The Guardian view on Gaza’s engineered famine: stop arming the slaughter – or lose the rule of law
On 17 June 2025 the Guardian Newspaper published an Opinion piece which began…
As Palestinians starve amid the rubble, western governments defend Israel, fund armed aid and dismantle the very rules they claim to uphold.
Here are some extracts which convey the sense of this important article.
Gaza’s cries have been drowned out by Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the diplomatic pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu over the suffering has ebbed. Yet as the industrialised world urges de-escalation in the Middle East, the devastation continues…
As Médecins Sans Frontières declared this week, what is unfolding in Gaza is “the calculated evisceration of the very systems that sustain life”…
In such circumstances, words without action are worse than meaningless. Western powers cannot decry war crimes and genocide while supplying the arms that cause them elsewhere. If they believe in international law, countries such as the UK should act to uphold it. The law is not law if no one enforces it. Israel is the occupying power in Gaza and has a clear duty under the fourth Geneva convention to ensure the population’s access to food, water and medical care.