A new report by Amnesty International confirms what Palestinians in Gaza have been warning for months. Israel is not only besieging Gaza but is deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war, which Amnesty identifies as part of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Since October 2023, families in Gaza have faced a brutal and inescapable reality.

Children are collapsing from hunger, not because food is unavailable, but because it is being systematically withheld. Israeli forces have blocked aid convoys, shelled distribution points, and turned food access into a deadly gamble. Civilians waiting in long queues for flour or bottled water have been shot at, injured, or killed.

These attacks, Amnesty states, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader policy designed to inflict maximum suffering and displacement. The report exposes how so-called humanitarian corridors, often coordinated with the United States and Israel, have failed to protect civilians.

Instead, they have become zones of death. Palestinians recount walking to aid points only to be fired upon, even while carrying white flags or pushing carts for bread. The idea of humanitarian relief has been stripped of all meaning under siege, replaced by a reality of deliberate cruelty and collective punishment.

While Israeli officials deny the allegations and insist they are facilitating humanitarian access, the evidence tells another story. For Palestinians, no denial is needed, the truth is written in the empty shelves, the shrunken bodies of children, and the graveyards now filled with those who died not only from bombs but from hunger. Gaza’s health system has collapsed, clean water is scarce, and thousands are on the brink of starvation in what experts are calling one of the worst man-made famines in recent history.

According to a recent report from the Associated Press, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed in just a few weeks while trying to access aid at distribution points near Rafah, Netzarim, and northern Gaza. The situation has prompted more than 165 international humanitarian organisations to call for an immediate end to the current system and the establishment of a United Nations-led mechanism that guarantees safe and unrestricted access to food, water, and medical supplies.

This is not a natural disaster. It is a political decision. Starvation is being used as a method of war, a tactic of genocide. Amnesty’s findings echo what Palestinians have endured daily and what the international community can no longer afford to ignore.