The Gaza Strip is currently facing the threat of total famine, as the end of the fourth month of the war approaches. Several indicators have emerged of a major disaster, and international warnings and reports have been issued diagnosing the situation and calling for redress.

Since the start of the war, the Gaza Strip has been suffering from a shortage of raw materials, due to Israel preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, which it was receiving at a rate of 600 trucks per day, and a very small portion, at a rate of 3 percent, was not allowed to pass until about two weeks later, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

In its report on the situation of the population of Gaza before last October 7, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stated that “80 percent of the population of Gaza depends on international aid.”

It noted that living in Gaza in 2022 would mean confinement in one of the most densely populated places in the world. The issue of the continued flow of international aid remained the subject of international bargaining with the Israeli government, which refused to provide tangible facilities and did not even respond to US pressure, and large quantities of food and medicine remained piled up at the Egyptian Al-Arish airport.

Israeli censorship prevents the delivery of medicines

Israel imposed strict control on the quantity and quality of materials entering the Gaza Strip daily, and insisted on inspecting them in the Al-Awja corridor and then returning what it allows to enter the Rafah crossing from the Egyptian side, as Israel does not have any sovereign rights, borders, or agreements with Egypt that would allow it to do so.

The Israeli measures led to the banning of the majority of medicines and the rationing of food, which caused a major shortage, and reflected an explicit Israeli position that the policy of preventing food, medicine and water is part of a comprehensive war within the framework of collective revenge against the Gaza Strip.

International pressure partially succeeded in increasing aid to 4 percent after a month of war on Gaza, and in numbers, the per capita share in the Strip, which is inhabited by 2.3 million people, became the equivalent of 70 grams of food and 17 milliliters of water per day.

This is at a time when the United Nations estimates that more than 1.7 million people in Gaza have become displaced, and about a million of them reside in more than 150 UNRWA shelter centers throughout the Strip. Israel began implementing punitive measures from the beginning of the war on Gaza. In parallel with the military operations, it cut off electricity, water, communications, and the Internet from the Strip. It linked all steps to developments in the war, and began bargaining over them as negotiating cards.

These measures included the systematic destruction of hospitals, schools, infrastructure, residential facilities, and homes, with the aim of making the Gaza Strip an unlivable area. This led to more than two-thirds of the residential buildings being taken out of service, and they became either completely destroyed, or uninhabitable.

The sector held out for a while thanks to some stocks that were not destroyed, and signs of running out began to appear last week, with some residents consuming animal feed, as stated in reports carried by media outlets and international organizations.

The manifestations of famine began when the canned goods, which the people of the Gaza Strip had relied on for their food since the beginning of the war, began to disappear from the markets, followed by wheat flour, which was empty in the markets, so the Palestinians turned to grinding corn and barley grains intended for making animal feed.

The owner of a grain mill in Jabalia camp spoke of the market running out of white flour completely, and pointed out that what is in the market now is only corn flour. He said that they used to grind rice, but because of its high prices, they stopped that and started making flour from corn and barley grains intended for animal feed.

According to Palestinian sources, this option has begun to gain popularity despite medical warnings about its effects, including that the nutritional value of animal feed lacks essential elements to nourish the human body. The taste of bread is difficult, and humans do not eat it easily.

When the Israeli army withdrew from northern Gaza, this contributed to achieving a breakthrough. Citizens reached animal food warehouses and were able to solve the hunger crisis within a few days, as they worked to grind bad wheat, barley, corn, lentils, and even bird and cat food, to obtain something similar to Flour, but this breakthrough quickly dissipated due to the hunger that struck the Gaza Strip.

The threat of mass famine in Gaza

The World Food Program has warned of the threat of mass famine since the beginning of last month. He said that hunger is widespread throughout the Gaza Strip, and that people feel increasingly desperate in trying to find food to feed their families. He reported that cases of drought and malnutrition are rapidly increasing in the Strip.

Monitoring conducted by the program by phone on December 5 showed that between 83 and 97 percent of families do not consume enough food, and in some areas, up to 90 percent of families do not eat any food for an entire day and night. . As evidence of the rapid spread of famine, 18 percent of these households experienced these conditions on more than 10 days during the month preceding the survey.

On January 22, the warning was raised to its highest level by the World Food Programme, which reported that very small amounts of food aid had reached the south of the Gaza Strip to its north since the beginning of the war, stressing the danger of pockets of famine forming in areas of the Strip.

A day later, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that 750,000 people in the Gaza Strip were facing catastrophic hunger. The reasons behind the announcement were identified as the lack of aid on the one hand, and on the other hand, the violent fighting, the refusal to receive aid, and the interruption of communications, which hinders its ability to provide aid safely and effectively.

The matter is not limited to Israeli measures only, as UNRWA poses another problem, which is the inability of the United Nations to receive aid shipments recently, due to several factors, including the small number of trucks inside Gaza, with the inability of some of them to move from the central areas that were isolated from the South.

Other factors include the disruption of communications, and the increase in the number of employees unable to go to the Rafah crossing due to hostilities. The Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Karl Skau, said in a statement, after a visit to the sector, that "with the collapse of law and order, any meaningful humanitarian operation has become impossible." He added: "We have food on the trucks, but we need more than one crossing. Once the trucks are in, we need a free and safe passage to reach the Palestinians wherever they are."

United Nations employees are trying to summarize the issue in terms of technical difficulties, but it has been clear since the beginning of the war that Israel knows what it wants by turning food into a weapon of war with the aim of displacement, putting pressure on the social incubator, and directing resentment against the Palestinian factions.

International organizations such as Doctors Without Borders began to warn of the disastrous and horrific consequences of Israel's policies, which are affecting children due to a lack of milk, and leading to diseases that may be difficult to recover from at a later stage. Displacement is a red line, and at the same level of danger must be placed famine. So far, it has appeared that appeals and statements issued by international organizations alone are insufficient, and in order for them to be heard, they need a directed international media campaign, especially in light of the crisis that UNRWA is going through today.