GENOVA, Italy

Israel has been using hunger as a “weapon” in its attacks on the Gaza Strip, a UN special rapporteur on the right to food told Anadolu on Wednesday.

Michael Fakhri said Israel wants to punish all Palestinians and it is "a genocide," adding that Gaza has never experienced this level of hunger.

"Even before forces moved to Rafah, we were raising the alarm that every single person in Gaza was hungry and at least one-quarter of the population was starving, and that famine was imminent,” he said about the famine and the developments in Gaza under the Israeli attacks and blockade.

“Since then, two things have happened. First, several countries have decided not to fund the most important humanitarian agency in Gaza but all Palestinian refugees and that is under war. And second, now we see Israeli forces pressing into Rafah squeezing hundreds of thousands of people into such a small concentrated area,” said Fakhri.

He said at this point he is “running out of ways to describe inhumanity and the violence and the brutality.”

“Before we were saying famine is imminent. I would not be surprised by the end of the month that we will say that there is actually a full-blown famine,” he added.

Fakhri said aid reaching Gaza is not enough to sustain the population.

"The problem with starving people is that it is a long slow and painful violent. Which means we are going to see the impact of this for months, years and decades to come. Even if there is a cease-fire today, already the impact is affecting generations because so many children have been affected. So, the key thing to remember is that over 1 million children live in Gaza, and so their future is at stake. What we know is that children under fire -- this is 335,000 children -- are at the risk of permanent physical and cognitive impairment.”

“What is unique is we have never seen this degree of hunger, we have never seen an entire population like this. So, this is over 2.2 million people may go hungry so completely, so quickly,” he said.

Fakhri noted that the Israelis have repeatedly expressed their intention to target all Palestinians, “Based on all the statements that we have been reading and all the statements has been made, both as government and individual efforts, their intent is ethnic cleansing; their intent is to punish all civilians, all people in Gaza. Their intent to push them out of Gaza, to punish them collectively. This war is not about self-defense; this war is not about Hamas attacking on Oct. 7. It was the intent to punish all Palestinians simply because they are Palestinian. This is the genocide.”

Fakhri said he has seen that the UN cannot do anything at this point and the international community is not organized enough to put pressure on Israel.

*Writing by Zeynep Cetin in Istanbul