The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) released a new report this week raising the alarm about the severity of the humanitarian catastrophe engulfing the people of Gaza:
Half a million people in the Gaza Strip face starvation, a global hunger monitor said on Monday, saying the Israeli-blockaded enclave still confronts a critical risk of famine with a high risk of one occurring by the end of September.
The people of Gaza are being starved to death by the Israeli government. It is a policy of deliberate starvation, and it has been aimed at inflicting collective punishment on the entire population. This has been Israeli policy for the last nineteen months, and the U.S. has backed the government committing these starvation crimes throughout the conflict. While the president gladhands with despots and sells more weapons to war criminals as he talks about peace, the people of Gaza are being slowly murdered with hunger with our government’s blessing and support.
There has already been famine in Gaza, and there have been famine-like conditions in Gaza for more than a year. If nothing changes, things will get much worse in the next few months. Conditions briefly improved during the ceasefire that the Israeli government shattered, but now the situation in Gaza is as dire as it has ever been.
Even when famine hasn’t been officially declared, people are still starving and dying. The World Health Organization (WHO) made this clear again this week:
“We do not need to wait for a declaration of famine in Gaza to know that people are already starving, sick and dying, while food and medicines are minutes away across the border,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Today’s report shows that without immediate access to food and essential supplies, the situation will continue to deteriorate, causing more deaths and descent into famine.”
Waiting until there is a formal declaration of famine means that the world has already waited far too long to stave off massive loss of life. When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, doctors don’t wait until it has metastasized throughout the body before beginning treatment, but the world has responded to the threat of famine in Gaza with just that sort of indifference and lethargy. Hunger has been burning through the people of Gaza for a year and a half, and it is only when things begin to approach the point of no return that the outside world even notices that it is happening.
The U.N. has been blunt in its condemnation of the Israeli blockade:
“Blocking aid starves civilians,” explained Tom Fletcher, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, in a statement last week. “It strips them of dignity and hope. Blocking aid kills.”
There are huge stockpiles of aid waiting outside Gaza to be brought in, but the Israeli government refuses to let it reach the people that need it.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
