Netanyahu Is Choosing to Starve Gaza

Opinion|Gaza’s Children May Never Recover From This

The enduring anguish of the kind of starvation that has taken hold in Gaza lives on in personal and collective memory for generations. Starvation also lives on in the body, especially for the young. For children who survive acute malnutrition, the resulting physical and cognitive damage can last a lifetime.

Those of us who have studied famines over many decades recognize the dreadful signs when social collapse is imminent — when the bonds that tie a community together are fraying and order is breaking down. It is a moment at which death rates grow exponentially and beyond which the fabric of society becomes far more difficult to repair. This disintegration portends chaos and conflict, delinquency and a fierce hopelessness that can breed fresh terrorism. Gaza appears to be passing into that zone now.

It is a calamity that was foreseeable, and foreseen. Starvation takes time; authorities cannot starve a population by accident. Since March of 2024, international bodies have repeatedly warned that Gaza is on the brink of famine. This week, a U.N.-backed group issued yet another alert warning that “the worst-case scenario of famine is playing out.” Food-security experts haven’t had access to the data they would need to make a final judgment about whether conditions in Gaza officially constitute a famine. At this point, the distinction is irrelevant.

Seasoned humanitarian-aid professionals can still bring Gaza back from the brink — if they’re given the chance. For months, Israel has restricted the flow of aid into Gaza, fueling a crisis of hunger that is growing more dire by the day. Food stockpiles were already desperately low in March, when Israel imposed a blockade on the enclave, citing unverified claims that Hamas had been systematically stealing food from the U.N.

When Israel partly eased restrictions in May, it began operating a new Israeli- and U.S.-backed aid distribution system run by a private group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, largely displacing traditional aid agencies. This system has so thoroughly ignored conditions on the ground that it raises the question of whether Israel has been intentionally engineering starvation in the strip.

The aid provided by the G.H.F. is inadequate by several standards. The group’s ration boxes, according to nutritionists, are unbalanced and lack nutrients that are essential for starving populations, especially children. A malnourished child requires specialized food such as Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based therapeutic formula — not pasta or lentils, which the G.H.F. offers instead. The most severely malnourished need intensive care in a hospital. To prepare food included in the ration boxes, people also often require fuel and clean water, both of which are in short supply in Gaza.