Above photo: Displaced Palestinian children wait to receive food at a tent camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/ Reuters.
The ICGSP urges global social movements to unite to stop genocide through starvation.
And to organize locally for upcoming global days of action March 2, 8, and 9.
The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICGSP) encourages social movements worldwide to take urgent action to stop the intentional starvation of people in the Gaza Strip and to participate in upcoming global days of action in March aimed at raising awareness of and pressuring governments to stop the famine.
In January of this year, the World Court ordered the state of Israel to cease all activities consistent with genocide. This includes actions that would threaten the well-being of Palestinians, such as the withholding of basic necessities: food, water, medicines and fuel, to name a few.
One month later, in defiance of international law, the state of Israel, with the direct aid of Washington and other Western imperialist nations, continues unabated to wage its campaign of complete elimination of the Palestinian people. This past week, the United States again vetoed a ceasefire resolution in the United Nations Security Council, greenlighting Israel’s ongoing violations of international law.
The United States has also led the effort to strip the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of its funding, impeding the agency’s vital work to bring aid to Palestinians. UNRWA reports that it is currently unable to reach people in Northern Gaza where one in six children under age five are suffering acute malnutrition. Families report eating plants and animal feed to stay alive.
The starvation of Palestinians is a tool of genocide that is completely preventable. Hundreds of trucks filled with life-saving supplies are being denied entry into Gaza by Israel at the Rafah border crossing. Trucks that are allowed in, struggle to reach their destination due to Israel’s destruction of the roads and shortages of fuel. Palestinians who attempt to pick up supplies in the rare moments when they are available are targeted and killed by Israeli Occupying Forces.
Earlier this week ICSGP launched a campaign, spearheaded by Coalition member organization the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Palestinian member organization of La Vía Campesina, to bring an end to the use of starvation as genocide in Palestine. The UAWC/ICSGP campaign includes an organizational sign-on letter for which signatures will be collected until March 8, a call for a Global Day of Fasting in Solidarity with Gaza Saturday, March 9, and a call for organizations and individuals to participate in two other days of global solidarity in the coming week—the Shut it Down for Palestine action Saturday March 2, and next Friday’s Global March of Women March 8—with clear messaging condemning starvation as a tool of genocide.
UAWC Director Fuad Abu Saif states:
In the face of the horrific starvation campaign waged by the Israeli occupation against Gaza, we stand united in our anger and sorrow. The deliberate deprivation of food and the systematic assault on the livelihoods of the Palestinians represent a blatant insult to humanity, an act so egregious that it transcends mere violation to embody genocide. The silence of the international community in this dark hour is deafening; it is a silence that starves and kills. We call upon the world to awaken to the cries of the Palestinian people, whose basic right to food and a dignified life, like any other people of the world, is being cruelly snatched away. This is not just a matter of law; it is a test of our collective humanity. Let us come together to demand an immediate halt to this brutality, to ensure that food and hope flow freely into Gaza once again. The indomitable spirit and steadfastness of the Palestinian people must inspire everyone to act, to not rest until justice prevails and the shadow of occupation and starvation is forever lifted from over Gaza and all of Palestine.
In its organizational sign-on letter denouncing the use of starvation as genocide, the ICSGP “call[s] on all states and international institutions to undertake any and all action possible including sanctions and arms embargoes to bring an immediate end to the obstruction of humanitarian, life sustaining, and life-saving supplies to Palestinians in Gaza, to investigate all state and non-state actors who have directly and indirectly participated in the obstruction and/or destruction of supplies to Gaza, and we ask that the campaign to de-fund UNRWA be investigated as a possible act toward furtherance and facilitation of starvation and/or genocide.”
The ICSGP urges people around the world to organize events on the March 9 Global Day of Fasting in Solidarity with Gaza to amplify these demands, and to donate money they would have spent on food that day to support Palestinian-led anti-starvation efforts.
Additionally ICSGP strongly urges individuals and organizations to participate in the March 2 Global Day of Action, and in March 8 International Women’s Day marches with a focus on denouncing the use of Starvation as Genocide in Palestine. Pawel Wargan, coordinator of the Secretariat of Progressive International—one of ICSGP’s founding organizations and a co-sponsor of the March 2 Global Day of Action—states:
This week, Israeli forces in Gaza massacred starving people as they lined up to receive the paltry humanitarian aid that is allowed through the blockade — another grim episode in the long, wretched history of Zionist colonialism in Palestine. In Gaza, Zionism and its imperialist backers are striking at the very foundations of humanity. That is why it is imperative for progressive forces to mobilize — with love, courage, and organization more powerful than the inhumanity that threatens to crush the world in its death march.
Information about local March 2 actions can be found here.