Occupied al-Quds – Saba:
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said on Saturday that approximately 1,200 elderly Palestinians have died in the past two months due to the repercussions of the Israeli starvation policy, malnutrition, and denial of medical treatment, which reached their peak in recent days.
In a press release on its website, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor expressed its fear that the actual number of deaths is much higher.
It noted that the daily death toll in the past two weeks has reached unprecedented levels, at a time when hundreds of elderly people are arriving daily at hospitals and primary care centers in a state of extreme exhaustion and fatigue, trying to obtain medical nutrition fluids.
The Monitor stated that the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip officially documented 55 deaths within a week due to starvation and malnutrition, bringing the total number of documented cases to 122, including 83 children. It explained that this statistic does not include all deaths resulting from the consequences of starvation and denial of medical treatment.
The Monitor explained that its field team documented the deaths of dozens of elderly people in displacement camps as a result of famine, malnutrition, or lack of medical treatment. These deaths were recorded as natural deaths due to the lack of a clear mechanism for recording these cases on the death list, as well as the tendency of victims' families to bury their loved ones immediately.
The Euro-Med Monitor emphasized that the absence of an effective mechanism by the Ministry of Health in Gaza to monitor these deaths leads to their being recorded as natural deaths, despite the fact that they actually occurred due to deliberate starvation policies and the systematic dismantling of the health system, which constitutes a pattern of deliberate killing prohibited under international humanitarian law and international criminal law.
The Monitor stated that these conditions include the crimes of deliberate starvation, the infliction of extreme suffering, and the systematic denial of healthcare, in addition to the comprehensive blockade, in the context of the ongoing crime of genocide for nearly 22 months.
It emphasized that the high death toll is the result of a deliberate Israeli policy of using hunger and denial of medical care as a weapon to kill civilians. This policy is part of a stifling blockade that has been tightened since October 7, 2023, and has entered a more severe phase since March 2. This blockade aims to eliminate the most vulnerable groups and transform the humanitarian catastrophe into a central tool in the implementation of genocide.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor reported that its field team documented painful testimonies of elderly people whose health has deteriorated due to famine and denial of medical care.
It is worth noting that cases of malnutrition and famine are arriving at hospitals in Gaza at any given moment. 900,000 children in Gaza are suffering from hunger, 70,000 of whom have reached a stage of malnutrition.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) warned that malnutrition among children under the age of five doubled between March and June, as a result of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
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