Sadly, Gaza remains a prime example. Even before the current war, the Gaza Strip suffered under a 17-year hermetic blockade, which has rendered the impoverished area virtually ‘unlivable’.

That very term, ‘unlivable’ was used by the then-UN Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Palestine, Michael Lynk, in 2018.

As of mid-December, “nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed”, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing experts who conducted a thorough analysis of satellite data.

As tragic as the situation was in December, now it is far worse.

Some 67 per cent of Gaza’s water, sanitation facilities and infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged, according to a statement by the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) on 19 June, leading to the spreading of infectious diseases, which have ravaged the beleaguered population for months.

The spread of disease is also linked to the accumulation of garbage everywhere in Gaza. Earlier, the refugees agency reported that “as of June 9, over 330,000 tons of waste have accumulated in or near populated areas across Gaza, posing catastrophic environmental (and) health risks.”

The situation was already disastrous. Indeed, three years before the war, the Global Institute for Water, Environment and Health (GIWEH) said, in a joint statement with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, that 97 per cent of Gaza water was undrinkable and unfit for human consumption.

Yet, so far, any conversation on allowing aid to Gaza, or the rebuilding of Gaza after the war, has been placed largely within political contexts.

By shutting down all border crossings, including the Egypt-Gaza Rafah Crossing – which, on 17 June was set ablaze – Israel has politicised food, fuel and medicine as tools in its war in the Strip.

This is not a mere inference, but the actual statement made by Israeli Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who on 9 October, declared that he had ordered a “complete siege” and that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water” entering Gaza.

The timing of the statement, which has indeed been put into action from the first day of the war, suggests that Israel did not apply the strategy as a last resort. It was one of the most important pieces in the war stratagem, which remains in effect to this day.

Al Jazeera English: “Extent of forced hunger crisis in Gaza revealed in UN report”

Instead of pressuring Israel, Washington tried to obtain its own political leverage, also by politicising aid. On 3 March, the US Air Force started airdropping aid into northern Gaza. A far more conducive and less humiliating option for Palestinians, however, would have been direct US pressure on Israel to allow access to aid trucks arriving through Rafah, Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) Crossing or any other.

Scenes and images of thousands of starving Palestinians chasing after boxes of aid parachuted in Gaza will remain etched in the collective memory of humanity as an example of our failed morality.

News reports spoke of whole families who were killed under the weight of the dropped ‘aid’, much of which had fallen in the Mediterranean, never to be retrieved.

Even the Gaza pier, constructed by the US military on the Gaza shore last month, did little to alleviate the situation. It merely transported 137 aid trucks, according to the US’ own estimation, enough to cover Gaza’s need for food for a few hours only.

During the years of siege, an average of 500 trucks arriving daily in Gaza has kept the 2.3 million population of the Strip alive, though malnourished.

To deal with the outcome of the war, and to stave off current starvation, especially in the north, the number of aid trucks would have to be much higher. Yet, whole days would pass without a single truck making its way to the suffering population. This is unacceptable.

 Not only did the international community fail at ending the war, it has also failed in delinking humanitarian aid from political and military objectives.

The problem with politicising aid is that innocent civilians become a bargaining chip for politicians and military men. This goes against the very foundation of international humanitarian law.

According to the International Red Cross, citing the Hague Conventions, “international humanitarian law is the branch of international law that seeks to impose limits on the destruction and suffering caused by armed conflict.” In Gaza, no such ‘limits’ have been ‘imposed’ by anyone.

Providing aid to Gaza and ensuring the reconstruction of the Strip must not be a political item for negotiations. It is a basic human right that must be honoured under any circumstance.

Meaningful pressure must be placed on Israel to end the Gaza siege, and urgent plans must be drafted, starting today, by representatives of UN humanitarian institutions, the Arab League and Palestinian and Gaza authorities to be the entities responsible for delivering aid to Gaza.

Humanitarian aid to Gaza must not be used as political leverage, or a tool in a cruel war, whose primary victims are millions of Palestinian civilians.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The International Medical Corps, an NGO working in Gaza alongside UNICEF and other organizations, reports this week that “according to a recent needs assessment by the Global Nutrition Cluster, the situation in Gaza is alarming: the ongoing conflict has significantly worsened child malnutrition from a Global Acute Malnutrition rate of 0.8% to 16% in northern Gaza and 7% in the rest of Gaza.”

That “7% in the rest of Gaza” figure will skyrocket by July to levels similar to what now exists in North Gaza.

The report says that 1.7 million people are internally displaced in Gaza, which means homeless and without a source of income. The first four months of Israel’s total war on Gaza destroyed an entire year’s GDP for the entirety of Palestine: “As of end of January 2024, the cost of direct damage inflicted on infrastructure in the Gaza Strip was equivalent to 97 percent of the total GDP of West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 2022.” That would be like doing $27 trillion worth of damage to buildings, roads, water pipes, and sewage treatment centers in the United States. Quarterly inflation in the Strip was 120% in the first quarter of this year, while GDP had plummeted by 80%.

Amartya Sen argued that famines do not occur because there is no food. They happen because food becomes too expensive and isn’t distributed to the people who need it even as people lose the income necessary to purchase it.

This point is an important reply to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that Israel is allowing enough food into Gaza for the population calorie-wise. This assertion is, according to UN and NGO aid organizations on the ground, a bald-faced lie. But even if it were true, having food in trucks at the border would not necessarily forestall famine if it cannot be distributed efficiently, if people cannot get to the distribution centers, etc.

The report says ominously:

Between mid-March and mid-July, half of the population of the Gaza Strip (1.1 million people) is expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), and the entire population of the Gaza Strip is expected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above) levels of acute food insecurity.

Phase 3 malnutrition is defined as: “Phase 3 – CRISIS: At least 20 percent of households in an area are experiencing Phase 3 or worse outcomes, and acute malnutrition rates are expected to be between 10 and 15 percent.”

Phase 5 malnutrition is defined as: “FAMINE: At least 20 percent of households in an area are experiencing Phase 5 outcomes, acute malnutrition levels exceed 30 percent, and more than 2 per 10,000 people are dying each day.”

Al Jazeera English: “Aid group fears famine-like conditions may already be present in south Gaza”

That is bad for North Gaza, but things get much worse, expanding to the whole Strip:

According to the IPC Famine Review Committee, as of March 2024, all evidence pointed towards a major acceleration of starvation-related death and malnutrition.

Food insecurity in Gaza is not moving along at a steady pace. It is speeding up alarmingly. And it has been speeding up for some time:

Malnutrition rates had doubled since January 2024 in the northern governorates, with 1 in 3 children under 2 years of age being affected. As of March 2024, famine was projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza governorates, in the absence of an immediate cessation of hostilities, unrestricted humanitarian access and a restoration of health, water, sanitation and electricity.

So, just this spring a third of toddlers and infants in North Gaza were visibly malnourished. Please note that children don’t come back from malnutrition. It has permanent cognitive and affective impacts. They will never achieve their full potential regarding intelligence and emotional regulation.

And here’s the kicker:

Moreover, for the southern and middle governorates, the IPC Famine Review Committee concluded that there was a risk of famine during the projection period of mid-March to mid-July, in a reasonable worst-case scenario.

Famine is spreading inexorably from north Gaza to the south and by mid-July will very likely have encompassed the entirety of the Gaza Strip, with its 2.2 million people.

Given a population of 2.2 million, one in 10,000 would equal 220 persons if famine conditions really did spread throughout the entire strip. If more than 2 per 10,000 died daily, that would imply at least three dead every day. That figure would yield a death toll of 660 per day dying of starvation. That death toll would equal 19,800 per month.

If the Israeli-imposed famine remained in place for two months, it would kill more than all the Israeli bombs have in the nine months of the total war on Gaza.

( Middle East Monitor ) – The Israeli authorities, in their campaign of remorseless killing, doctoring and adjusting the numbers of the Palestinian populace for whatever future awaits, have been found wanting on accusations that Hamas terrorists packed, stacked and filled UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).

Not that this, in of itself, negates the need to feed, clothe and provide medical assistance to Palestinians being pummelled into oblivion.  Or avoid committing war crimes against them.  Or avoid starving, humiliating, and degrading them through administrative fiat and bureaucratic oppression.  By any estimation, bad apples do not destroy the entire crop, and still need harvesting.

From the outset, Israel asserted that 12 such individuals in UNRWA had participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas, sharing the sparse details on January 29 with media outlets.  The grateful recipients of the alleged scandal proceeded to gorge on the thin morsel comprising a few pages.  The Financial Times, for instance, wrote of Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs having “something explosive on their agenda”, even if 12 suspects from a Gaza complement of 13,000 would have barely caused a ripple in any other circumstance.

Fifteen donor governments, in a fit of stretched moral outrage, froze promised funding, insisting that investigations by the organisation be undertaken.  The UN’s Office of International Oversight Services immediately commenced an investigation while US$444 million was withheld from an aid agency that has assisted dispossessed Palestinians for three-quarters of a century.

On February 5, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that an independent panel would assess “whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”  The panel, chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, and also comprising the work of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, released its findings on April 22.

The full report, titled “Independent review of mechanisms and procedures to ensure adherence by UNRWA to the humanitarian principle of neutrality”, was marked by a total absence of cooperation from Israeli authorities.  Two requests from the Colonna-led inquiry in March and April requesting names and details to support Israel’s allegations died in silence.

In its findings, UNRWA was found to have, in place, “a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with the emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities.”

Palestinians in Gaza see UNRWA funding cuts as ‘death sentence’ – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]

It also noted that staff lists, comprising names and functions, are shared on an annual basis with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Israel and the US for East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank.  It falls on the states in question “to alert UNRWA of any information that may deem a staff member unworthy of diplomatic immunity.”  The report further notes that “the Israeli Government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011.”  Regarding the March 2024 list, Israel made public allegations “that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations.  However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”

The report does not ignore the challenges facing the agency in the Gaza Strip, one made more complex since Hamas took over the reins of the territory in 2007.  It found, generally, that the agency had been admirable in maintaining its neutrality in such trying circumstances, though identified eight “critical areas” for improvement, among them addressing the neutrality of education, the political position of staff unions, staff and behaviour, and management and internal oversight mechanisms. UNRWA schools, for instance, were not found to be breeding grounds of antisemitism, though some “host-country textbooks with problematic content” were being used in them.  Other areas needing rectification are unlikely to be taken, given the need for Israeli cooperation.

As the report’s executive summary notes, “In the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, UNRWA remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”

Despite refusing to furnish any solid evidence, Israel was already preparing the ground for refusal and refutation ahead of the release.  Any findings would be ignored with a fanatic’s adamance.  While the country jumps at every opportunity to conduct investigations into its own military misconduct at the drop of hat, with the inevitable exonerations, no external review would convince them.  Nothing short of the destruction of the agency would satisfy the objectives of the Israeli state.

In March, The Guardian quoted one Israeli diplomatic source (nameless, naturally) as claiming that a “double game” was being played by Hamas and the agency, “so much so that UNRWA is a Hamas strategic asset.”  Another nameless diplomatic source was of the view that the aid agency was “so penetrated in Gaza, it cannot be repaired.  This is the policy of the state of Israel.  We want to see an end to UNRWA activity in Gaza.  This is not a case of a few bad apples.  It is systemic, consistent and cannot be ignored.”  Out, it would seem, with the entire orchard.

Presumption can therefore take the position of hard fact, a point made crystal clear in another round of allegations (no evidence supplied about that either) that 2,135 UNRWA staff were supposedly members of Hamas, of whom 400 were alleged to be active fighters.

From the perspective of lusty warmongers, UNRWA remains an obstacle, a nuisance, a nightmare of reminder to those wishing to be done with the Palestinian issue once and for all.  May it continue to thrive, and, more ever, may its funders finally wise up to the fact that in the viciousness of conflict, civilians should never have to pay the price for military actions undertaken by others.  Unfortunately, three months after, and a human-confected famine ravaging Gaza even as the killings continue, various donor countries such as the United States, Germany and the UK are still minding their wallets.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

Lynch has seen a memo entitled “Famine Inevitable, Changes Could Reduce but Not Stop Widespread Civilian Deaths,” which was produced by food security experts in US AID and the State Department, and which they sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. These US officials gave the memo a subheading that is damning for the Israeli government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel-imposed administrative challenges are preventing the delivery” of food.

So two things are being asserted:

1. Famine in Gaza is now unavoidable and will kill many civilian noncombatants even if more food aid starts getting in now.

2. The responsibility for this starvation of children, women and noncombatant males lies squarely with Israel, which is obstructing food aid deliveries.

That is all you need to know. These experts have never seen a situation so bad.

MSNBC Video: “‘Death by starvation is slow and cruel’: famine is projected to take hold of Gaza within weeks”

Lynch quotes the memo, sent earlier this month:

“Adequate health, nutrition, and water, sanitation, and hygiene … interventions, an immediate cessation of hostilities, and sustained humanitarian access will be required. Absent these conditions, all available evidence indicates rising acute food insecurity, malnutrition, and disease will lead to a rapid increase in non-trauma deaths, particularly among women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.”

It continues that the

“deterioration of food security and nutrition in Gaza is unprecedented in modern history, exponentially outpacing in six months the long-term declines that led to the only other two famine declarations in the 21st century: Somalia (2011) and South Sudan (2017).”

The National Institutes of Health concluded that “During 2010–2012, extreme food insecurity and famine in Somalia were estimated to account for 256,000 deaths.” The population of the country was then about 12 million, so that is 2.1% dead of starvation. If Gaza’s coming famine were only as bad as Somalia’s we’d expect 46,200 dead from starvation alone, more than have been killed by Israeli bombing during the past six months. But the USAID and State Department experts are saying that the Gaza famine is outpacing Somalia’s. Hence we can expect even more deaths from this cause.

The USAID/ State memo is consistent with what the World Food Program is assessing as of last Wednesday. According to UN News, Gian Carlo Cirri, WFP Director, Geneva office, said at a news conference on Wednesday of Gaza, “people are clearly dying of hunger.” So this catastrophe is not in the future. It is now.

Cirri said, “People cannot meet even the most basic food needs, they have exhausted all coping strategies, like eating animal fodder, begging, selling off their belongings to buy food. They are most of the time destitute and clearly some of them are dying of hunger.”

He called for massive food deliveries “in a very short time.” He said,

“We’ve mentioned the necessity to rebuild livelihoods, to address root causes and so on. But, in the immediate time, like tomorrow, we really need to significantly increase our food supplies. This means rolling out massive and consistent food assistance in conditions that allow humanitarian staff and supplies to move freely and (for) affected people to access safely the assistance.”

Food security experts, Cirri remarked, say that “We are getting closer by the day to a famine situation. Malnutrition among children is spreading. We estimate 30 per cent of children below the age of two is now acutely malnourished or wasted and 70 per cent of the population in the north is facing catastrophic hunger,”

Cirr added “There is reasonable evidence that all three famine thresholds – food insecurity, malnutrition, mortality – will be passed in the next six weeks.”

Reuters Video: “Gaza Strip could reach famine in six weeks, WFP says | REUTERS”

Lynch at Devex also has seen a study produced by USAID concluding that Israel is in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and is impeding the delivery of US-funded humanitarian aid. It is therefore ineligible for US provision of offensive weaponry.

On February 8, President Joe Biden had issued a national security memo instructing Secretary of State Antony Blinken to seek written assurances from all recipients of such US military weaponry that they are abiding by IHL and not interfering with humanitarian aid shipments. Either the Israeli government has declined to proffer such assurances, or USAID has concluded that they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.

The paper concluded that the killing of (at that time) over 32,000 persons by Israel, of which the US government assesses two-thirds or 21,120, were noncombatant women and children, could constitute a violation of International Humanitarian Law. The official death toll reported by the UN, based on Gaza Ministry of Health Statistics, has risen to over 34,000, but this number is widely considered to be a gross under-count, given that thousands of people were killed when Israeli fighter jets targeted their apartment buildings, and their bodies are under rubble, unrecovered. Many likely died a slow, agonizing death, trapped by fallen concrete blocks, thirsting to death. After 3 days without water, renal failure typically sets in. Some observers estimate that the real death toll may be 100,000, or 4.5% of the pre-war population. That is about the percentage of the non-Russian European population killed by Nazi Germany 1933-1945 (17 million out of about 400 million).

Although Israel claims to have killed 10,000 members of the Hamas paramilitary, the Qassam Brigades, and other militant groups, these assertions cannot be verified and seem unlikely to be true. It is likely that many of the 10,000 were elderly or boys or were civilian men with no connection to Hamas, or were civilian Hamas party members rather than Qassam Brigade fighters. International Humanitarian Law does not permit militaries to blow unarmed civilians who do not pose an immediate threat to smithereens from the sky, regardless of their party membership.