The hunger crisis in Gaza continues as at least 10 more Palestinians die from starvation. According to Al Jazeera, this brings the starvation death toll to 111 since the conflict between Palestine and Israel broke into a war in October 2023. Of those deaths, 43 have reportedly occurred in the last three days.
The worsening of the hunger crisis prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO), along with 115 other worldwide aid organisations, to call for an immediate ceasefire to be negotiated, along with the opening of all land crossings to allow aid supplied by UN-led organisations to flow freely into the war zone.
“A large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving. I don’t know what you would call it other than mass-starvation – and it’s man-made,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, via The Guardian.
The hunger crisis is believed to be a result of the IDF’s blockade of life-saving aid and food into the Gaza Strip, with the European Comission stating that Israel is not doing enough to allow increased aid into the region. Before the blockade was put in place in March, The Guardian claimed that more than 500 aid trucks entered Gaza each day. From the 17th to the 21st of July, only 132 trucks were reported to have entered the strip which is not enough to help those in need.
Despite multiple organisations and countries citing the IDF’s blockade as the cause of the rising hunger crisis, the Israeli government denies that it is responsible for the critical shortage of food. Instead, it claims that Hamas has been orchestrating the crisis.
Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum says that “hunger has become as deadly as the bombs” for Palestinians in Gaza.
“Families are no longer asking for enough; they are asking for anything,” Azzoum reported from the ground at Deir el-Balah in Gaza.
“[It’s] a slow, painful death playing out in real time, an engineered famine that the Israeli military has orchestrated”.
Meanwhile, medical staff in Gaza claim that they haven’t had food in more than 48 hours, making it increasingly difficult for them to provide life-saving care for people in need.
“They are in a state of extreme exhaustion. Some have fainted in the operating rooms,” said director of Gaza’s al-Shift hospital Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia.
“Medical services will be affected because our staff will not be able to hold out any longer in the face of this famine.”
This, combined with the decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system, has made it increasingly difficult for doctors and people seeking medical care.
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