When the genocide in Gaza began, most thought that nothing could be worse than families huddled at home, wondering if the next bomb would land on them. But leave it to the Israelis to show the world that there is no bottom to the cruelty that they are willing to subject the Palestinian population to. Reports now say that around 2.3 million people in Gaza no longer have the food to sustain themselves, with over 100 aid organisations, including Save the Children, releasing a joint statement this week sounding the alarm over the mass starvation going on in the strip. The statement says that just 28 trucks are being allowed into the strip each day, when the UN has already suggested that a minimum of 600 lorries per day are needed to feed the populations. As such, dozens of people are now dying of starvation according to Gaza’s health ministry and other sources, with at least 45 known to be dead over the past four to five days, and one in every five children is now malnourished. The hunger reaches so deep that even the head of the main UN agency serving Palestinians has said his frontline staff are fainting from hunger. One can only wonder if jeopardising the health of aid workers trying to save lives in Gaza is incidental to trying to starve its population or part of the Israeli strategy to further their brutal control and cleansing of the strip. And yes, there can be no doubt that this is a deliberate strategy of mass starvation on the part of the Zionist regime.
As of yesterday, 6000 aid trucks were waiting to enter Gaza. Among the main difficulties in getting the aid through is securing commitments from the Israeli forces, as desperate Palestinians will not be shot at when they try to collect the aid. For even when aid does make it through, the Israelis try to kill those trying to access it, with at least 1,054 Palestinians killed in this manner since May 27. It is almost as if the occupiers are trying to gather the occupied in one place to be better able to eliminate them. But starvation often brings with it a fate that is arguably even worse than death. People reach a stage where they are too weak to do pretty much anything but breathe and make it through the day. The commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), quoting a colleague, said on Thursday that people in Gaza “are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses". Perhaps the idea is that such a population will be incapable of resistance.
Amidst the starvation of an entire population and the deliberate malnourishment of its children, we still have Western leaders, principally in Europe, issuing mealy-mouthed statements of support. The French president promises to recognise a Palestinian state, while the UK foreign minister has called the situation in Gaza indefensible. This is quite simply too little, too late. The situation in Gaza passed the indefensible point long ago, and even starving children are not enough to wake the West’s conscience enough for them to go beyond statements. While France and the UK say things, Israel actually does things. Its most recent deprivation is to now claim sovereignty over the West Bank, the other main occupied Palestinian territory. The fact is that the West and its international institutions have reached a low point from which they will not recover.
