Chocolate

• The numbers involved are just as despairing.
• The world’s major authority on food insecurity, the IPC Famine Review Committee, estimates that 90% of Gazans – some 2.08 million people – are facing acute food insecurity.
• Indeed, of the people facing imminent starvation in the world today, an estimated 95% are in Gaza.
• As an expert in Palestinian public health, I fear the situation may not have hit its nadir.

Putting Palestinians ‘on a diet’

• But food insecurity in Gaza and the mechanisms that enable it did not start with Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack.
• Multiple factors contributed to this food insecurity, not least the blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and enabled by Egypt since 2007.
• Basic foodstuff was allowed, but because of delays at the border, it can spoil before it enters Gaza.

• By placing restrictions on food imports, Israel seems to be trying to put pressure on Hamas by making life difficult for the people in Gaza.
• In the words of one Israeli government adviser in 2006, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” To enable this, the Israeli government commissioned a 2008 study to work out exactly how many calories Palestinians would need to avoid malnutrition.
• The blockade also increased food insecurity by preventing meaningful development of an economy in Gaza.

Hampering self-sufficency

• Gaza’s fishermen are regularly shot at by Israeli gunboats if they venture farther in the Mediterranean Sea than Israel permits.
• Because the fish closer to the shore are smaller and less plentiful, the average income of a fisherman in Gaza has more than halved since 2017.
• By early December 2023, an estimated 22% of agricultural land had been destroyed, along with factories, farms, and water and sanitation facilities.

Starvation as weapon of war

• The use of starvation is strictly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions, a set of statutes that govern the laws of warfare.
• Human Rights Watch has already accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, and as such it accuses the Israeli government of a war crime.
• Yet untangling what Israel’s intentions may be – whether it is using starvation as a weapon of war, to force mass displacement, or if, as it claims, it is simply a byproduct of war – does little for the people on the ground in Gaza.

Yara M. Asi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.