Category: 2. World

LONDON: A UN expert who raised the alarm over deliberate mass starvation in Gaza a year and a half ago said governments and corporations “cannot act surprised” now at the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in the territory.

“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine,” Michael Fakhri, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, told The Guardian newspaper on Monday.

“So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024.

“Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it; I feel like Cassandra,” he added, referencing the Greek mythological figure whose accurate prophecies were ignored.

In a recent alert, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that “the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.

Fakhri was one of the first to sound the alarm about the crisis. In February 2024, he told The Guardian: “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely; that is the consensus among starvation experts. Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. This is now a situation of genocide.”

The following month, the International Court of Justice acknowledged the risk of genocide and ordered Israel to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid, including food and medicine. In May, following an investigation by the International Criminal Court, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s defense minister at the time, Yoav Gallant, became the first individuals formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation, a war crime.

A group of UN experts, including Fakhri, declared famine in Gaza in July 2024 after the first deaths from starvation were reported. Fakhri also published a UN report documenting Israel’s long-standing control over food supplies in Gaza, a stranglehold that meant 80 percent of Gazans were aid-dependent even before the current siege started. Despite this, little action has been taken to stop what Fakhri described as a systematic campaign by Israeli authorities.

“Famine is always political, always predictable and always preventable,” he said. “But there is no verb to famine. We don’t famine people, we starve them — and that inevitably leads to famine if no political action is taken to avoid it.

“But to frame the mass starvation as a consequence of the most recent blockade is a misunderstanding of how starvation works and what’s going on in Gaza. People don’t all of a sudden starve, children don’t wither away that quickly. This is because they have been deliberately weakened for so long.

“The State of Israel itself has used food as a weapon since its creation. It can and does loosen and tighten its starvation machine in response to pressure; it has been fine-tuning this for 25 years.”

Netanyahu continues to deny such accusations, stating last week that “there is no policy of starvation in Gaza.” But aid agencies, including UNICEF, say malnutrition has surged since March this year, when Israel reimposed a total blockade on the territory following the collapse of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

In May, Israel and the Trump administration backed the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private logistics group that replaced hundreds of established UN aid hubs with just four distribution sites secured by private contractors and Israeli troops. On June 1, 32 people were reportedly killed trying to obtain food at the foundation’s sites, followed by more than 1,300 others since then.

“This is using aid not for humanitarian purposes but to control populations, to move them, to humiliate and weaken people as part of their military tactics,” said Fakhri.

“The GHF is so frightening because it might be the new militarized dystopia of aid of the future.”

The GHF has dismissed reports of deaths at its sites as “false and exaggerated statistics,” and accuses the UN of failing to cooperate.

“If the UN and other groups would collaborate with us, we could end the starvation, desperation and violent incidents almost overnight,” a spokesperson for the foundation said.

The deaths from starvation are in addition to at least 60,000 Palestinians reported killed by Israeli air and ground attacks since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023. Researchers say the true death toll is likely to be higher, though international media and observers remain barred from entering Gaza.

Fakhri and other UN officials have urged governments and businesses to take concrete steps, including the introduction of international sanctions and the halting of arms sales, to stop the violence and famine.

“I see stronger political language, more condemnation, more plans proposed, but despite the change in rhetoric we’re still in the phase of inaction,” he said. “The politicians and corporations have no excuse; they’re really shameful.

“The fact that millions of people are mobilizing in growing numbers shows that everyone in the world understands how many different countries, corporations and individuals are culpable.”

The UN General Assembly must step in to deploy peacekeepers and provide escorts for humanitarian aid, Fakhri added.

“They have the majority of votes and, most importantly, millions of people are demanding this,” he said. “Ordinary people are trying to break through an illegal blockade to deliver humanitarian aid, to implement international law their governments are failing to do. Why else do we have peacekeepers if not to end genocide and prevent starvation?”

Special rapporteurs are part of what is known as the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. They are independent experts who work on a voluntary basis, are not members of UN staff and are not paid for their work.

The United States could require bonds of up to $15,000 for some tourist and business visas under a pilot programme launching in two weeks, a government notice said on Monday, an effort that aims to crack down on visitors who overstay their visas.

The programme gives US consular officers the discretion to impose bonds on visitors from countries with high rates of visa overstays, according to a Federal Register notice.

Bonds could also be applied to people coming from countries where screening and vetting information is deemed insufficient, the notice said.

US President Donald Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a focus of his presidency, boosting resources to secure the border and arresting people in the country illegally.

He issued a travel ban in June that fully or partially blocks citizens of 19 nations from entering the US on national security grounds. Trump’s immigration policies have led some visitors to skip travel to the US.

Transatlantic airfares dropped to rates last seen before the Covid-19 pandemic in May and travel from Canada and Mexico to the US fell by 20 per cent year-over-year.

Effective from August 20, the new visa programme will last for approximately a year, the government notice said. Consular officers will have three options for visa applicants subjected to the bonds: $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000, but will generally be expected to require at least $10,000, it said.

A similar pilot programme was launched in November 2020 during the last months of Trump’s first term in office, but it was not fully implemented due to the drop in global travel associated with the pandemic, the notice said.

The State Department was unable to estimate the number of visa applicants who could be affected by the change. Many of the countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban also have high rates of visa overstays, including Chad, Eritrea, Haiti, Myanmar and Yemen.

Numerous countries in Africa, including Burundi, Djibouti and Togo, also had
high overstay rates, according to US Customs and Border Protection data from fiscal year 2023.

Plastic pollution is a mounting global health crisis causing widespread disease and death, with annual economic losses surpassing $1.5 trillion, according to a new report published in The Lancet.

The new review of the existing evidence, which was carried out by leading health researchers and doctors, was published one day ahead of fresh talks opening in Geneva aiming to seal the world’s first treaty on plastic pollution.

“Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1.5 trillion annually,” said the review in The Lancet medical journal.

Comparing plastic to air pollution and lead, the report said its impact on health could be mitigated by laws and policies.

The experts called for the delegates from nearly 180 nations gathering in Geneva to finally agree to a treaty after previous failed attempts.

Philip Landrigan, a doctor and researcher at Boston College in the United States, warned that vulnerable people, particularly children, are most affected by plastic pollution.

“It is incumbent on us to act in response,” he said in a statement.

“To those meeting in Geneva: please take up the challenge and the opportunity of finding the common ground that will enable meaningful and effective international cooperation in response to this global crisis.”

The researchers also warned about tiny pieces of plastic called microplastics, which have been found throughout nature — and throughout human bodies.

The full effect of microplastics on health are not yet fully known, but researchers have sounded the alarm about the potential impact of this ubiquitous plastic.

The amount of plastic produced by the world has risen from two million tonnes in 1950 to 475 million tonnes in 2022, the report said. The number is projected to triple by 2060.

Yet currently less than 10% of all plastic is recycled, it added.

Landrigan said that the world’s plastic “crisis” is connected to its climate crisis. Plastic is made from fossil fuels.

“There is no understating the magnitude of both the climate crisis and the plastic crisis,” Landrigan said.

“They are both causing disease, death and disability today in tens of thousands of people, and these harms will become more severe in the years ahead as the planet continues to warm and plastic production continues to increase,” he said.

The report also announced a new effort to track the impact plastic pollution has on health, the latest in a series called The Lancet Countdown.

The relationship between India and the US is facing one of its most significant challenges in decades, as the Trump administration doubles down on its demands that India stop buying Russian oil or face punitive tariffs.

The US president, Donald Trump, has refused to cut tariffs on Indian exports to the US, as he has for other countries, and on Monday said he would significantly raise them over its purchases of cheap Russian oil, which now account for one-third of its imported oil.

“They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” he said in a post to his Truth Social network, also accusing India of selling Russian oil “on the Open Market for big profits”. In a previous social media tirade last week, he said of Russia and India: “They can take their dead economies down together.”

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday at the weekend, his hardline deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, did not hold back as he took direct aim at India, stating that Trump had made it clear “it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this [Ukraine] war by purchasing the oil from Russia”.

The whiplash the last few days have caused in the corridors of New Delhi is palpable. It was only February when India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was one of the first world leaders to be hosted by Trump and the two men embraced each other and hailed their “great friendship”. Indian officials were adamant that Russia had not even come up in trade negotiations until Trump’s public outburst.

India had come to view the US as one of its strongest and most reliable partners, united by the bonhomie between its leaders and growing cooperation on everything from regional security and defence to bilateral trade, intelligence, technology and an increasingly powerful Indian diaspora in the US.

A united geopolitical ambition to counterbalance the power of China had only brought them further together under recent presidents.

Yet it did not go unnoticed by India that China – the other big buyer of sanctioned Russian oil, which also has leverage over the US in the form of rare earths – has not received similar threats, and neither has Turkey.

Trump’s moves have been met with a frosty, if not outright defiant, reception among Indian officials. After Trump told reporters he had heard India would “no longer” be buying Russian oil, he was swiftly contradicted by Indian officials over the weekend, who said there would be no change in policy.

Under India’s “non-alignment” foreign policy it has maintained a close partnership with Russia over decades while strengthening ties with the US; a position largely tolerated by Washington and reiterated by Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for India’s foreign ministry, following Trump’s threats.

“Our bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,” said Jaiswal. “India and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership.”

In a column in the Indian Express, Shyam Saran, a former Indian foreign secretary, did not mince his words. “Donald Trump was supposed to be good for India in his second presidency,” he said. “He has turned out to be a nightmare.”

Saran was among those who called for India to follow the example of China and Brazil and stand up to Trump. He insisted that although there would be “pain in resisting Trump … we should be prepared to endure it”.

“Submitting to his exaggerated demands, which are now political as well as economic, would severely undermine India’s national interests,” said Saran. “We cannot give any country a veto over which countries India should or should not partner with.”

It is widely agreed among analysts that Modi has been put in an unenviable position by Trump; either acquiesce to Trump’s demands and see loss of face domestically or reject them and face sky-high tariffs – and possibly other punitive actions – that would cripple the Indian economy.

The Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta said India was not the exception in mistakenly thinking that “Trump is purely transactional and that by placating him, pandering to his ego and giving him good headlines, it will be enough to make him quietly dial back”.

One of the major sticking points for Modi, he said, was the highly public nature of Trump’s threats, which had complicated the possibility of backdoor negotiations over India quietly moving away from buying Russian oil and arms.

He said Trump had already “frankly humiliated the Indian prime minister” over the recent India-Pakistan conflict in May, where Trump had publicly taken the credit for negotiating a ceasefire – a position vehemently denied by the Modi government in the aftermath.

Trump’s recent embrace of Pakistan, signing deals with India’s enemy on cryptocurrency, mining and oil – and even having the chagrin to suggest India may one day buy Pakistani oil – as well as hosting the Pakistan army chief for lunch in the White House, had only added insult to injury.

Mehta said suspicions towards the US in New Delhi now resembled those of 1971, when President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent warships to India in what is considered one of the lowest points of the US-India relationship. “The damage is already done,” said Mehta. “No matter what deal they come to now, distrust of the US is only going to continue to skyrocket.”

At least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, including 10 seeking aid, Hamas-run health authorities in the enclave said, adding that another five had died of starvation amid what aid groups say is a severe humanitarian crisis. There was no immediate comment from the IDF.

The 10 who were killed near aid sites were reportedly killed in two separate incidents near facilities belonging to the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Strip’s center and south, local medics said. Media outlets in Gaza also reported on Monday that Udai al-Quran, a nurse at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, died after an aid package that was airdropped over the Strip hit him on the head.

The reported casualties came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the cabinet is set to decide this week whether to expand the Israel Defense Forces’ ground operations in Gaza or to restrain military action in order to allow more time to reach a potential ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

“We must continue to stand together and fight together in order to achieve” the war’s goals, Netanyahu said in remarks shared by his office, specifying the war’s goals, as he has many times before, as “the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza will never again pose a threat to Israel.”

Last week, the IDF withdrew some troops from Gaza. On Sunday, four IDF soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, in a car crash during operational activity near the border with the Strip. And on Monday, more than a dozen former senior security officials put out a joint video calling to end the war, arguing that Israel was racking up losses, and that the fighting has dragged on for political reasons.

Netanyahu insisted on Sunday that Hamas is uninterested in a deal, which creates an incentive to “destroy” the terror group.

Negotiations between the sides reached an impasse in late July. But pressure on the government to free the hostages has remained heavy following the publication last week of videos showing two of the captives, Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David, in emaciated condition. Gaza terror groups are holding 50 hostages, at least 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said he spoke to Julien Lerisson, the regional coordinator of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and “requested his involvement in providing food to our hostages and… immediate medical treatment.”

The ICRC said in a statement it was “appalled by the harrowing videos” and reiterated its “call to be granted access to the hostages.”

In response, Hamas said it would allow the agency access to the hostages but only if “humanitarian corridors” for food and aid were opened “across all areas of the Gaza Strip.”

The Red Cross has not provided any assistance to the hostages since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023, apart from facilitating the transfer of captives during two truce periods.

Humanitarian groups continue to sound the alarm over widespread starvation in Gaza and increasing reports of deaths due to malnutrition. The United Nations says more than 1,300 people have been killed trying to obtain aid supplies in the enclave since the GHF began operating in May 2025, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating near GHF sites.

The IDF has acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds that get too close to its soldiers but called the UN tallies exaggerated, though it hasn’t provided alternate numbers.

The GHF began operating in May after a nearly three-month aid blockade Israel had imposed on the Strip. The group seeks to circumvent Hamas in the distribution of aid, amid Israeli allegations that the terror group regularly hijacks deliveries under the existing UN-led aid system. The UN and other aid groups have rejected the GHF, accusing it of violating humanitarian principles of neutrality and of putting aid seekers in harm’s way.

“Everyone who goes there, comes back either with a bag of flour or carried back (on a wooden stretcher) as a martyr, or injured. No one comes back safe,” said 40-year-old Palestinian Bilal Thari.

He was among mourners at Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital on Monday who had gathered to collect the bodies of their loved ones killed a day earlier as they sought aid, according to local health officials.

At least 13 Palestinians were killed on Sunday while waiting for the arrival of UN aid trucks at the Zikim crossing on the Israeli border with the northern Gaza Strip, the officials added.

At the hospital, some bodies were wrapped in thick patterned blankets because white shrouds, which hold special significance in Islamic burials, were in short supply due to continued Israeli restrictions on the entry of supplies, and the mounting number of daily deaths, Palestinians said.

“We don’t want war, we want peace, we want this misery to end. We are out on the streets, we all are hungry, we are all in bad shape, women are out there on the streets, we have nothing available for us to live a normal life like all human beings, there’s no life,” Thari told Reuters.

Meanwhile, five more people died of starvation or malnutrition over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Monday. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began.

Israel has denied allegations of widespread starvation in Gaza and blamed the UN and Hamas for obstructing or diverting aid meant for civilians. In late July, the government instituted a series of measures to alleviate hunger in the Strip, including airdrops and 10-hour “humanitarian pauses” in military operations in three population centers.

On Monday, Australia announced that it would provide an additional $20 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza, following growing domestic pressure and mass pro-Palestinian protests in Sydney demanding increased aid for Gazans and sanctions on Israel.

The new package will fund food deliveries, medical supplies for field hospitals, and other critical support, with a focus on women and children, the Australian Foreign Ministry said.

“The suffering and starvation of civilians must end,” said Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, adding that “Australia will continue to work with the international community to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and a two-state solution.”

And Germany’s interior ministry is reviewing whether it can bring children from Gaza to Germany for treatment, a ministry spokesperson said. The German cities of Hanover and Düsseldorf have said in recent days that they would accept children from Gaza and Israel who are particularly vulnerable or traumatized.

COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates activity in the West Bank and Gaza, said on Sunday that 23,000 tons of humanitarian aid on 1,200 trucks entered Gaza over the past week, and that 1,200 trucks were “successfully collected by the UN and international organizations.”

Nevertheless, it added, “hundreds of trucks remain inside Gaza, waiting to be picked up and distributed by the UN and international organizations.”

That aid was separate from the “hundreds of pallets of humanitarian supplies” that have been airdropped into Gaza recently, it added.

On Monday, aircraft from Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Germany, Belgium, and — for the first time — Canada, airdropped 120 pallets of humanitarian aid in the northern and southern Gaza Strip, the IDF said.

Each pallet contains around one ton of food.

The IDF said the airdrops were carried out “in accordance with the directives from the political leadership and as part of the cooperation between Israel” and the involved countries.

“The IDF will continue to work in order to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, along with the international community, while refuting the false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza,” it added.

Since July 26, a total of 675 humanitarian aid packages have been airdropped in the Gaza Strip by nine countries, including Israel. The packages the IDF airdropped were supplied by international aid groups, not by Israel.

UN agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and quickly ease access to it. Palestinian and UN officials said Gaza needs around 600 aid trucks to enter per day to meet the humanitarian requirements of the Strip, the number Israel allowed into Gaza before the war.

The war began with the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage. Since then, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 60,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.