The Palestinian foreign minister says Israel has been using starvation as a weapon of war against the population of Gaza as its brutal war on the besieged enclave enters its third month. 

Addressing a UN meeting in Geneva on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki said “As we speak, at least 1 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, are starving, not because of a natural disaster or because of lack of generous assistance waiting at the border."

"They are starving because of Israel's deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against the people it occupied,” Maliki added. 

He condemned the international community for taking no action in response to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, describing it as an "utter international failure.”

"Rather than insisting on respecting the Palestinian people's basic right to eat and drink water, we are living through this dystopian reality that excludes Palestinians from the basic, most basic rights afforded to all human beings.”

Israel's ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar did not specifically respond to the prime minister’s remarks in a speech at the same UN meeting.

According to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million is starving.

“There’s not enough food. People are starving,” WFP Deputy Director Carl Skau wrote on X, following a visit to the besieged coastal strip on Friday.

He said his team had reached more than a million people, “but the situation is untenable. We need to get our supplies in,” Skau wrote, calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Israel, however, stepped up its bombardment of the besieged territory since the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution for peace in Gaza on Friday.

Before the vote at the Council meeting on Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Gaza was at a “breaking point” with the humanitarian support system at risk of collapse.

The regime has brutally killed more than 18,200 people in Gaza since October 7. According to the Gaza health ministry, two-thirds of those killed are women and children.