Israel Is Starving Gaza
Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images
Israel has blocked aid from reaching Gaza since March 2. It has cut off new supplies of food, fuel, and medicine to more than 2 million people for more than two months. Israel is starving Gaza as it continues to bombard it, attacking the remaining infrastructure left that people need to survive, and displacing more than 400,000 civilians since Israel broke the ceasefire in March.
Gavin Kelleher, humanitarian access manager in Gaza with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on a press call with aid workers last week that “we are in a scenario where tens of thousands of people are going to die in Gaza if this siege is not lifted immediately.”
“Let there not be any doubt that starvation is being used as a weapon of war,” he added.
The World Food Program said last week that it had delivered its last remaining stocks of food. Community kitchens that serve hot meals are shuttering because supplies are depleted. Most bakeries have shut down, too. Food is scarce in markets; what little is left is innutritious or unaffordable. Prices have risen more than 1,000 percent. A bag of flour costs about $350 dollars, said Ghada Alhaddad, Gaza media and communications officer for Oxfam International. Even if families can obtain rice or flour, dwindling fuel supplies make cooking difficult, with aid workers saying people are burning wood, books, and refuse.
The United Nations says about 10,000 cases of malnutrition were identified among children since the start of the year, with about 1,4000 of those being severe acute malnutrition. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 57 people have starved to death amid the blockade. Amjad Shawa, Director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) and the deputy of the General Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), said there is no medication, no supplementary materials to provide to malnourished children even if they go to the hospital.
Israel’s war has also prevented Palestinians from growing, farming or fishing for food. According to the United Nations, about 82 percent of Gaza’s croplands have been destroyed. Israel’s attacks have targeted agricultural and irrigation infrastructure, including wells. The United Nations estimates that 95 percent of Gaza’s cattle have died. About 72 percent of its fishing fleet has been wiped out. Palestinian fishermen have been targeted by the Israeli army, with 200 dying last year.
“Israel is not only preventing food from entering, but has also engineered a situation in which Palestinians cannot grow their own food, they cannot fish for their own food, and they continue to attack or deny access to the little left food stocks in Gaza,” Kelleher said.
Dr. Aqsa Durrani is pediatric ICU physician and board member with Médecins Sans Frontières who recently returned from an assignment in Gaza, where she was working at a trauma field hospital. She said the vast majority of patients they saw were injured in air strikes and shelling. She also saw many children come in for treatment for burns, sometimes as secondary injuries to air strikes, but also kids who had been scalded after getting jostled or bumped in crowded food distribution lines.
“That was another way that we saw this crisis manifest itself,” Durrani said.