SA BDS Coalition Press Statement

Palestinians in Gaza are now starving to death!

The SA BDS Coalition is distressed to announce that our colleagues in Gaza have officially run out of food as of yesterday. Their stocks of cardiac medication and other important chronic medication are also now depleted.

“Everything is running out now – food, gas, water. Soon all of Gaza will not find a single thing to eat. People are starving to death. Please do anything possible to prevent any more people from starving”, said a colleague who could not be named for their own safety.

The use of starvation and the impeding of relief supplies is recognised as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Geneva Conventions. This joins the plethora of genocidal atrocity crimes that the Israeli regime is committing.

Our colleagues remain trapped in the Gaza Strip, subjected to bombardment and starvation. Last night (9 November), Israel bombed three major hospitals. Bread production in the South of Gaza has come to a halt as Israel bombed most of the bakeries – this after forcibly removing 1.1 million people from Gaza City and North Gaza, under threat of bombing, to South Gaza.

Our colleagues report that families who are still fleeing North Gaza are still being bombed by Israel along the way. Others are dying along the way from panic, hunger, or fatigue. Palestinian families who are fleeing are forced to leave the bodies of their family members along the side of the road if they die, and continue walking to South Gaza without burying their loved ones. Israeli soldiers are also robbing fleeing families of their money, jewellery and last possessions.

There is imminent starvation of 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. The SA BDS Coalition demands an immediate ceasefire, a mass delivery of humanitarian assistance, including all necessary medications, for the Palestinians trapped in Gaza, the reinstatement of the UN anti-apartheid mechanisms towards international sanctions and an arms embargo against Israel, and a swift prosecution by the ICC into war crimes by Israel, including the crimes of genocide and Apartheid.

…./ends