Starvation grips Gaza asfood crisis deepens

Express Tribune

4 days ago

Seela Barbakh, an 11-month-old Palestinian girl who is malnourished, is held by her mother at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Photo: REUTERS
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The World Health Organization's chief warned Wednesday of widespread starvation in Gaza, saying food deliveries into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory were "far below what is needed for the survival of the population".
"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," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
His statement added his voice to those of 111 aid organisations and rights groups, including MSF and Oxfam, who warned earlier Wednesday that "mass starvation" was spreading in Gaza.
"Our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away," they said in a joint statement.
The United Nations and aid groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say Israel, which controls everything that comes in and out, is choking delivery, and Israeli troops have shot hundreds of Palestinians dead close to aid collection points since May.
Starvation grips Gaza as food crisis deepens
"We have a minimum set of requirements to be able to operate inside Gaza," Ross Smith, the director of emergencies at the UN World Food Programme, told Reuters.
"One of the most important things I want to emphasize is that we need to have no armed actors near our distribution points, near our convoys."
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar on Wednesday urged the international community to deliver justice, freedom, dignity, and a state to the long-suffering Palestinian people.
He also called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian access, a halt to illegal settlements, and post-war reconstruction.
"It is time to give the Palestinian people what they have been denied for too long: justice, freedom, dignity, and a state of their own. That is the path to durable peace and stability in the Middle East," Ishaq Dar said while chairing the UN Security Council's "Open Debate on the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question".
He emphasized that the path to lasting peace lies in upholding international law, ending foreign occupation, rejecting the use of force, and advancing solutions through dialogue and diplomacy.
"Gaza has become a graveyard for innocent lives as well as for international law," Ishaq Dar stated, citing systematic attacks on hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and aid convoys. He emphasized that the unfolding hunger crisis, with a third of Gaza's population going days without food, is a dire warning of catastrophic levels of food insecurity.Best restaurants near me
Calling the Palestinian issue a litmus test for the UN's credibility, the deputy PM warned that failure to act decisively would embolden impunity and erode the international rules-based order.
The deputy PM urged the Security Council to pursue with unity and urgency, concrete measures including immediate, permanent, and unconditional ceasefire across Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including full implementation of Resolution 2735, unfettered humanitarian access and protection for aid workers, with urgent restoration of food and medical supply lines, renewed support for UNRWA, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, an end to forced displacement and illegal settlement expansion, particularly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, implementation of the Arab and OIC-led reconstruction plan for Gaza, and revival of a time-bound political process to achieve a two-state solution in accordance with UN resolutions and international law.
Reaffirming Pakistan's support for a sovereign Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif (Jerusalem) as its capital, Dar welcomed recent momentum toward Palestine's recognition and UN membership. He highlighted the upcoming International Conference on the Two-State Solution, co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, as a key opportunity for renewed diplomatic progress.
Dar also addressed broader regional issues, urging peaceful resolution of conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and condemn recent Israeli military actions in Iran. He reiterated Pakistan's support for multilateral diplomacy and adherence to international law as the only path to regional peace and stability.
Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, where more than two million people are facing severe shortages of food and other essentials after 21 months of conflict.
Even after Israel began easing a more than two-month aid blockade in late May, Gaza's population is still suffering extreme scarcities.
"The 2.1 million people trapped in the war zone that is Gaza are facing yet another killer on top of bombs and bullets: starvation," Tedros said.
"We are now witnessing a deadly surge in malnutrition-related deaths," he added.
Tedros highlighted that "rates of global acute malnutrition exceed 10 percent, and over 20 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women that have been screened are malnourished, often severely".
The UN health agency has documented 21 deaths in Gaza related to malnutrition of children under the age of five since the beginning of the year, but acknowledges that that the true number is likely higher.
The head of Gaza's largest hospital said Tuesday that 21 children had died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory over the previous three days alone.
Tedros warned that "the hunger crisis is being accelerated by the collapse of aid pipelines and restrictions on access".
The starvation is "man-made" and clearly caused by Israel's blockade on the territory, he said.
The WHO chief highlighted how starving people were risking their lives to access aid.
The UN rights office said Tuesday that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operations in late May.
"Not only 1,026 were killed while trying to feed themselves or find food for their family. Thousands were also wounded," Tedros said.
"We demand that there is full access, and we demand that there is a ceasefire," he said.
"We demand that there is a political solution to this problem, a lasting solution."
Killings
The Al-Shaer family went to bed hungry at their home in Gaza City. An Israeli airstrike killed them in their sleep. The family — freelance journalist Wala al-Jaabari, her husband and their five children — were among more than 100 people killed in 24 hours of Israeli strikes or gunfire, according to health officials.
Their corpses lay in white shrouds outside their bombed home on Wednesday with their names scribbled in pen. Blood seeped through the shrouds as they lay there, staining them red.
"This is my cousin. He was 10. We dug them out of the rubble," Amr al-Shaer, holding one of the bodies after retrieving it. Iman al-Shaer, another relative who lives nearby, said the family hadn't eaten anything before the bombs came down.
"The children slept without food," he said. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike at the family's home, but said its air force had struck 120 targets throughout Gaza in the past day, including "terrorist cells, military structures, tunnels, booby-trapped structures, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites".
Relatives said some neighbours were spared only because they had been out searching for food at the time of the strike. Ten more Palestinians died overnight from starvation, the Gaza health ministry said, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death to 111, most of them in recent weeks as a wave of hunger crashes on the Palestinian enclave.