Thou Shalt Not Starve Thy Neighbor
Palestinians gather to receive aid outside an UNRWA warehouse as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, earlier this month.
The Israeli government, from its head to its most junior member, refuses to admit that many of those who live in Gaza are civilian noncombatants and that about half of the Strip’s inhabitants are children. The public media debate in Israel also ignores this element of the situation in Gaza. After the death toll in the Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, passed the 32,000 mark, including over 12,000 children, the discourse remained indifferent; even the discussion of humanitarian aid focuses on Israeli interests, without considering the human element.
The amount of food that is currently entering Gaza is insufficient for human survival, Francesco Cecchi, a professor of epidemiology and international health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told Haaretz (Neta Ahituv, Haaretz Hebrew edition, March 27). According to the United Nations, the entire population of the Gaza Strip, some 2.3 million people, is suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, and about one in four is on the brink of famine.
There are an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip, who are at high risk. About 90 percent of them suffer from catastrophic food insecurity; the rate is similar among nursing mothers, according to a statement by the World Health Organization in November. In recent weeks, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported 27 deaths from malnutrition, 23 of them children. The situation is the worst in the northern Strip, where 15.6 percent of children under the age of 2 who were screened in shelters and health centers – one out of six – were found to be acutely malnourished.