Israel's Deliberate Starvation of Gaza Continues

The use of starvation as a weapon is a war crime.

Israel’s deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza continues:

Israel’s two-month siege of the Gaza Strip has again plunged the enclave into a hunger crisis, leaving shelves and aid stocks empty, residents and relief agencies say, and wiping out the humanitarian gains made during a brief ceasefire earlier this year.

No food, fuel, aid or commercial goods have entered Gaza since March 2, after the first phase of the truce expired. Israel said it was imposing the blockade to pressure Hamas, which rules the territory and attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023.

The use of starvation as a weapon is a war crime. It is a crime that that the Israeli government has been committing from the start. Referring to the current blockade as a “two-month siege” is technically accurate but misleading. Prior to the brief ceasefire at the start of this year, the Israeli government had been severely impeding the delivery of aid throughout the conflict. The Biden administration knew this, but chose to ignore it and kept sending weapons in violation of U.S. law anyway. The current blockade is an intensification of the starvation policy that has been in place all along.

Continued U.S. support for the war while the Israeli government deliberately starves the population is despicable and indefensible. The Trump administration is an accomplice in the crimes of Netanyahu’s government and an enabler of the ongoing genocide. Our government’s role in facilitating the slaughter and starvation in Gaza will be a lasting stain on our country’s reputation.

The ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant identify their use of starvation as a weapon as one of the main charges against them. As Boyd van Dijk says in a new article for Foreign Affairs, “At the heart of the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, however, is a different, and rarely invoked crime: the ICC’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, accuses them of orchestrating a criminal starvation policy against Gaza’s civilian population.” The evidence that the Israeli government had been deliberately starving the people of Gaza was extensive before the ICC issued its warrants, and in the months since then there is even more proof that this is being done on purpose in order to inflict collective punishment on all Palestinians in Gaza.

The World Food Program announced last week that it had run out of food in Gaza. The kitchens that it has been supplying will shortly have nothing to give to the people. Some of the very last sources of humanitarian relief for Gaza are drying up under the pressure of the blockade. Lee Mordechai and Liat Kozma reported on the effect of the blockade last month for +972:

The impact of this intensified blockade is even more devastating than the one Israel imposed at the beginning of the war, after Gallant’s “no electricity, no food, no fuel” order; Gaza’s stockpiles were much higher back then than they are now, and Israel eventually relented to international pressure and allowed some aid in, albeit in much smaller quantities than what was needed.

This is why the U.N. Secretary General denounced the blockade earlier this month, saying that it had opened the “floodgates of horror.” Guterres accurately described Gaza as a “killing field” where civilians are in an “endless death loop.” This is what unconditional U.S. backing for Israel has created: a population of more than two million people being driven into the abyss of famine.

In famines, young children are particularly at risk. CNN reports that acute malnutrition among children is spiking:

Cases of acute child malnutrition are also rapidly rising, one of the telltale signs of impending famine. Nearly 3,700 children were diagnosed last month, an 82% increase from February, according to the United Nations.

As a result, children in Gaza are wasting away:

Five-year-old Usama al-Raqab has already lost 8 lbs in the last month, now weighing just 20 lbs, according to his mother. According to the World Health Organization, the median weight for a healthy 5-year-old boy is about 40 lbs.

He has several pre-existing medical conditions – including a pancreatic disorder and respiratory issues – which require a diet rich in fats and proteins to stay healthy. Those foods have become almost completely unavailable as Israel’s siege approaches its third month.

Usama’s skin now sticks to his bones, and his mother says he can barely walk.

This is one of the victims of what the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini has correctly called a “manmade and politically motivated starvation.”

The people of Gaza have nothing to fall back on under the siege. Any signs of recovery during the brief respite of the ceasefire earlier this year have been obliterated. Conditions have been rapidly deteriorating in the last two months. If nothing changes, Gaza will be facing a major famine and even more loss of innocent life.