it would have been sanctioned.”
US defends Israel at ICJ
Meanwhile, in The Hague in the Netherlands, the ICJ continued its hearings on what Israel must do to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, following a request for an advisory opinion from the UN General Assembly last year.
The United States defended Israel on Wednesday, saying that while it must provide aid to Gaza, it does not have to work with UNRWA. Israel banned the agency from operating on its territory in January, after alleging that 19 out of approximately 13,000 staff took part in Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Joshua Simmons, a legal adviser from the US State Department, argued there was “no legal requirement that an occupying power permit a specific third state or international organisation to conduct activity that would compromise its security interests”.
Simmons suggested other organisations could fulfil UNRWA’s mission, despite the UN agency having repeatedly stated that there could be no replacement for its role as an aid provider.
Similar points were raised by Hungary as it took the floor in defence of Israel.
The Russian Federation, which spoke directly after the US, said that UNRWA’s work was crucial for the Palestinian people and the agency was supported by the majority of the international community.
“The urgency of this matter cannot be overstated. Gaza balances on the brink of famine. Hospitals lie in ruins. Millions of Palestinians in the [Gaza] Strip, as well as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, face existential despair,” Maksim Musikhin, of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the court.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from The Hague, said other countries, including Turkiye, France, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan and Kuwait, were expected to speak against Israel’s aid blockade before the end of the day.
Challands said the countries that gave statements to the court in the first two days of the hearings had all been critical of Israel’s actions. “It was only at the beginning of the third day that a country turned up and spoke in defence of Israel,” he said. “And that, of course, was the US.”
