NEW YORK, (PIC)
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, condemned the ongoing Israeli occupation for starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In a post on X on Saturday, Albanese said, “Why: after 19 months of genocidal violence and 60 days without a single grain of rice entering Gaza, Palestinians are portrayed to the world as they scramble for food as if they are gasping for breath.”
She continued: “People of Gaza. Palestinians. Your hunger today is our shame. We should not be allowed to witness your suffering if we are so indifferent, neglectful, selfish, and corrupt that we cannot stop it immediately.”
Earlier, the UN Rapporteur called the humanitarian crisis in Gaza a “shame on global conscience,” warning that the international community must not continue to neglect the rescue of civilians from hunger and destruction.
In a report to the UN Human Rights Council, she noted that the ongoing blockade and military operations have turned Gaza into an “open-air prison,” where residents suffer from severe shortages of food, medicine, and water.
This comes as the World Food Program recently announced that its food stocks in Gaza have run out due to the suffocating Israeli blockade.
Today, it was reported in Gaza that a child, Jinan Saleh Al-Sakafi, died from malnutrition and dehydration at Al-Rantisi Hospital in western Gaza City, following two months of Israeli blockade on the entry of food and medicine into the besieged enclave amid the ongoing genocidal war.
The Government Media Office in Gaza said that the number of victims of starvation and severe malnutrition has risen to 57 martyrs since the war began, the vast majority of whom are children, including patients and the elderly.
At the beginning of March 2025, the first phase of a ceasefire agreement and prisoner exchange between the resistance in Gaza and Israel ended, which had come into effect on January 19. However, Israel reneged on it and resumed the genocide on the 18th of that month.
On March 2, Israel closed the crossings of the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid and fuel and resumed the mass killing. The 2.4 million residents of Gaza are entirely dependent on such aid after being turned into impoverished individuals due to the ongoing genocide, as confirmed by World Bank data.
