As hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza die from starvation, a daunting question faces the world’s governments: What could prevent famine in Gaza and save thousands of lives?
The answer, humanitarian workers say, is simple. “Flood the zone.”
That, they say, means pouring food, fuel, and hygiene kits into Gaza from multiple crossing points to relieve food scarcity, prevent looting, and ensure safe water and hygiene, to prevent deaths from starvation and contaminated drinking water.
Why We Wrote This
Famine is threatening tens of thousands of people in Gaza. It can be averted, aid experts say, but only if humanitarian assistance is stepped up fast. Israel is showing no sign it is ready to allow that.
With aid piled up at United Nations warehouses that are a short drive to Gaza, experts say this solution would be feasible within days if Israel opened more crossings into Gaza and facilitated quicker inspections.
“All of this is doable and in the power of the Israelis. It simply requires the political will to do so,” says Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president for crisis response, recovery, and development at the International Rescue Committee.
At the moment, restrictions, insecurity, logistical backlogs, and looting are rampant. A promised flow of aid is no more than a trickle.
Gazan humanitarian workers, pillars of the aid response, cannot even feed themselves as they try to help their own people.
“Humanitarian workers are exhausted, stretched thin, making do with whatever we can find,” says Dr. Ahmed Abed, a Gazan medic screening toddlers for malnutrition at a clinic in Deir al-Balah.
“And yet, we keep going, because if we stop, even for a moment, the suffering will only deepen.”
Israeli promises and bottlenecks
Bowing to international pressure, Israel last week began halting military operations 10 hours a day, creating a “pause” in hostilities to facilitate aid distribution and designating secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine.
The move came as the U.N. confirmed that more than 20,000 children in Gaza have been treated for acute malnutrition. As of Sunday, 175 Palestinians in Gaza, including 93 children, have died from starvation and malnutrition, according to local health authorities.
In control of multiple crossings into Gaza and of its only international land border, Israel is allowing aid into Gaza through only one crossing, Karem Shalom, creating what humanitarians describe as an aid bottleneck.
Dozens of trucks are being held back, denied, or delayed of Israeli military approval each day, humanitarians say.
When trucks carrying aid get into Gaza, their drivers struggle to get Israeli military permissions to move within the strip, keeping them waiting for hours and vulnerable to looting by gangs and starving crowds.
Over the past week, some 100 trucks have entered Gaza each day, according to the U.N. and other humanitarian agencies. It will require over five times that flow for several weeks if famine is to be averted, they warn. The Israeli authorities claim they allowed nearly 200 trucks a day carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza last week.
Hunger is reaching everyone
The deepening famine is threatening the Gazan humanitarians working for international and local nongovernmental organizations.
With a gaunt face and clothes hanging from a body that has lost 33 pounds, Dr. Abed screens dozens of children for malnutrition each day, wrapping a yellow-and-red measuring tape around sticklike arms. Emaciated children with sunken eyes cling to the doorway of this clinic, run by the international NGO Project Hope.
He agonizes over the way in which famine is threatening the lives of his young patients, including his own 2-year-old nephew, who has been diagnosed with malnutrition.
“We provide services, and we are part of the community. We try to help others even with limited resources, but we are living the same crisis,” Dr. Abed says.
“Everything is limited: our resources, our supplies, our energy.”
“Most of my conversations with colleagues are not about medicine,” Dr. Abed says. “We talk about how to find food for our families, for our children, for our parents. That is what consumes us.”
Yousra Abu Sharkh, a mother of two and program coordinator at INARA, a humanitarian organization supporting children, explains how the line between aid provider and aid recipient has all but disappeared.
“After the ceasefire broke, we became like everyone else – hungry, afraid, exhausted. The only difference is we remain silent about it,” she says.
Courtesy of Yousra Abu Sharkh
On a recent day, Ms. Abu Sharkh left for work unable to provide a single piece of bread for her children to eat.
“It was one of the hardest days,” she says. “Part of me was with my children, worried they had nothing to eat. The other part had to focus on helping others. I could barely function.”
“We’re expected to listen, to give, to care. But when we collapse, no one catches us.”
What can stop the famine?
Humanitarian professionals agree that famine could be staved off in Gaza if Israel allows international organizations to flood the zone with aid to the strip.
“If there is food everywhere, it is less valuable to hoard or to steal … and makes it easier for others who are vulnerable and in need of aid to receive it,” says Katy Crosby, Mercy Corps senior director of U.S. policy and advocacy.
People at risk of starvation also need different food from what they are now getting.
Many of the meal boxes reaching Palestinians through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation include pasta, rice, flour, and lentils, which need to be cooked. Fuel, wood, stoves, and water are luxuries that the vast majority of Gazans do not enjoy.
“It doesn’t do people good if they receive uncooked pasta and have to cook it in unsafe water by burning clothes, and then get waterborne diseases,” says Scott Paul, director of peace and security at Oxfam America.
Instead, experts say people in Gaza need ready-made meals and charity kitchens – which were operating across the strip until Israel imposed a full siege in March.
Instead of pita bread and starches, Palestinians with acute malnutrition need ready-to-use foods distributed by the U.N. and aid groups in famine situations. They often include a fortified peanut paste, which helps pull people back from the brink.
While these strengthening foods have been available during most of the war, UNICEF reports that its supplies are set to run out in mid-August.
Humanitarian professionals also insist that the traditional decentralized aid distribution network, created by international NGOs and their partners from 400 distribution points across Gaza, should be reinstated.
Currently, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israel and the United States, maintains only four distribution sites in central and southern Gaza.
As of Aug. 1, nearly 1,400 Palestinians had been killed while seeking food at these sites, according to the U.N., most of them victims of the Israeli military.
The Monitor asked the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for comment on current and future aid distribution plans, but did not receive a reply.
Another urgent need: fuel for desalination and treatment plants to ensure clean water supplies.
It is not unusual to meet people in Gaza who say they are drinking dirty water because it is all they have to fill their stomachs while they wait more than 24 hours for their next meal.
In regional warehouses in the Middle East, a day’s drive from Gaza, the U.N. says it has enough food to feed Gaza’s 2.1 million people for three months.
Humanitarian aid workers agree that the U.S. government has the leverage it needs to convince the Israeli authorities to let this food in.
It emerged Monday that around 600 retired Israeli security officials, including past leaders of intelligence agencies, had written to President Donald Trump asking him to press the Israeli government to stop the war in Gaza.
“It is our professional judgment that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the officials wrote.
On the ground in Gaza, the situation is critical, warns Mr. Paul of Oxfam America. “This is a point of no return, and the next few days – maybe weeks if we are lucky – will decide the fates of hundreds of thousands of people: whether they live, whether they die, whether they live with lifelong conditions,” he says.
“Tinkering at the margins … will take us down the deadly road, not the road to recovery.”
