Hunger and malnutrition rates could rise “exponentially” in Lebanon, if Israel follows through with threats to escalate the current military operation which has so far killed more than 2,000 and displaced as many as a million people, according to a leading UN expert.
“Israel has the ability to starve Lebanon – like it has starved Palestinians in Gaza,” said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. “If you look at the geography of Lebanon, Israel has the power to absolutely put a stranglehold on the food system. There is a huge risk of hunger and malnutrition rates skyrocketing very quickly in Lebanon.”
Acute hunger rates could rise very quickly because food security in Lebanon was precarious even before Israel launched its full-scale aerial bombardment in mid-September, as growing hostilities with Hezbollah since 7 October had already displaced 40% of local farmers, disrupting local production and interrupting trade flows and access to markets, according to the UN World Food Programme.
Access to adequate food is becoming increasingly challenging, as entire communities have been forced to abandon their homes and farmland in southern Lebanon and as civilian areas in Beirut come under heavy aerial attack.
In June, the UN added Lebanon to its list of hunger hotspots, warning that a quarter of the population faced acute levels of food insecurity amid the simmering conflict, soaring inflation, rising global wheat prices, and diminishing humanitarian aid for the country’s 1.5 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees.
On Friday, Fakhri will face questions at the UN general assembly over the findings of his latest report, which argues that starvation campaigns are always deliberate and that the state of Israel should be held criminally accountable for the mass starvation of Palestinians.
“Famines are human-made and are always the result of one group starving another, therefore should always be understood as a political problem,” said Fakhri.
“There is clear evidence that Israeli officials have used starvation both as a war crime and as a crime against humanity – which are fundamental violations of international law with no exceptions. Famine causes lasting physical and psychological harm to survivors, and may cause harm for generations to come. You cannot turn starvation on and off like a ceasefire.”
On 9 October 2023 – two days after the Hamas attack which killed more than 1,100 people – Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a “complete siege” of Gaza and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel. By December, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger, according to UN and international aid agency figures.
Fakhri’s report published in July said that never in post-second world war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
Some aid has reached Gaza but humanitarian groups say just a fraction of what Palestinian civilians need to survive is getting through. Israel says that aid is arriving in Gaza but not being distributed.
In September, UN and Israeli government data showed that deliveries of food and aid to Gaza sank to their lowest in seven months due to new rules imposed by Israel.
Inside Gaza, aid distribution is complicated by fuel shortages, and Israeli checkpoints. More than 300 aid workers have been killed in the territory, according to the UN.
Fakhri was the first in the UN system to raise the alarm of the risk of genocide through starvation within weeks of the start of the conflict. He argues that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza did not start on 7 October.
“It takes years of political choices, and a significant degree of military and financial power to be able to starve another population. It also requires an international system that enables this to happen, so countries that continue to send money and weapons to Israel are also culpable.”
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, blamed Hamas for the violence and suffering in Gaza and has said that more aid is being allowed to enter the enclave. The government did not respond to requests for reaction to Fakhri’s comments.
More than 42,100 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, with at least 98,100 others injured and an estimated 10,000 unaccounted for and presumed dead, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Fakhri’s report to the UN frames starvation as a violation of international law for which states and corporations could be held accountable by the international court of justice (ICJ) and domestic courts. Currently, starvation is understood strictly as a violation of humanitarian law, a war crime for which only individuals can be prosecuted.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense minister Gallant are the first individuals to be formally accused by an international court of deliberate starvation.
“Framing starvation campaigns like the ones we see in Gaza and the Sudan as only a crime under the laws of war is problematic – and empirically impossible. Military supply chains are inherently connected to humanitarian supply chains which are inherently connected to civilian supply chains,” said Fakhri, a law professor at the University of Oregon.
“If you use starvation in any instance, whether it’s against armed combatants or otherwise, guaranteed you will starve a civilian population en masse,” Fakhri added.
The world produces enough food to feed 1.5 times the current population, and yet the prevalence of hunger, malnutrition and famine is on the rise. Food insecurity is concentrated in Africa and the Arab world because the food systems are fragile by design, according to Fakhri.
“Starvation is always used as a weapon to displace people from their land or weaken their relationship with their land. It is often connected to annexation, occupation and land acquisition, and that’s what’s playing out in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon,” said Fakhri.