By Amra Lee
Israel partially lifted its aid blockade of Gaza this week in response to intensifying international pressure over the man-made famine in the devastated coastal strip.
The United Arab Emirates and Jordan airdropped 25 tonnes of food and humanitarian supplies on Sunday. Israel has further announced daily pauses in its military strikes on Gaza and the opening of humanitarian corridors to facilitate UN aid deliveries.
Israel reports it has permitted 70 trucks per day into the strip since May 19. This is well below the 500–600 trucks required per day, according to the United Nations.
The UN emergency relief chief, Tom Fletcher, has characterised the next few days as “make or break” for humanitarian agencies trying to reach more than two million Gazans facing “famine-like conditions”.
A third of Gazans have gone without food for several days and 90,000 women and children now require urgent care for acute malnutrition. Local health authorities have reported 147 deaths from starvation so far, 80% of whom are children.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed – without any evidence – “there is no starvation in Gaza”. This claim has been rejected by world leaders, including Netanyahu ally US President Donald Trump.
Famine expert Alex de Waal has called the famine in Gaza without precedent:
[…] there’s no case of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.
While the UN has welcomed the partial lifting of the blockade, the current aid being allowed into Gaza will not be enough to avert a wider catastrophe, due to the severity and depth of hunger in Gaza and the health needs of the people.
According to the UN World Food Programme, which has enough food stockpiled to feed all of Gaza for three months, only one thing will work:
An agreed ceasefire is the only way to reach everyone.
Airdrops a ‘distraction and a smokescreen’
Air-dropping food supplies is considered a last resort due to the undignified and unsafe manner in which the aid is delivered.
The UN has already reported civilians being injured when packages have fallen on tents.
The Global Protection Cluster, a network of non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, shared a story from a mother in Al Karama, east of Gaza City, whose home was hit by an airdropped pallet, causing the roof to collapse:
Immediately following the impact, a group of people armed with knives rushed towards the house, while the mother locked herself and her children in the remaining room to protect her family. They did not receive any assistance and are fearful for their safety.
Air-dropped pallets of food are also inefficient compared with what can be delivered by road.
One truck can carry up to 20 tonnes of supplies. Trucks can also reach Gaza quickly if they are allowed to cross at the scale required. Aid agencies have repeatedly said they have the necessary aid and personnel sitting just one hour away at the border.
Given how ineffective the air drops have been – and will continue to be – the head of the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine has called them a “distraction” and a “smokescreen”.
Malnourished women and children need specialised care
De Waal has also made clear how starvation differs from other war crimes – it takes weeks of denying aid for starvation to take hold.
For the 90,000 acutely malnourished women and children who require specialised and supplementary feeding, in addition to medical care, the type of food being air-dropped into Gaza will not help them. Malnourished children require nutritional screening and access to fortified pastes and baby food.
Gaza’s decimated health system is also not able to treat severely malnourished women and children, who are at risk of “refeeding syndrome” when they are provided with nutrients again. This can trigger a fatal metabolic response.
Gaza will take generations to heal from the long-term impacts of mass starvation. Malnourished children suffer lifelong cognitive and physical effects that can then be passed on to future generations.
What needs to happen now
The UN has characterised the limited reopening of aid deliveries to Gaza as a potential “lifeline”, if it’s upheld and expanded.
According to Ciaran Donnelly from the International Rescue Committee, what’s needed is “tragically simple”: Israel must fully open the Gaza borders to allow aid and humanitarian personnel to flood in.
Israel must also guarantee safe conditions for the dignified distribution of aid that reaches everyone, including women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities. The level of hunger and insecurity mean these groups are at high risk of exclusion.
The people of Gaza have the world’s attention – for now. They have endured increasingly dehumanising conditions – including the risk of being shot trying to access aid – under the cover of war for more than 21 months.
Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have just publicly called Israel’s war on Gaza “a genocide”. This builds on mounting evidence compiled by the UN and other experts that supports the same conclusion, triggering the duty under international law for all states to act to prevent genocide.
These obligations require more than words – states must exercise their full diplomatic leverage to pressure Israel to let aid in at the scale required to avert famine. States must also pressure Israel to extend its military pauses into the only durable solution – a permanent ceasefire.
Amra Lee is a doctoral candidate in Protection of Civilians at Australian National University.
NJ says
The BIG LIE continues about the children of Gaza who will be dead soon because of the IDF and the current Israeli leadership! Remember the USS Liberty which the IDF attacked three times ( Fighters, Fighter-Bombers, and Torpedo Boats ) thereby KILLING 34 and WOUNDING 134 US Navy Heroes! Check out the USS Liberty Memorial at Heroes Park in Palm Coast then ask WHY the IDF is NOT stated on the memorial as the Attacking Force! WHY?? Yes, ask the Palm Coast City Council and Mayor WHY!
Big Mike says
What humanitarian aid did Hamas offer during the October 7, 2023, attack their on Israel, roughly 1,200 people were killed, and 251 hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack? the answer is NOTHING!
Kennan says
At one time there were hundreds of food sites to try to feed civilians. There are now four food sites run by the shadowy death trap we now know as Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The foundation is a private organization made up of American mercenaries and IDF soldiers. The UN and its humanitarian efforts were blocked and/or Bombed to keep food from civilians. This organization was developed to appear to be a humanitarian food station, but as we know now it’s really a corralling station for Palestinians an ultimately a death trap where many are shot. The Chaos that happens when people are starving and hopelessly running for food, Provides the perfect opportunity for animals Like the IDF and US private contractors to shoot men women And children by repeatedly shooting into crowds.
Let me re-introduce you to Anthony Aguilar. The 25 year army veteran Green Beret, who was working for subcontractor UG solutions to do what he thought was give aid to starving people. He has now blown the whistle on the travesty on the ground at all four of these GHF death traps. He tells the story of an emaciated 12-year-old boy. The boy was so happy to have food, not a lot because he had to grab it off the ground and carried whatever rice he could in his shirt which was hanging off of him, as he was literally starving. He put his hands on Aguilar‘s face And kissed him. He said thank you in English. it should be noted that the boy walked 12 km to get to the GHF site for food. 12 km. Shortly after he left Aguilar, he was shot and killed along with others in a crowd of people exiting the area. Shot and killed at a so-called humanitarian site. Aguilar stated,” ISIS was treated better than this.”
Benjamin Netanyahu‘s grip on reality has never been good. The culpability of the United States and our money to give this monster free to kill and starve. Everyone is staggering.
The dye was cast on the second week of October 2023 when Israel cut off water and electric.
Israel does not want a two state solution and a ceasefire of any kind flys in the face of a “Greater Israel “ narrative and their hoped end result.
After nearly two years of indiscriminate killing, humanitarian blockades, destruction of any and all infrastructure, the plan was obvious from the beginning.
People, including myself who have spoken and written against this obvious holocaust are told we are anti-Israel, or worse, yet try to use the term antisemite and hyper victimize themselves because they no longer have a leg to stand on.
Israel has consistently walked away from the negotiating table and taking billions of American dollars to destroy Gaza. We see this, protesters are arrested and we are told to shut up. People, congressman, and senators are given a” Slow drip” of lies that tell Americans that by speaking out, we are putting the Jewish state at risk. Israel and its actions put Israel at risk. Israel, the IDF and of course, Netanyahu are antisemitic against their own people and put Israel in peril. 80% of the world nose is real, and Netanyahu are guilty of war crimes
Israel ambassador to Washington Yecheil Leiter Is so desperate and depraved that he went on CNN and told Wolf Blitzer this: Stavation Is not real. Children with cerebral palsy are being shown in videos. Not kids with starvation issues. What?!?! He goes on to say that 600 trucks with food are in Gaza, but Hamas steals food. A absolute unbridled lie!! A sick sick joke told on national television. Insane!
Trump publicly says there is starvation, but does nothing.
How the world doesn’t step in and stop this atrocity is beyond me. There is nothing complicated about any of this.
I have said this before. There is a vast difference between a Jew, a Zionist, and an Israeli. Let’s be honest when you say, Jew, one of the first things that pops into your head is the Holocaust. Yes, it happened. It’s undeniable. This Holocaust however; is in Gaza. It too is undeniable and it’s being administrated out in the open. No gas chamber. One concentration, camp, but a whole lot bigger. Than the Zionist Credo is that “we” the Jewish people are the chosen people. Above all else. This is the credo that drives the indoctrination and hate of not all, but many Israelis. Is there hate coming from Palestinians? Yes, of course, but their hate is based in by the taking of their land in 1948. The subsequent decades that followed with subjugation and controlled occupation in 1967 and the calorie restricted diet? What are these people to do?
Cease-fire? Two state solution that Israel quite obviously doesn’t want? There’s nothing left. Israel says you can leave Gaza. That completes the ethnic cleansing.
The US cannot have it both ways. A country that administers an apartheid set of standards and applies this to Palestinians in a slow role for 77 years?
The crescendo peaks to the Holocaust we are seeing now. Israel applies this to people slow slowly after a Holocaust they suffered in World War II. They now on all cylinders push killing that is being live. Streamed all over the world. What does America do? Nothing. Hopes and prayers FUCK YOU.
Sanction Israel completely. No more money. If you continue this madness, we will send war planes or invade. Wouldn’t we do that to anyone else? We could stop all of this bloodthirsty racist killing tomorrow.
We have many juice in this country that don’t support this at all, and have the balls to say it. Intellectuals like:
Norman Finkelstein, Elon Pape, Gideon Levitt, guys like John Stewart, and hundreds of thousands of” not in my name” Jewish protesters.
Make no mistake. None of these whores could happen without us. The United States of America.
This country has never been legitimately under threat since World War II. The only threat this country has faced is nuclear. The only country to use nukes was us. Twice!
There is the country we say we are at home and the country. We are on the international stage. Money, hungry proxy war, profiteer, and an oil addicted, zealot disguised as a profit of” freedom, and democracy.”
PS
One year ago The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Today…Still… Nothing.
Kennan says
Just a note:
When I rip off facts off the top of my head and go talk to text, things get a little interesting. My apologies. For my grammatical gaffs. Not for my words though.😊 FREE PALESTINE.🇵🇸
DaleL says
It is Hamas that is benefiting from the hunger and devastation in Gaza. Hamas believes that the suffering of Gazans bolsters its cause. That is the reason that Hamas refuses to negotiate in good faith. Hamas still holds Israeli hostages. Hamas just hunkers down and periodically does what it can to disrupt food distribution. Israel is playing into this Hamas strategy by the misguided effort to pressure the population as a means of pressuring Hamas. The best way to undermine Hamas’s position is to instead flood Gaza with food. It would also be best if the world community, particularly Arab countries, stepped up and replaced Israeli forces.
Israel also must crack down on Jewish “settlers”. The spirit of the 1947 Palestine partition should be honored. That means that Israel must end its occupation of Arab Palestine and allow a Palestinian state.
Kennan says
America first?
Not when it comes to Israel.