-Analysis-
PARIS — It has now been 59 days since the last truckload of humanitarian aid entered Gaza, home to more than two million Palestinians. The warnings have grown increasingly dire about the critical situation in the territory, which is at the same time facing an intensified war resumed by Israel.
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The World Food Program, which distributes meals to tens of thousands of people, has depleted its reserves, and is warning that the population is “running out of ways to cope.”
Gaza is “on the brink of collapse,” according to the United Nations. The French NGO Médecins sans Frontières, for its part, declared that the enclave had become “a mass grave” for Palestinians and their aid workers.
You can dismiss these warnings, as Israel does, considering them enemy propaganda. But this in no way detracts from the seriousness of what is happening, which is totally in defiance of international humanitarian law.
Will Israel accept?
At the request of 40 states and international organizations – on the initiative of Norway – the International Court of Justice, a United Nations body, has begun hearings in The Hague to rule on Israel’s legal obligations regarding humanitarian aid.
Will Israel accept the Court’s decisions? Probably not, as the Israeli government has decided not to even attend the ICJ hearings in The Hague.
But it remains essential to uphold the law in a situation where life and death are at stake, even if it has no immediate effect. Especially since the Israeli government makes no secret of its use of the weapon of hunger to bend Hamas, which is still holding hostages. Defense Minister Israel Katz put it as simply as that.
Yet it’s very likely that Israel will be called to order by The Hague Court, because international law is clear on the prohibition of collective punishment, and on the use of food as a weapon. It is indeed a sign of the regression of our times that the Israeli government, supported by a large part of its population and “covered” by Trump’s United States, is flouting these rules.
Going back to 1863
The history of this principle, as recalled by the ICRC, is quite instructive. In 1863, the Lieber Code, a first attempt to define wartime conduct during the U.S. Civil War, still stipulated that “it is lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed, so that it leads to the speedier subjection of the enemy.”
But after World War I, that doctrine was changed, and famine was no longer an acceptable weapon of war. Its prohibition was enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, then in the statutes of the International Criminal Court in 2002: “the deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” is now a war crime.
What is happening in Gaza was acceptable in 1863, not in 2025. The weapon of hunger is from another time — it is indefensible.
