Children will die quickly amid ‘genocidal starvation’ in Gaza, warns top famine expert
A Palestinian child waits to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a severe hunger crisis, in Gaza City, on 23 July 2025
Mathilda Mallinson and Sondos Asem report in Middle East Eye on 23 July 2025:
A renowned expert on famine, Professor Alex de Waal, has accused Israel of “genocidal starvation” of Palestinians in Gaza with its continued deadly siege on the enclave.
At least 101 Palestinians, including 80 children, have died of starvation since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza, including 15 who died of malnutrition on Monday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at distribution sites run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in place since May and manned by Israeli soldiers and US security contractors.
De Waal told MEE’s live show on Tuesday [22 July] that the UN is not in a position to declare famine due to Israel’s obstruction of access to humanitarians and investigators to gauge the extent of hunger. However, he said, “it is actually relatively straightforward if you are perpetrating a famine to shut out access to essential information and then say no one has declared famine”. “Concealment of famine is an instrument of those who perpetrate it,” he added.
De Waal said that famine is unfolding in Gaza in “a wholly predicted manner”. De Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, affiliated with the Fletcher School of Global Affairs at Tufts University, and the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
He explained that a healthy adult will take 60 to 80 days of total deprivation of food to die of starvation. With semi-starvation, it would take a lot longer. “But children will perish much more quickly. Their small bodies waste away very, very fast.”