Starvation as policy: how Israel's aid blockade deepens the genocide in Gaza

THE Palestinian people are living through one of the most catastrophic horrors of recent history, an event that will be remembered in history books with shame.

- PROFESSOR USUF CHIKTE

Israel has just decided to make it worse by barring more than 30 critical aid groups from operating in Gaza which will leave people trapped without food and medicine, exacerbating starvation. The genocide in Gaza is not only carried out through bombs, bullets and bulldozers. It is also executed through paperwork, border controls, and the deliberate denial of food, water, medicine and shelter.

Israel’s systematic obstruction of humanitarian aid is not a secondary failure or an unfortunate byproduct of war. It is a central pillar of a policy designed to destroy Palestinian life in Gaza. Even under the guise of a so-called ceasefire, Israel has continued to strangle the Strip. More than 80 days into an agreement announced with much fanfare by the United States, Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians, carried out close to a thousand violations, and maintained sweeping restrictions on humanitarian access.

What is unfolding is not peace interrupted by breaches, but genocide continuing by other means. International humanitarian law is unequivocal. As the occupying power, Israel has a legal obligation to ensure the civilian population has access to food, medical care, shelter and basic services. Instead, Israel has done the opposite: it has obstructed aid, criminalised humanitarian actors, dismantled life-sustaining infrastructure, and turned starvation into a weapon of war.

Only a fraction of the aid required to sustain Gaza’s population has been allowed to enter. Less than half of the promised humanitarian supplies have crossed the border. Fuel deliveries, essential for hospitals, water pumps, bakeries and sewage treatment, have been reduced to a trickle. As a result, hospitals shut down operating theatres, incubators go dark, dialysis machines stop, and patients die not from lack of medical knowledge, but from lack of electricity. This is not collateral damage. It is policy.