Israel is starving Gaza and ‘nothing is being done to stop it’

It’s 2024 and we are living in a world dealing with the stark reality of an impending man-made famine.

Three months since Israel’s war on Gaza started, more than 22,000 Palestinians have died, with 7,000 people unaccounted for and 55,000 more wounded, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Those who have survived the bombings, repeated displacement and disease outbreaks must now contend what another impending disaster: famine.

Last month, a United Nations-backed body warned that famine could become a reality in Gaza, if food crisis levels of hunger continued.

"Increased nutritional vulnerability of children, pregnant and breastfeeding women and the elderly is a particular source of concern," the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative report added.

More than 60 percent of Gaza residents had already needed food aid even before this latest war, with an average of 500 food aid trucks lorried in daily to meet their needs.

But in the past 90 days, increased restrictions on food supplies have left thousands living with severe hunger and starvation. World Health Organisation (WHO) Emergency Medical Teams entered northern Gaza on December 23 and reiterated “the risk of famine,” as aid workers described meeting people facing hunger.

Aid agencies declare a famine in an area where at least 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food, at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and two people out of every 10,000 die each day due to outright starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

"Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare," Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said last month.

"World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population," he added.

Intentionally creating food insecurity and using starvation as a weapon of war was declared a war crime by the UN Security Council just six years ago, in 2018.

But governments and military groups the world over have been using starvation as warfare since the earliest conflicts.

In recent history, Union soldiers fighting in the US Civil War (1861 – 1865) under rules of engagement known as the Lieber Code, gave permission to use starvation tactics against Confederate soldiers. The tactic was used again during Germany’s siege of Leningrad (1941 – 1944) in the former Soviet Union.

It was most recently wielded in parts of South Sudan, where a civil war raged from 2013-2022. The UN declared a famine in 2017, which remains ongoing today.

"Whether what we’re living through is called a genocide, or a war crime, or whether we’re told about famine from these international agencies, they are all just empty words," Rifat Farajallah told TRT from his makeshift home by the beach in Khan Younis.

"These people keep trying to define what we are living through, but nothing, nothing is being done to stop it! Tell me, what are they doing to stop it?"

Since early October, Israeli attacks across Gaza have damaged local bakeries and food warehouses, with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) confirming that up until this week, only one of their 25 bakeries was still up and running, baking enough bread to feed around 25,000 - 30,000 people a day.

But on January 4, a fresh delivery by the WFP of salt, wheat and milled wheat to nine bakeries across Deir al Ballah and Rafah have meant they can reopen.

Although parts of their infrastructure were damaged in the war, the machinery needed to make and bake the bread is still operational, and most were forced to close after running out of provisions early in the war.

The bakeries can now sell bread at a subsidised price, with a bread parcel of 30 loaves selling for $1 (3 shekels). The bread would likely cost more if it was sold by private bakeries.

After describing a "serious bottleneck" last month in getting aid through the Rafah border crossing, aid convoys successfully entered Gaza from Jordan and through Israel's Kerem Shalom. So far, the WFP says it has distributed 750 metric tons of "life-saving food."

"Again, it's great to hear about these aid trucks, but I, nor my surviving family members have seen any of this aid," said Farajallah, who has lost 25 members of his family in Israeli airstrikes since the war began.

The WFP said it’s managed to reach 799,000 of Gaza’s 2.3 million population since the bombing campaign began. But Israeli bombardments and power blackouts continue to make delivering aid challenging for it and other humanitarian organisations in the region.

Farajallah, a businessman in his 50s from Nuseirat, has moved three times since the start of the war in Gaza. He has a heart condition, but is unable to access medication to treat it.

He's also caring for his 85-year-old father Ibrahim, who suffers from a similar heart condition, but also has no medicine. With them are at least 20 other family members, the youngest being his seven-year-old niece.

They are forced to live by the sea, where he says the night air can get bitterly cold, biting them as they sleep without shelter. Tent supplies cost money, with some being sold for $150. Farajallah’s cousin Hussein tells TRT that he first reduced his food intake to a few dates and some bread at the start of the war as a way to ration supplies, but when food became even more scarce, he started fasting from dawn until dusk.

For suhoor (pre-dawn meal), he takes sips of contaminated water, and he breaks his fast at iftar time with half a piece of bread. How is he managing? "Alhamdullilah," he says, giving all thanks to God.

Speaking to TRT, a WFP nutritional expert based in Jerusalem said a healthy adult can live up to 10 days without any water. For a child, it’s up to five days, but the body can survive for several weeks more without any food.

"Our bodies are adapted to stretch themselves to survive, but that comes with a price of severe complications and long-term health effects," she added.

Initially, within the first 24 hours, the body taps into its own glucose stores, using that as its main fuel to keep the body going. "As it depletes, the body begins to convert glycogen from the liver and muscles into glucose."

After a few days more without food, the body begins to break down its fat reserves to provide a temporary source of energy. The nutritionist continued:

"The longer a person can typically survive during starvation is often directly related to the fat stores available. When all the fat stores run out, the body switches to breaking down muscle tissue for energy because it becomes the only remaining source of fuel. This is when the body (begins to) shut down."

With no relief in sight, Farajallah remains defiant, a characteristic that has become synonymous with Gaza’s people. Speaking to TRT, he said, "Whatever happens, we will live on this land, we will die on this land, and we will continue to be part of this land and its soil. Our souls will forever be present here."