The arguments in defense of the Israeli government concerning the hunger in Gaza are not only an insult to humanity and reason, but, if taken serious, also an insult to the IDF. The government commanding the most powerful military in the entire region is seriously telling the world that this military’s only way to fight ill-trained, ill-equipped Hamas thugs is by counting and micromanaging calories such that the calories do not reach those 2% of the population that are recruits of the Islamist militias? Of course, they say, it is also about Hamas’ capacity to extort taxes. Evidently their capacities are quite limited, there has been a total chaos of looting by whatever criminal actors. The exploitation of Gazans by all those strongmen who looted the humanitarian aid to sell it, is of course horrible. But also everybody knows that the prices would not be as extreme if there would be sufficient supply. Nobody would be willing to spend all their monthly income or savings for some days worth of food, with prices being 20× pre-war prices, if it is not an acute emergency. Now some food and some money will inevitably end up with Qassam in tunnels. However, Hamas probably rather minor capacities to collect taxes will not be destroyed when there is even more chaos and even less reliable food provisioning, but when they are removed from power. And they will only be removed from power when there is some alternative administration—let it be some Egyptian, UAE, PA cooperation as it has been offered as part of a ceasefire deal, let it be under Israeli control. However, the Israeli government has consistently ignored international advice and the first principle of counterinsurgency: You cannot win against a guerilla without building some alternative infrastructure, a positive alternative to being killed in a combat zone, an island where civilians or even Qassam men, who have an incentive such that they no longer want to fight and leave behind their arms, can go (and ideally see some future). Hamas police has been targeted by the IDF again and again, no other police force has replaced them, no wonder there is total chaos. The Israeli government has decided to leave Hamas the opportunity to rearise at any time once there is a ceasefire, and to distract from this deliberate decision it resorts to stupid ideas like fighting Hamas by cutting it off from food while criminally risking the starvation of large parts of the population. We have seen sieges of cities in past wars for example against the Islamic State where nothing or little was going into the city, but the liberators of those cities did not have the crazy and criminal idea that INSTEAD of taking over the city, letting refugees out of the city into IDP camps (where they would be checked for weapons), and getting the job done, you could protract the war endlessly and then win by some combination of managing and creating chaos in food supplies. Even during the brutal spring 2009 campaign of the Sri Lankan army to crush the Tamil Tigers, where tens of thousands of civilians were killed especially by mortars/artillery and where the Sri Lankan army just like Israel now failed to protect the so-called humanitarian zones from infiltration and from becoming combat zones, still those so-called humanitarian zones that were not under control of the Sri Lankan army would be supplied with food and the army did not come up with the crazy Israeli idea we see today and which it manages to sell to major parts of the Israeli population.
We do not need to discuss IPC 5 classification (Yannay Spitzer has written some criticism) and whether there is marasmus or not. Way way before all people get marasmus and look like the Muselmänner in Auschwitz, way way before far too many people die, because they do not get enough food and they do not get enough diverse food under already horrible healthcare conditions.
Already after two days into the war the Israeli government (back then Katz and Gallant) threatened the Gazan population with starvation (“total siege”, nothing will get in). It was an announcement of a crime against humanity—and despite all the excuses by people who claim it was no serious plan, even making a threat of doing something immoral is immoral, especially if it is a crime of this scale. But let us take the most benign interpretation: The Israeli government stopped humanitarian supplies to Gaza on 2nd of March, of course knowing that there were a lot of stockpiles due to the deliveries during the ceasefire. So it calculated that Gazans would consume all those stockpiles, while employing ambiguous double speak, saying at the same time to one audience that there is enough food in Gaza and that one would not want to starve Gazans, while telling at the same time that stopping food supplies would be a mean to force Hamas to release the hostages, which only makes any sense, if you actually threaten starvation (even then it makes limited sense, because probably hostages will be killed). Only in May the new GHF scheme was announced. We see the same behaviour on large scale that we see elsewhere in small scale, like when UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem get closed without providing funding for new schools for the students. Likewise, UN and NGO mechanisms were not allowed to return to Gaza, while even the announced targets for food distribution by GHF were insufficient to sustain the Gazan population mid-term (only sufficient to feed Gazans for two days in a week). Then slowly some limited UN operations returned, but meanwhile the situation with nutrition turned into a full-blown catastrophe by July. The most benign interpretation: The Israeli government was playing a game of chicken with Hamas, hoping Hamas would give up some demands when seeing that starvation would be immanent, while not actually wanting to have starvation. But as we know from James Dean, people get killed when they play games of chicken, and it might cause some more damage around. The idea is total nuts that with Hamas, an organisation where people join out of admiration for suicide bombings, you can play such a game and reach a good outcome for everyone. And at the same time even this most benign interpretation makes the policy utterly immoral: If you have a stable situation then you can apply certain sanctions on what kinds of stuff gets into a place to exercise economic pressure. However, if the general situation is already at the brink, with hospitals being destroyed, food not reaching everywhere, it is a crime to turn food supplies, that might be the difference that keeps people on the one side of the brink of death, into a bargaining chip. Yannay Spitzer has well-documented how the Israeli policy was also based on miscalculations concerning the actual amount of food reaching Gazans. But it is precisely because you always have to expect miscalculations that you should not play games of chicken. The less benign interpretation is that the government, as some of its members openly say, wants to starve Gazans and see them dead pure and simple.
During the last month some measures have been taken to improve the supply situation, with food delivered through WFP, GHF, UAE. However, the situation has not become stable, especially not in Gaza City, and now, without prior stabilisation a new offensive on Gaza City has been announced. Not everyone will be able to flee. Not everyone will be willing to flee, after everyone has experienced that all the humanitarian and evacuation areas have always turned into combat areas again later on during the war. The GHF scheme with only four distribution centers located within combat zones, where US mercenaries and IDF would use armour-piercing ammunition and even tank rounds for “crowd control”, has not increased the trust in Israeli orders to go somewhere. And yet again food is not getting into Gaza City. The crime against humanity continues.
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