The major relief organizations of the world have said that the food situation in Palestine is the most dire of any country in 20 years. The UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is by far the main, and only meaningful way to channel food to Palestinians at anything close to the scale needed to stave off mass starvation. It employs 13,000 people in Gaza and has the logistical skills, connections with local administrations, and ability to move food quickly to people in an orderly and rational way. In the midst of mass destruction, terror, and chaos in Gaza, under siege by Israel, that is not something that could be recreated in a way that came close to addressing the situation. 

U.S. efforts to “air drop” aid have been at best random and at worst murderous (these air drops have killed a number of people when parachutes failed). 

So, what did the U.S. Congress do to deal with the imminent starvation of perhaps 2 million people? It cut off aid to UNRWA, the ONLY viable relief organization operating in Palestine!

The supposed “reason” being unsubstantiated, unproven, claims by Israel that a few of the thousands of UNRWA employees in Gaza were part of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. The U.S. Congress might just as well have voted to make it a U.S. law that Israel must starve the entire population of Gaza to death.

And that’s just one element of a whole panorama of horror—carried out by Israel, but in many, many ways “Made In USA”—that went on this past week. 

Israel continues unchecked mass murder of civilians in bomb and missile attacks. And the U.S. continues to rush those bombs and missiles to Israel. As of March 23, the number of people killed by Israel in Gaza was 32,142. Uncounted thousands more bodies lie buried in the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli missiles and bombs. On March 23, the New York Times reported that “Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within.”

In addition to tens of thousands of dead, Israel’s bombs, missiles, tanks, and foot soldiers have injured at least 75,000 people in Gaza. The entire population suffers from malnutrition and starvation. Emaciated women are giving birth in shelters. Israel has systematically decimated Gaza’s health care infrastructure; two-thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been effectively knocked out of operation by Israeli attacks.

• Using “Inspections” to Impose Starvation

None of the 2.2 million people in Gaza have enough food to eat. Half the population is on the brink of starvation! In northern Gaza, the UN reports that 70 percent of the population is already suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger. People are eating grass and animal feed, and drinking polluted water. Starving mothers are unable to produce enough milk to feed their babies and parents beg for infant formula at overwhelmed health facilities.

Having systematically destroyed Gaza’s food production, storage, and transportation with bombs, missiles, tanks, and bulldozers, Israel chokes off food going into Gaza through so-called “inspections” of aid trucks, banning items ranging from sanitary napkins and pregnancy kits to hospital supplies and water purification tablets, claiming these items can be used as weapons by Hamas. 

On March 23, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA tweeted:

Today, the Israeli Authorities denied another convoy with much needed food supplies from going to the north where people are on the verge of famine. The last time @UNRWA was able to send food aid to the north was nearly 2 month[s] ago. I’ve said it many times: this is a man made hunger & looming famine which can still be averted. The Israeli Authorities must allow delivering food aid at scale to the north including via UNRWA, the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza. Meanwhile, children will continue to die of malnutrition & dehydration under our watch. The unbearable cannot become the new normal.

• Continued Targeting of Food Distribution

In recent months, Israeli forces have killed over 400 Palestinians in northern Gaza as they gathered to collect aid from trucks arriving from the south. On February 29, Israel killed over a hundred people and injured many hundreds more in the “Flour” Massacre in North Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that on March 23, at least 19 people were again killed by Israeli shelling as aid was being distributed at the same location where previous massacres took place in Gaza City.

Reports, including at Middle Eastern Eye, have documented Israel targeting aid workers. This includes civilian officials responsible for organizing food distribution, and committees of volunteers who have organized to coordinate and manage food distribution. Israel gives the excuse that these civilian officials are part of Hamas, but Hamas has been the government in Gaza for 18 years—meaning the entire civil apparatus could be considered to be “affiliated with Hamas.” Israel has not provided evidence that the people they killed in the last week were military combatants. After Israel struck a UN food distribution operation in southern Gaza on March 13, killing a UN staff person and others, the Washington Post reported that Israeli attacks on aid convoys and local police that guard them are creating conditions of chaos and looting by gangs.

• The Siege of Al-Shifa Hospital

As we post this, Israel’s siege of al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza is in its seventh day. This is the largest hospital in Gaza. As the siege began, al-Shifa was barely equipped after months of war and a previous raid by Israeli forces.

Amr Fawzi Jedbah, a 31-year-old vascular surgeon at al-Shifa described looking out a window of al-Shifa on March 18 and seeing Israeli tanks surrounding the hospital. He told the Washington Post that minutes later the Israeli military announced “they have conquered al-Shifa and everyone is under arrest.” Dr. Jedbah said Israeli troops forced out, or detained, hundreds of patients. Some 150 to 200 patients who could not walk remained in the hospital with a handful of doctors. At least nine patients—including two in the intensive care unit—died from lack of treatment. While Dr. Jedbah remained in the hospital, he avoided looking out of hospital windows for fear of being shot.

• Gaza Doctors Testify in Washington

American and British doctors with years of experience treating patients in war zones came to Washington, DC, to bring firsthand accounts of what they saw in hospitals in Gaza. 

Nick Maynard, a British surgeon, described operating on chest injuries from explosions with few anesthetics or antibiotics at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza in December and January. “The lack of pain relief was particularly disturbing because we saw lots of children with awful burns.” He described trying to operate with only a limited supply of sterile gloves and surgical gowns. This absence of essential medical material is due to the Israeli siege of Gaza. Dr. Maynard described walking through hallways packed with displaced people to check on patients he had operated on and sometimes failing to find them. He told the New York Times, “This is the deliberate destruction of the whole health care system.” 

Thaer Ahmad is a Palestinian-American emergency medicine physician. He worked at Nasser Hospital in the south of Gaza through January. On February 15, after he left, Nasser Hospital was raided by Israeli forces in what Israel claimed was a search for Hamas members, weapons, and the bodies of Israeli hostages. Israel ordered patients and staff to leave, attacked and killed some of those trying to leave with bullets and air strikes, and forced thousands of patients, staff, and refugees out of the hospital. 

Videos from the February raid depicted chaos inside the damaged, smoke-filled hospital, punctuated by automatic gunfire and explosions. Under rapidly deteriorating conditions, patients died from a lack of power and oxygen. The Israeli military described the raid as “a precise and limited operation.”

What we are seeing with the utter destruction that Israel is bringing down on the people of Gaza—with the financial and military support of the U.S.—is an attempt, on the part of Prime Minister Netan-NAZI (aka Benjamin Netanyahu)—toward a “final solution” to Israel's “Palestinian problem.” This means, at a minimum, reducing the Palestinians to such a state that they can no longer pose any obstacle to Israel’s objectives. Beyond that, it could mean mass expulsion and/or slaughter on a massive scale, beyond even what Israel is now carrying out.