Israel used starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza

The fuller answer

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Current to 31 July 2026. The IPC classifications below move. Check the latest analysis before you quote one.

The crime is the purpose, and that is the ground you fight on

Lead here, and refuse to be moved off it.

Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute does not prohibit people going hungry in a war. It prohibits intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival. The ICC’s own Elements of Crimes then spell out what has to be proved: that the accused intended to starve civilians as a method of warfare. Deprivation is the act. Starving people has to be the object of it.

The treaty behind that provision is blunter. Article 54(2) of Additional Protocol I bars removing or rendering useless objects indispensable to survival for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value. Article 54(3) then lifts that prohibition where the objects sustain enemy forces or directly support military action, so long as what is left does not starve the civilian population or force it to move.

So the argument in front of you is not whether Gazans were hungry. They were, and the IPC’s own committee wrote in June 2024 that “extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip”. The argument is what the restrictions were for.

“Nobody’s disputing that people went hungry. The charge is that hunger was the point. That’s a claim about purpose, so tell me what your evidence about purpose is.”

What the law lets a besieging army do

This is the dual-use question, and the answer is in two provisions almost nobody in the argument has read.

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires free passage of medical stores, and of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases. It then makes that obligation conditional on the party being satisfied there are no serious reasons to fear three things: that the consignments may be diverted, that control may not be effective, or that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy. Article 70(3)(a) of Additional Protocol I gives the party allowing passage the right to prescribe the technical arrangements, including search, under which such passage is permitted.

Inspection, refusal of specific items and supervised distribution are things the law contemplates rather than things it forbids. That matters because Israel was not besieging an abstraction. Hamas took at least 252 people hostage on 7 October 2023 and was still holding 59 of them, 24 believed alive, in March 2025.

What none of those provisions authorise is a shut-off aimed at the population rather than at the fighters. Hold both halves or the case will not survive one follow-up question.

The IPC record, said whole or not at all

This is where most people arguing on our side get destroyed, because they know half of it.

On 18 March 2024 the IPC’s Famine Review Committee confirmed famine was projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza governorates. On 25 June 2024 the same committee reported the opposite. Its words: after the March report, “the amount of food and non-food commodities allowed into the northern governorates steadily increased”, the nutrition response was scaled up, and “the available evidence does not indicate that Famine is occurring”.

Now the fence, in the same breath. That same committee had already declined to endorse a FEWS NET analysis suggesting famine had been running in April, saying it could not determine whether the thresholds were passed. It classified every area at Emergency, Phase 4. And it warned that the improvement “should not allow room for complacency”.

Then it went the other way. On 22 August 2025 the IPC confirmed Famine in Gaza Governorate, all three criteria met, for the first time in the territory, with more than 640,000 people projected to be in Catastrophe by the end of September. In July 2025 alone, over 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished, the highest monthly figure recorded.

And then back again. On 19 December 2025 the IPC classified no area of Gaza in Famine, downgrading Gaza Governorate to Emergency, and the UN agencies credited the October ceasefire and improved humanitarian and commercial access. The analysis published on 23 July 2026 records 1.4 million people, 67 per cent, in Crisis or worse, improved from 1.6 million at the end of 2025.

One variable moved that classification every time, in both directions, and the UN agencies name it themselves. In September 2025 around 500,000 people were reached with food assistance and under-five nutrition coverage was below one per cent. By May 2026, food parcels reached around 1.5 million people and nutrition support reached 60 per cent of under-fives.

“The IPC projected famine in March 2024, then found in June that the evidence didn’t show it, because more food got in. It confirmed famine in August 2025 and cancelled it by December, because more food got in. That’s a policy responding to pressure. A plan to starve a population doesn’t have a tap.”

The numbers are contested, so be the one who says so first

Anybody who walks into this argument with a single truck figure will be taken apart, whichever side’s figure it is.

Between 12 October and 7 December 2025, under the same ceasefire and over the same weeks, COGAT’s figures give an average of 459 aid trucks a day entering Gaza. The UN records 6,545 trucks offloaded at the crossings, about 113 a day. Neither party is lying. They are counting different events, and the AP’s analysis notes the UN figure excludes trucks sent bilaterally outside the UN network, while the UN points to customs delays, cargo denials and the small number of routes available inside Gaza.

The IPC said the same thing about its own inputs. Its June 2024 methodological note records that it gathered figures from WFP, UNRWA, OCHA, COGAT and FEWS NET, that no single source captures every delivery route, and that because of the discrepancies it used trends rather than “face value of any particular source”.

One more trap. The pre-war baseline everybody quotes, about 500 trucks a day, is UN News’s own figure and it covers commercial goods and humanitarian aid together. Somebody who says aid never returned to pre-war levels is comparing against an economy, not against a relief operation.

Diversion: what is documented and what is asserted

Be careful here, because this is the weakest thing in the Israeli case and leading with it costs you the room.

What is documented is theft, and that it is mostly unattributed. The USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance reviewed 156 incidents of theft or loss of US-funded supplies between October 2023 and May 2025. Sixty-three involved unknown perpetrators and 35 involved armed actors. The review found no reports alleging that Hamas benefited. It also attributed 44 incidents directly or indirectly to Israeli military action.

What is asserted is the rest. The IDF cites intelligence alleging Hamas diverted up to a quarter of supplies. The State Department said there was video evidence and produced none. Those may be true. They are not, at present, checkable, and a claim you cannot check is a claim you cannot use.

So do not say Hamas stole the aid. Say the honest thing, which is still useful: that theft on a large scale is documented, that most of it is unattributed, and that a population governed by an armed group in a war zone is a place where relief is hard to protect. Then go back to purpose, where your case is strong.

Where this genuinely goes against Israel

Two places, and both are handled by saying them yourself.

The government published its own intent, twice. On 9 October 2023 Gallant announced a complete siege: no electricity, no fuel, everything closed. On 2 March 2025 the Prime Minister’s Office announced that all entry of goods and supplies into Gaza would cease, and tied it to Hamas’s refusal of a negotiating framework. A prosecution normally has to infer purpose from conduct. Here it can quote.

Which is exactly why the argument turns on what was announced. The stated object was a hostage deal, not a dead population, and the crime requires the second. So push it: the same office that closed the crossings in March reopened them on 19 May 2025 under American pressure. Governments pursuing extermination do not reverse themselves in eleven weeks because a phone call from Washington told them to.

The eleven weeks happened. Nothing entered Gaza from 2 March to 19 May 2025. Do not dispute it, minimise it or call it a pause.

Concede it flatly and you earn the rest of the timeline, which nobody who leads with denial ever gets to use. Israel is now three years into a war in which the aid line has been opened, closed and reopened in response to pressure. That is the profile of a government using leverage badly and being made to stop. It is not the profile of a policy of destruction, which by definition nobody has to be pressured out of.

Where this backfires

Three ways.

Say “not starvation” and you will be heard as “not serious”. The June 2024 committee that found no famine wrote in the same document that extreme suffering was without doubt ongoing. Quote that line yourself.

Reach for diversion first and a briefed opponent will produce the USAID review inside a minute, and everything true you said before it goes with it.

And do not stretch this. Showing that the intent element is unproven says nothing about the separate charges of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts, and nothing about the restrictions the UN still reports today: one crossing open, sea access prohibited, and limits on agricultural inputs the UN agencies describe as not dual-use at all.

Lines you can say

“Starvation as a war crime is about purpose. The Elements of Crimes say the accused has to have intended to starve civilians as a method of warfare. So which is it you’re claiming?”

“The IPC’s own famine review reversed the March 2024 projection in June, because more food got in. Read the report. It says so in those words.”

“Over the same weeks of the ceasefire, Israel counted 459 trucks a day and the UN counted 113. If you’re quoting one of those at me, tell me which one and why.”

“Yes, nothing went in for eleven weeks from March 2025, and that was leverage. Then it reopened. Work out what kind of policy responds to a phone call.”

Four things to learn, about ninety minutes

Learn four things well enough to say without notes: the wording of the intent element, the two IPC reversals with their dates, the two truck figures, and the USAID review. About ninety minutes.

Then: if somebody puts the starvation charge to me, then I will say the eleven weeks happened before I say anything else, and go to purpose in my second sentence.

The likeliest obstacle is not a counter-argument. It is being handed a photograph of a child: if that happens, then I will say the picture is real, that I am answering a legal charge somebody chose to make, and let the pause sit.