Geneva, March 5 (RHC)-- A United Nations rights expert has called for international sanctions against Israel, saying such punitive measures are the only means of ending the occupying regime’s months-long genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, made the plea in a social media post.  “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 8,” Fakhri wrote.

He added: “Now, famine may very well be already occurring. The only way to end/prevent this famine is an immediate ceasefire. And the only way to get a ceasefire is to sanction Israel.”

On Friday, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned that in the absence of any changes in the war, the coastal sliver was on course to experience an all-out famine.

Israel launched the genocidal war of aggression on Gaza on October 7th in response to Palestinian resistance groups’ surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories. Since the start of the war, the Israeli military has killed more than 30,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

The Tel Aviv regime has also enforced a near-total siege on Gaza, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory to a trickle.

Israel has vowed not to stop the aggression until the realization of its declared goals, including “destruction” of the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas, which many dismiss as unattainable.