The historic Gaza Tribunal on Friday scrutinised the “crimes” of Israel through three interlinked offences – starvation, ecocide, and domicide – to highlight the weaponisation of food by the Zionist state in its genocidal war against Palestinians.
The four-day public session of the tribunal at Istanbul University marks the culmination of a year-long effort by international jurists, scholars, and civil society figures to document crimes committed against Palestinians.
Chaired by former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Professor Richard Falk, the Tribunal marks the first time that the genocide in Gaza is being publicly tried in the court of global conscience through a collective civil initiative.
The event from October 23 to 26 brings together academics, human rights advocates, journalists, and civil society representatives to present evidence, testimonies, and legal assessments of war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza. 
Weaponisation of humanitarian aid
Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Professor Hilal Elver, in her address on ‘Declaration of Famine and the Weaponisation of Humanitarian Aid’, warned that the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s means of subsistence is both a present atrocity and a generational catastrophe.
“The crime of deliberately creating famine must never be forgotten, normalised or forgiven,” Elver told the hall.
She argued that the long-term damage to Gaza’s ecosystem and infrastructure is intentional, creating economic starvation that will persist “even after the guns stop.”
Elver criticised the failure of international legal systems to deter or punish those responsible.
“The United States has sanctioned ICC officials; the UN’s special procedures on the occupied territories have been sidelined; perpetrators have been shielded,” she said.
“Even with overwhelming evidence, international law has proved politically impotent.”
Explaining the legal complexity of starvation, Elver said it often intersects with other crimes and doesn’t require visible deaths from hunger to be prosecutable.
“You do not need a specific intent, nor do you need people to die of starvation for a crime to exist. If you burn food, destroy bakeries or block humanitarian aid, those acts already constitute criminal conduct.”
“Without accountability there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no real recovery,” Elver added.
Starvation by design
Hani Almadhoun, former UNRWA director and founder of a Gaza food relief initiative, linked Israel’s starvation strategy to the weaponisation of aid and control over food distribution in his talk titled ‘Starvation by Design: Blocked Aid and the Fight to Feed Gaza’.
“Controlling food means controlling people,” Almadhoun said.
 
He described how aid itself has become an instrument of coercion:
“When you need food, you become desperate. That desperation can be leveraged for information, for compliance; food becomes power.”
Almadhoun also criticised the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and its predecessor, the CERF, accusing them of mismanagement and exploitation.
“Unfortunately, the precursor for the GHF was the CERF; they take millions of dollars for it, serve their parent families, and then dismantle them.”
Recalling the ‘flour massacre’ under a similar initiative, he added, “Who was the security contractor there? It was the US. And they started shooting and killing.”
Almadhoun also described a pattern of attacks and manipulation around aid deliveries.
“We must not allow humanitarian aid to be weaponised. Aid must be safe, neutral, and guaranteed.”
Ecocide and domicide
David Whyte, Professor of Climate Justice at Queen Mary University of London, documented the environmental scale of Gaza’s destruction, describing it as deliberate ecocide with devastating long-term consequences.
“The large-scale destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure has produced an estimated 61.4 million tonnes of debris, more than twenty times the volume of all military attacks on Gaza since 2008,” Whyte told the hall.
That rubble, he warned, contains industrial and medical waste, human remains, and unexploded ordnance: all posing chronic health risks.
Whyte detailed how targeted attacks have hit Gaza’s water and sanitation systems, energy grids, and agricultural land.
“Damage to water facilities is consistent with targeted strikes, not collateral harm,” he said. “This is an attack on the environmental infrastructure that sustains life in Gaza.”
By 2025, Whyte said, 97 percent of tree crops and 82 percent of annual crops had been destroyed, alongside widespread demolition of greenhouses and farmland.
“This is part of a deliberate campaign to make survival, now and in the future, nearly impossible.”
He also argued that environmental destruction and systematic demolition of homes, domicide, must be understood as interconnected crimes: acts that erase life and the very conditions for community, culture, and recovery.
 
The final verdict, scheduled for Sunday, is expected to serve as both a moral and historical record, one that participants say could reshape global understanding of responsibility and impunity in Palestine.
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Source: TRT