Gaza Strip famine
[40] In the following decades, the number of humanitarian trucks permitted to enter Gaza would vary, depending on several factors such as the political situation, security issues, agreements between Israel and Palestinian authorities, and interventions by international organizations.
[41] Diplomatic cables subsequently published by WikiLeaks revealed that Israel had informed the United States in 2008 that, while it would take measures to prevent a humanitarian crisis, it intended to keep Gaza's economy on the "brink of collapse".
Both cultivators and their rudimentary irrigation devices nonetheless were often exposed to sniping and automated machinegun fire, and crops along the armistice line were, without warning, sprayed by Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.
[84][85] Israeli bombardment and the blockade have led to a total collapse of Gaza's civil infrastructure, including sewage treatment, waste disposal, water management, and fuel supplies.
"[113] Alex de Waal, an expert on humanitarian crises and international law, stated, "The rigor, scale and speed of the destruction of the structures necessary for survival, and enforcement of the siege, surpasses any other case of man-made famine in the last 75 years.
[124] On 27 February 2024, Carl Skau, the deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, told the United Nations Security Council that more than 500,000 people were at risk of imminent famine in Gaza.
[135] On 30 April 2024, when rendering its verdict in the Nicaragua v. Germany genocide case, the International Criminal Court said that it remained concerned about the situation in Gaza, "In particular, in view of the prolonged and widespread deprivation of food and other basic necessities to which they have been subjected".
[170] The World Health Organization stated on 25 January 2024 that the food situation was "absolutely horrific" in northern Gaza, with rare aid deliveries mobbed by visibly starved people with sunken eyes.
[194] By late March, the growing season for khobiza, a wild plant eaten in northern Gaza, was ending, which journalist Moath al-Kahlout stated "will lead to an even more horrific famine".
[16][non-primary source needed] In response to the IPC findings, the WFP stated that "The improvement shows the difference that greater access can make" and "Increased food deliveries to the north and nutrition services have helped to reduce the very worst levels of hunger, leaving a still desperate situation.
[224] The same month, Human Rights Watch criticized the defunding of UNRWA, which they termed "the main humanitarian channel into Gaza", in the face of "mounting risks of famine and a binding order by the World Court in a case about genocide".
[239] In June 2024, the World Food Programme stated that aid workers moving through the Kerem Shalom crossing faced risks due to "fighting, damaged roads, unexploded ordnance, and Israeli restrictions.
The US president and chief executive of Save the Children, Janti Soeripto explained the convoluted regulations to reporters causing items to be turned back, like sanitary pads due to a nail clipper included in the hygiene kit, or sleeping bags because they had zippers.
[253] An investigation found that Israel was blocking cancer medications, sleeping bags, drinking water purification tablets, and maternity kits from entering Gaza, leading the Save the Children US president to state she had "never seen anything like the level of barriers being put in place to hamper humanitarian assistance".
'"[258] In an interview with the New Yorker, US Senator Chris Van Hollen stated, "Administration officials have recognized that the Netanyahu government has put up unacceptable barriers to the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza".
"[265] A USAID internal assessment reportedly found Israel "does not currently demonstrate necessary compliance" with a requirement that countries not impede "the transport of delivery of United States humanitarian assistance".
[266] In July 2024, 13 human rights organizations, including Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council, stated Israel was blocking humanitarian aid.
[288] The United Nations called for an investigation on 1 March into the killing of humanitarian aid seekers, stating it had "recorded at least 14 incidents involving shooting and shelling of people gathered to receive desperately needed supplies".
[306] On 1 April 2024, an Israeli drone fired three consecutive missiles at three cars belonging to the World Central Kitchen (WCK), killing seven aid workers who had been distributing food in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been pushed close to famine by Israel's siege and blockade during the Israel–Hamas war.
[363] According to a letter sent to President Joseph R. Biden, Vice President Kamala D. Harris, and others on October 2, 2024 by 99 American healthcare workers who have served in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, and cited in a paper from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, based on starvation standards by the United States-funded Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, according to the most conservative estimate that they could calculate based on the available data, at least 62,413 people in Gaza are likely to have died from starvation, most of them young children.
The judges wrote "The chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity" and that the pair "bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare".
[395][396] Yoav Gallant made a public speech in early October 2023, shortly after the Hamas attacks on Israel that sparked the war, saying, ‘there will be no more electricity, no more food, no more fuel … We are fighting against human animals and will behave accordingly’.
[233] On 5 August 2024, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that he believes that blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is "justified and moral" even if it causes two million Gazans to die of starvation, but the international community won't allow it to happen.
[405] Speaking at the United Nations Security Council on 12 January, Martin Griffiths stated colleagues who had made it into northern Gaza in recent days had described "scenes of utter horror: Corpses left lying in the road.
[433] A medical student working as a doctor at Al-Shifa Hospital documented the first death by starvation in Gaza; he stated, "Do not talk to us again about human rights, I do not know where the world has reached in its brutality and cruelty.
[448] After the passage of UNSC Resolution 2728, the UN director of Human Rights Watch stated Israel needed to begin "facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid, ending its starvation of Gaza’s population, and halting unlawful attacks".
[457] On 4 May, Cindy McCain, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), stated in an interview with NBC News that Northern Gaza was in a “full-blown famine”, and that it was “moving its way south”.
[462] The Middle East and North Africa director of Oxfam stated, "When hunger claims many more lives, nobody will be able to deny the horrifying impact of Israel’s deliberate, illegal and cruel obstruction of aid".
"[464] Israel has criticized the IPC's previous methodology,[30] citing the revised June FRC report which stated that: “In contrast with the assumptions made for the projection period (March – July 2024), the amount of food and non-food commodities allowed into the northern governorates increased"; "Additionally, the response in the nutrition, water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health sectors was scaled up.
Arif Husain, the chief economist of World Food Program, stated that arguments about an official famine designation for Gaza were missing the point, as the situation was already dire for the territory's 2.3 million people.
