THE Hamas Movement has said that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval of a plan to occupy Gaza, following the Palestinian factions’ acceptance of the mediators’ proposal, demonstrates his determination to smash any ceasefire agreement.
In a statement, Hamas said: ‘We agreed to a partial deal and expressed readiness for a comprehensive one, but Netanyahu rejects all solutions.’
The Movement highlighted remarks by former US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, which confirm Netanyahu’s stalling and dishonesty, adding new conditions each time the agreement nears completion.
Hamas emphasised that a ceasefire agreement is the only path to securing the release of captives, holding Netanyahu fully responsible for the fate of living detainees held by the resistance.
It added: ‘More than twenty-two months of aggression have exposed the illusion of “total victory” dreamed by war criminals Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich.’
Hamas called for continued official and popular pressure to stop the genocide and starvation targeting the Palestinian people. After 686 days of Israel’s ongoing genocide, the UN’s declaration of famine in Gaza has come as a significant step in defining Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of extermination and a weapon of war.
On Friday, the international body responsible for monitoring global hunger, the IPC, announced that more than half a million people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger and acute malnutrition.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), backed by the UN, reported that over half a million Gazans are living in conditions of hunger, deprivation, and death. It warned that famine would spread to Deir al-Balah (centre) and Khan Younis (south) by the end of this month, urging that it must be stopped ‘at any cost’, and forecasting that acute malnutrition will worsen rapidly across the Strip until June 2026.
Although Israel had openly declared from the start of its assault that it was using food and water as tools of war, it denied the famine by claiming to have allowed in limited aid, insufficient to avert starvation. The importance of the IPC’s declaration lies in its rarity. Famine has only been declared in exceptional cases such as Somalia (2011), South Sudan (2017 and 2020), and Darfur (2024).
This rarity is due to its strict criteria, which require that all three conditions be met simultaneously: At least 20% of households suffer acute food shortages; at least 30% of children experience severe malnutrition, and mortality exceeds two deaths per day for every 10,000 people.
This prompted UN Secretary-General António Guterres to state that the famine in Gaza is ‘no mystery, but a man-made disaster (by the Israeli occupation), an ethical indictment, and a failure of humanity itself,’ stressing that such a situation cannot continue without accountability.
Guterres added: ‘At a time when words seem to have run out to describe the hell of Gaza, a new word has been added: famine. It is not just about food, but the deliberate collapse of the systems essential for human survival.’
He emphasised that people in Gaza are starving, children are dying, and those responsible for acting are failing. Holding Israel accountable as the occupying power with clear legal obligations, he asserted: ‘We cannot allow this situation to persist without punishment.’
Israel’s starvation tactics are not new. Since imposing its blockade on Gaza in 2006, it has engineered a policy of hunger through geography, shutting crossings, controlling the type and quantity of goods entering, and even calculating calorie intake per person to keep people barely alive. But with its assault in October 2023, this weaponisation of hunger intensified dramatically, serving political, retaliatory, and criminal goals of Israel’s far right government. The scale of the catastrophe eventually forced international bodies to break their silence.
South Africa’s Foreign Ministry legal adviser, Zaheer Laher, said the IPC report directly corroborates his country’s case that Israel is systematically and deliberately committing genocide against Gaza’s population by destroying means of life. This, he explained, demonstrates intent to commit genocide.
Former UN Human Rights Commission chair and international law professor William Schabas also described the IPC report as significant, confirming an ‘engineered starvation campaign’ in Gaza. He stressed the importance of enforcing international law and the International Court of Justice’s rulings against Israel.
The decisive factor in this catastrophe is that it stems from an explicit Israeli decision, announced on the second day of the genocide, when Israeli officials declared: ‘No food, no water for Gaza’s residents.’
The world’s trade unions, especially the UK’s TUC must now intervene and call millions of workers to take general strike action to smash the regime of the Zionist gangsters and declare a State of Palestine from the river to the sea.
There must be no more delays. The TUC must call a general strike on the first day of its Congress on September 7th!
