Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war and the international community must exercise its ‘responsibility to protect’.
There is growing global recognition that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. The IPC, the body that assesses food-security crises, believes that famine is imminent for half of its population, some 1.1 million people.
The laws of war prohibit the use of starvation in this way. Under the Rome statute establishing the International Criminal Court, parties to a conflict must not prevent citizens gaining access to ‘objects indispensable to their survival’, including by ‘wilfully impeding relief supplies’.
A recent Oxfam report has however identified a number of ways in which Israel is deliberately obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid. These include an unjustifiably inefficient inspection system; arbitrary rejection of items on grounds of their supposed ‘dual use’ character; wholesale destruction of civilian life in an unprecedentedly brutal military campaign; forced displacement of populations; attacks on aid workers, facilities and convoys, and systematic disruption of humanitarian-relief organisations.
The overland routes are by far the most efficient way to get aid into the strip. Talk instead of maritime passage or air drops risks obfuscating the problem that Israeli control is being used deliberately to starve the people of Gaza.
Reflecting the reports of their own staff on the ground, many western officials are recognising the severity of this unfolding crisis. The most senior diplomat in the European Union, Josep Borrell, high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, has accused the state of Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. Even the German government, so often stridently pro-Israel since the Hamas atrocities of October 7th, has now echoed Borrell’s analysis.
Rapid-reaction force
Can anything be done to avert this catastrophe? Calls for an immediate ceasefire, as well as the cessation of arm sales, are very welcome and should be acted on urgently. But this, in itself, might not be sufficient to force Israel to facilitate the passage of food aid. Serious consideration should be given to other options to secure the entry of aid, including the use of a rapid-reaction force mandated by the United Nations.
Military action should not be taken lightly. It should always be a last resort. In this case, the political barriers are clearly enormous. But the world has a shared ‘responsibility to protect’ when ‘national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’. This threshold has evidently been met in Gaza.
A UN Security Council resolution would make a peacekeeping operation lawful. The mandate could be narrowly defined—a limited UN military operation to open and protect humanitarian aid routes into all of Gaza, independent of Israel Defence Forces control and inspection. In all likelihood, practical steps in this direction could be sufficient in themselves to force a change in policy by Israel. But international parties would have to be prepared to follow through if necessary.
Humanitarian intervention
The history of humanitarian intervention is mixed at best and has often been marred by inappropriate means, such as air strikes in the cases of Kosovo and Libya. Interventions aimed at saving people cannot risk the lives of those they are seeking to protect, which is why the rules of engagement should be tighter than in classic military operations.
But there are precedents for intervention around limited humanitarian goals. The most successful and perhaps most relevant was Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq in 1991 under the auspices of Security Council resolution 688. This military operation was led by the United Kingdom and focused entirely on providing immediate humanitarian relief to the Kurdish refugees facing persecution by the then Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, following the first gulf war. The ground operation was completed in 58 days and widely regarded as a dramatic success. In its carefully defined, limited humanitarian goals and short timescale, it sets a clear precedent for Gaza.
Israel’s western allies comfortably have the military capacity in the region rapidly to open and protect safe routes for humanitarian aid. It would be closer to a civilian policing exercise than a traditional military operation.
Averting catastrophe
The UN must be clear that, to end the war crime being committed, control of the humanitarian route in security terms must be taken out of Israel’s hands with the authority of a Security Council resolution. Acting to stop the crime of famine should not feel far-fetched or controversial and Israel’s allies have a specific obligation to take measures to address the crisis. They also have the leverage to do so without facing Israeli military action.
Protecting a rules-based international order must mean applying those rules consistently, without fear or favour. In this darkest moment, all options to avert a catastrophe must be countenanced.
Luke Cooper is an associate professorial research fellow in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the director of PeaceRep’s Ukraine programme. He is the author of Authoritarian Contagion (Bristol University Press, 2021).
Mary Kaldor is professor emerita of global governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a member of the national committee of Another Europe is Possible.
Dr Marika Theros is a policy fellow at the London School of Economics. Her expertise focuses on political mobilisation, global-local dynamics of violence and change, peace agreements, the politics of knowledge production and the impact of international interventions.