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Abdelaziz was only a few hours old when he died. He was born prematurely, on February 24, 2024, to a “severely malnourished mother.” Human Rights Watch investigated his short life, reviewed his death certificate, and spoke to his father. According to the father, the infant struggled to breathe and was put on a ventilator. Just hours after taking his first breath, the hospital ran out of fuel, and the ventilator stopped: “Abdelaziz died immediately.”
Human Rights Watch also reported on Joud, a newborn who succumbed to “starvation-related complications” at the same hospital. According to her father, the family survived on just bread before her birth. Her mother could not produce milk, and store-bought milk was hard to find. Joud died at eight days old.
These stories, and those of far too many others who struggled to survive, were the result of Israel’s policy to starve Palestinians in Gaza. Strikes on food sources, attacks on aid workers, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid made this policy clear. All the while, Israeli officials publicly stated their intent.
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On October 7, 2023, Giora Eiland, adviser to the Israeli Minister of Defense and former Head of the National Security Council, declared in a national newspaper: “A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary outcome of events.” That same month, Eiland went further: “The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave.”
Two days into Israel’s offensive, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Later that month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked scripture in a televised address: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” For context on “Amalek,” in the Old Testament, God commands Saul to “attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
In the weeks and months that followed, conditions in Gaza deteriorated rapidly. By December 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that, “Hunger is ravaging Gaza.” By June 2024, about 2.13 million people “faced high levels of acute food insecurity,” and nearly 343,000 of them “experienced catastrophic food insecurity.”
Destruction of Food Sources
Israeli attacks devastated Palestinian food sources. The last functional bread mill – the As-Salam Mill – was reportedly destroyed on November 15, 2023. By January 2024, reports claimed that Israel had destroyed “approximately 22% of agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza” and 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleet, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Israeli forces decimated the Port of Gaza, destroying every single fishing boat and shack,” U.N. Special Rapporteur for food Michael Fakhri said. “In Rafah, only two out of 40 boats are left. In Khan Younis, Israel destroyed approximately 75 small-scale fishing vessels.”
By February 15, 2024, damaged agricultural land and infrastructure included 626 wells, 307 home barns, 235 broiler farms, 203 sheep farms, 119 animal shelters, and more than a quarter of greenhouses in Gaza. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated a 70% loss in average gross production value per household in the first three months.
On February 19, UNICEF, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization jointly reported that 64% of households were eating only one meal a day, and over 95% reported adults eating less so that “small children had food to eat.”
Malnutrition became widespread; as of January 2024, “dietary diversity for pregnant and breastfeeding women [was] also severely compromised,” and “about 90 per cent of children under two” were “consuming two or fewer food groups,” according to UNICEF.
“The children developed signs of malnutrition, especially in the first four months,” a father of eight told Save the Children. “They lost a lot of weight, did not have energy to play. Even their skin started to get yellowish due to lack of iron and sugar. My 10-year-old son started to develop cracks in his skin, especially around the eyes.”
“Hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” the Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, Dr. Mike Ryan, said. “Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatised children are more likely to get sick, and children who are sick, especially with diarrhea, cannot absorb nutrients well. It’s dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes.”
By March 2024, the Global Nutrition Cluster warned of “a sharp deterioration” in North Gaza and Gaza City, with “1 in 3 children under 2 estimated to be wasted,” double the estimate from the previous month. According to UNICEF, “Wasting is the most immediate, visible and life-threatening form of malnutrition.”
The Flour Massacre and Killing Aid Workers
With local food production in ruins, humanitarian aid became critical. This aid, as we shall see, was catastrophically obstructed. Yet, even the limited supplies that made it into Gaza were met with stunning brutality.
On February 29, 2024 — in what has come to be known as the Flour Massacre — the Israeli military fired on a crowd of civilians “gathered to collect flour” in Gaza City, killing at least 112 people and injuring an estimated 760 more. “The attack came after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month,” noted a U.N. press release, adding that “between mid-January and the end of February,” there were “over 14 recorded incidents of shooting, shelling and targeting groups gathered to receive urgently needed supplies from trucks or airdrops.”
Aid workers were also attacked. Human Rights Watch reported that by May 14, 2024, the Israeli military had “carried out at least eight strikes on aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza since October 2023, even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection.” Five of these attacks hit shelters and guest houses. The impacted aid organizations included UNRWA, Médecins Sans Frontières, World Central Kitchen, and the International Rescue Committee.
That month, the Global Protection Cluster reported, “At least 262 aid workers have been killed since the start of the hostilities.” This included five members of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and seven World Central Kitchen staff members killed in an IDF strike while traveling in three separate vehicles. “All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities, who were aware of their itinerary, route, and humanitarian mission,” according to the aid organization.
That same month, UNRWA reported that, since October 7, 2023, 169 of the organization’s installations were damaged, and at least 429 civilians who had sought shelter in UNRWA premises were killed.
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Choking Humanitarian Aid
Note: As of March 2025, after this writing, Israel again imposed a complete blockade on food and other supplies entering Gaza.
Years of Israeli restrictions left Gaza largely dependent on aid. By February 2023, over 60% of Palestinians in Gaza needed humanitarian assistance. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cited restrictions on “the exit and entry of commodities” and population movement “among the main reasons for this extremely high rate.”
After the displacement of 1.9 million civilians and the devastation of local production, Gaza needed far more aid for survival. Yet, for 15 months, the volume of food assistance Israel allowed into Gaza was drastically lower than pre-offensive import levels.
From late October 2023 — after the initial total blockade — to mid-January 2025, the U.N. documented fewer than 67 truckloads of humanitarian food per day on average. In comparison, about 100 truckloads of food entered Gaza per day over the previous year, including both humanitarian and commercial shipments. Again, this was before the destruction of local food sources and before the mass displacement of Palestinians.
The assault began with a full-scale blockade. Starting October 9, all crossings, including all Israeli-controlled points and Rafah on the Egyptian border, were closed, sealing Gaza off from the world. “No electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared. Israel also cut off the water under its control.
The impact was quick and severe. On October 17, World Food Programme Regional Director Corinne Fleischer warned, “We need to be allowed to bring this food into Gaza for immediate distribution. And not just once. We need sustained access. The situation over there is catastrophic and our stocks inside Gaza are running out. Every day that passes pushed more and more people closer to starvation.”
Nearly two weeks into the assault, Netanyahu’s office announced, “In light of the sweeping and vital American support for the war effort, as well as US President Biden's request for basic humanitarian assistance,” Israel would not “prevent humanitarian assistance from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population located in the southern Gaza Strip or which is evacuating to there, and as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas.” That is, to keep the weapons flowing, they would not prevent aid from entering through another country (Egypt), as long as that aid was only for southern Gaza.
For the next eight weeks, the U.N. documented fewer than 53 truckloads of food aid per day. “Even though goods were entering Gaza through Egypt, Israel tightly restricted their import,” Amnesty International reported. “Israeli authorities insisted on checking trucks entering Gaza from Egypt at an inspection point many kilometres from the Rafah crossing. Trucks had to be unloaded and reloaded multiple times, and the entire process could take weeks.”
On December 6, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a recommendation “to allow a minimal supplement of fuel” to “prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics – into the southern Gaza Strip.” In a joint press conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Gallant explained that this was done so that the fighting could continue. “We also know that if there is a collapse, plagues, diseases, groundwater contamination, etc., this will stop the fighting,” Netanyahu said. Lest anyone mistake this move as valuing the lives and human rights of the civilian population, Gallant noted, “We are required to [do] the humanitarian minimum in order to allow the continuation of military pressure, and not the other way around.”
On December 17, “after significant international pressure,” Israel opened one crossing from its territory into southern Gaza for aid deliveries. Yet, the amount allowed in was nowhere near adequate, with the U.N. documenting fewer than 92 truckloads of food aid per day in January 2024.
“I have to walk three kilometers to get one gallon [of water],” a father of two who fled south with his children and pregnant wife told Human Rights Watch. “And there is no food. If we are able to find food, it is canned food.”
“The city was out of everything, of food and water,” another civilian told HRW. “If you find canned food, the prices were so high. We decided to eat just once a day to survive. We were running out of money. We decided to just have the necessities, to have less of everything.”
On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures in response to South Africa’s application against Israel. The ICJ concluded that “at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention.” The Court called on Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, noting that “there is urgency” and “there is a real and imminent risk.”
How did Israel react to this call by the international court to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza? The U.N. documented that fewer than 65 truckloads of food aid entered the Strip per day in February. Amnesty International reported that “in the three weeks following the ICJ order, the number of trucks entering Gaza decreased by about a third,” “smaller quantities of fuel, which Israel tightly controls, made it into Gaza,” and the only two open crossings were “opened on fewer days.”
Meanwhile, the U.N. was unable to deliver any aid to northern Gaza for over a month, and some Palestinians were forced to forage for wild plants and eat animal feed to survive.
Humanitarian officials reported “frequent” and “arbitrary” limitations by Israeli authorities, “including during efforts to import life-saving supplies.” Delays and rejections came without explanation, and humanitarian workers “were left guessing as to what would and would not pass through.” One worker told Amnesty International that impacted items were often critical: “For example, they’d allow everything for a water desalination unit, but not let the pumps in so it doesn’t work.” In one case, “Israel obstructed the import” of animal feed, delaying it for over four months.
Doctors Without Borders also described these restrictions: “There is no clarity or consistency to what is allowed into Gaza. Sometimes aid organizations can bring in certain items, sometimes not. Sometimes an entire shipment is rejected because of one item, but the reasons are not communicated to us, making it impossible to adapt future shipments accordingly.”
In March, a father described the conditions his family endured. “We were steadfast for five months,” Khudur al-Sultan said. “We tried to get food for our children, but where are we supposed to get food? The flour I bought lasted only one month. We started milling barley and fodder.”
That month, the United States, Israel’s top major arms supplier, resorted to token airdrops. Vice Admiral Brad Cooper reported that “2.4 million pounds of aid” were dropped into the Strip between March and July 2024 — about one pound per person over four months. In contrast, the U.S. appropriated over $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel between March and October — about $5,500 per Gazan, to the government bombing them.
Having supplied billions in arms, the administration couldn’t appear forced into airdrops by Israeli restrictions. So, U.S. officials offered a creative explanation. The day after President Biden announced these drops, three “senior administration officials” spoke on the matter in a press teleconference — their names were redacted from the public White House transcript. Oblivious or indifferent to the inconsistency in their talking points, one noted the administration was pressing “the government of Israel to open additional crossings” while another claimed that “[t]he challenge has not been getting [250-300] trucks-load of assistance physically into Gaza.” Instead, the problem was “distribution,” as “criminal gangs” were “taking,” “looting,” and “reselling” the aid.
To solve this, they explained, “you flood the market” to “demonetize these commodities.” And, to meet “the President’s intent” for the “flooding of the zone,” the U.S. would pursue “many points of entry.” Airdrops and a maritime corridor would complement land crossings.
During the call, perhaps skeptical that they would “flood the market,” Hiba Nasr asked: “How do you respond to the critics that what’s happening, and the airdrops now in Gaza, is humiliating for the United States because you weren’t able to get the aid any other way, and this is also another sign that you don’t have leverage over the Israeli government?” Predictably, the officials avoided any mention of Israeli aid restrictions and stuck to the talking points in their response.
In April 2024, the month following this Biden administration announcement, Save the Children issued an appeal. “We’re witnessing an annihilation of the physical and mental well-being of children in Gaza,” the organization’s Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory, Xavier Joubert, said. “The rate at which they’ve been pushed to – and beyond – the brink of death in the past six months is nothing short of staggering. It’s unconscionable that life-saving food, nutritional products and medical supplies are sitting at the border, just miles away from where children are needlessly and painfully dying from malnutrition. Starvation must never be used as a weapon of war.”
The manufactured famine continued. Despite Israel finally allowing more points of entry in May 2024, the U.N. documented fewer than 58 truckloads of food aid entering the Strip per day over the next six months, dropping to 32 daily in October.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit published border-entry figures that, unsurprisingly, were higher than those reported by the U.N. Those familiar with the public statements by Israeli officials and the unequivocal reports from Amnesty International (that Israel denied and obstructed “essential services and life-saving supplies”), Human Rights Watch (that Israel restricted “the entry of water, fuel, food and aid”), Oxfam (that Israel prevented delivery of “life-saving aid to thousands of starving people in north Gaza”), and Doctors Without Borders (that Israeli policy reduced “food, water, medical supplies” to “a trickle”), can judge the reliability of Israel’s numbers compared to those of the U.N. for themselves.
Yet, beginning in May 2024, even COGAT reported a decline in humanitarian goods, with “private sector” items rising to 56% of entries between May and September. According to Reuters, the “private sector” goods listed by COGAT were commercial items imported for sale in Gaza — not private donations. Nonetheless, COGAT included these shipments in its “Humanitarian Aid Data.”
As private sector shipments overtook aid, the U.N.’s OCHA, citing the Egyptian Red Crescent, reported that about 2,050 trucks “remain stuck in Al Arish on the Egyptian side of Rafah Crossing,” with the majority carrying food. Meanwhile, Amnesty International noted that commercial trucks “have been prioritized, and the movement of aid remains unpredictable, inconsistent, and critically low.”
Targeting the Lifeline
Israel also campaigned to eliminate funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which Amnesty International called “a sole lifeline, offering indispensable humanitarian aid, education and shelter” to “Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” In January 2024, Israel alleged that 12 of UNRWA’s 30,000 personnel participated in the October 2023 attacks, later raising the number to 19. Sixteen countries “suspended or paused funding” to the aid organization without waiting for an independent investigation. This resulted in a loss of “around US$450 million” in funding just when UNRWA’s work was most needed.
Nearly three months later, an independent investigation into UNRWA’s neutrality was released, and the “vast majority” of countries (the U.S. excluded) eventually resumed funding. In other words, a U.N. aid organization was presumed guilty until proven innocent, while its accuser — an occupying power currently before the International Court of Justice — was taken at its word.
The week the allegations were made public and days after the U.S. State Department announced it was “temporarily” pausing additional funding for the organization, Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed in a press conference that the allegations were “highly, highly credible,” but admitted that “we haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves.”
Incredibly, within the same press conference, Blinken noted that “UNRWA has played and continues to play an absolutely indispensable role in trying to make sure that men, women, and children who so desperately need assistance in Gaza actually get it. And no one else can play the role that UNRWA’s been playing, certainly not in the near term.”
These accusations were leveled the same month that the International Court of Justice mandated “that Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
“Despite mounting risks of famine and a binding order by the World Court in a case about genocide, Israel’s foreign minister has now announced that he will lead a brazen effort to shut down the UN agency most responsible for delivering lifesaving aid,” Human Rights Watch crisis advocacy director Akshaya Kumar noted at the time. “Unless governments reverse their decisions to suspend aid to UNRWA, the main humanitarian channel into Gaza, they risk contributing to the current catastrophe.”
Allegations continued and moved beyond the 19 UNRWA personnel. Israel’s U.N. representative hyperbolically declared, “UNRWA is Hamas, and Hamas is UNRWA.” The government also claimed that over 30 of the aid organization’s facilities “contain terror infrastructures such as tunnel shafts” and that “a significant share of UNRWA’s employees in Gaza serve in the ranks of Hamas and other terror organizations, including in military positions.”
At the U.N. Secretary-General’s request, an independent review investigated the institutional allegations. The resulting report noted that UNRWA not only screens all its staff against the U.N. sanctions list, but also shares staff lists for East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank with Israeli authorities. It noted that “the Israeli Government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011.”
The report added that after analyzing “the mechanisms and procedures currently in place within UNRWA to ensure neutrality and address potential breaches,” the review group concluded, “UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality.”
As for Israel’s claim that a significant share of UNRWA staff are involved in terrorist organizations, the report states that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”
By July 2024, “the vast majority” of countries that had suspended donations, “including Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,” Sweden, and the United Kingdom had resumed payments. The United States — historically UNRWA’s top donor — has yet to resume funding at the time of writing (February 2025).
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, while announcing to Parliament that the UK would resume payments to UNRWA, commented on the independent review of the organization, stating that “we are reassured that UNRWA is ensuring that it meets the highest standards of neutrality and is strengthening its procedures, including on vetting,” and thanked UNRWA “for its lifesaving work.”
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong highlighted the need for UNRWA in supplying aid for Gaza’s civilians and stressed the role Israel plays in preventing this aid from reaching them. “Only UNRWA has the infrastructure to receive and distribute aid on the scale needed right now in Gaza,” Wong stated. “But aid can only reach the civilian population at scale if Israel lets it into Gaza. Australia implores Israel to allow this to happen.”
The U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigated claims that individual UNRWA employees participated in the October 2023 attacks. While OIOS investigation reports “are strictly confidential and are not published,” the U.N. Secretary-General summarized the results in an August 5, 2024 statement.
According to the statement, in nine cases, “the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement,” while in another case, “no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement.” In the remaining nine cases, the conclusion was that “the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October 2023.” That same day, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General stated that the “contracts of these [nine] staff members will be terminated in the interest of the Agency.”
According to Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General, “since information used by Israeli officials to support the allegations have remained in Israeli custody, OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it.”
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