Israel developed a document entitled “Red Lines” following its imposition of the siege on the Gaza Strip, in the year 2007. This document included what foodstuffs are allowed or prohibited to be brought into the Strip, through very precise calculations of the minimum amount of daily calories that must be allowed. By entering the Gaza Strip without causing famine, according to what the Haaretz newspaper reported today, Friday.

Subsequently, Israel conducted calculations about the weekly and monthly quantities of food supplies, and thus the number of trucks allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. According to the document, 170.4 trucks can be entered daily, of which 68.6 trucks whose load is equivalent to the amount of local agricultural production will be reduced, bringing the number of trucks that can be entered into the sector to 101.8 trucks.

At the time, the commander of the Israeli military unit, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Occupied Territories, admitted that calculating the exact amount of food supplies was aimed at “ascertaining” that there would be a famine due to a shortage of food supplies. The number of trucks increased following the aggression on Gaza at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, and the list of food items also expanded.

Israel has continued to rely on these “red lines” and the “calorie list” that it has included since 2007, even though the population of the Gaza Strip this year was approximately 1.4 million people, while their number has now risen to about 2.3 million people.

After Israel launched the war on the Gaza Strip, on October 7, it prevented food trucks from entering the Strip until October 21, and then allowed only 20 trucks to enter per day, while their number was about 500 trucks before the war.

The number of shipments allowed to enter the Gaza Strip increased in recent weeks, then doubled in the wake of pressure exerted on Israel by the American administration. The newspaper pointed out that "with a simple calculation, the Israeli woman fulfills the conditions of the non-starvation threshold that she set in 2007."

However, following the war, the Gaza Strip lost its full capacity to produce local agricultural, marine, or any other foodstuffs, which were complementary to calculating the quantities of foodstuffs allowed for entry.

In the past, Israel claimed that it was allowed to wage an “economic war against the enemy,” while it now claims that imposing the siege on the Gaza Strip is an existential goal to protect the “direct enemy,” that is, the Hamas movement, and that this “economic war” helps Hamas collapse. But by severely restricting the number of trucks loaded with food and medicine, it “describes the entire population of the Gaza Strip as an enemy. Thus, it is taking away the basis of its claim,” according to the newspaper.

The newspaper referred to other countries in contemporary history that sought to starve civilian populations, including Nazi Germany through the plan of its leader, Adolf Hitler, which caused the death of 4.2 million citizens from starvation in the Soviet Union. This happened in Cambodia as well. In 1945, the United States implemented what it called a “starvation campaign” against Japan.

The strict siege imposed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE on areas in Yemen controlled by the Houthis, who now support Gaza, also caused the death of tens of thousands of Yemenis from hunger and epidemics, describing this as "the most dangerous humanitarian disaster in contemporary history."

In addition, there is the starvation of millions of people in South Sudan, the deadly siege of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and the Syrian regime’s siege of cities such as Homs, Daraa, and Aleppo, causing the death of tens of thousands from starvation.

The newspaper concluded that “Israel is not concerned about the moral aspects of its methods of warfare, including starvation, but as if it is fighting a war that is expected to last for a long time, it must study all the time the legitimacy of this in the international arena, especially in the United States. And the number of calories that will enter To the Gaza Strip will dictate the number of days during which Israel will continue the war, without being considered a war criminal.”