As the genocidal war in Gaza rages on, the Israeli military implements the next stage of its starvation plan inside the besieged coastal enclave. It is important to understand that famine in Gaza is not a mere byproduct of the conflict, it appears to be “Israel’s” only coherent battle strategy.

From day one of the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, the intent to manufacture famine has been communicated in public from the highest levels of the Zionist leadership. The infamous quote that has been extensively cited, including by the South African legal team at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which Israeli Security Minister, Yoav Gallant, calls the people of Gaza “human animals”, was also accompanied by a clear intent to manufacture famine in Gaza. Gallant said, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” which his military abided by for weeks, before a single ounce of aid was allowed into Gaza.

When the aid trucks were eventually permitted to enter Gaza on October 21, after a complete ban on aid since October 7, the Associated Press reported that some “two dozen” aid trucks were able to cross the Rafah crossing from Egypt. Although the Israeli regime claims that it has not obstructed aid and points to the convoys that have been able to cross into Gaza as proof, it is crucial to understand that for context, 500 trucks entered the besieged territory every day - on average - prior to the beginning of the war. Since then, there has not been a single day when even near to half of the normal pre-war number of aid trucks have been permitted to enter.

More recently, on March 19, Israeli airstrikes targeted a car outside of an UNRWA facility in the Nuseirat refugee camp and murdered local police chief Mahmoud al-Bayoumi, who was managing the distribution of aid in the area. On the same day, the Zionist military assassinated Raed al-Banna in Jabalia, who was also a high ranking police officer responsible for securing aid trucks and centers. 

During the first day of the renewed Israeli invasion of al-Shifa Hospital, Zionist forces assassinated Fayiq al-Mabhouh, who was a police officer and a committee leader in the Gaza Interior Ministry. The Zionist army's leadership tried to claim that they eliminated a “Hamas terrorist” when they murdered Fayiq al-Mabhouh, which is important, as it shows they went in with the intent of targeting him. He was not a fighter with the Qassam Brigades of Hamas, evidently, but he was playing the central role in coordinating desperately needed aid deliveries to northern Gaza, and also helped organize the arrival of the first trucks from the South, which arrived in his place of birth, the Jabalia Refugee Camp. 

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), over 400 attacks have been carried out on healthcare facilities in Gaza since the beginning of the war, beating all previous records in any documented war. The World Bank recently reported that roughly half of Gaza’s population is at imminent risk of famine, while the number of aid, UN and medical workers murdered by the Israelis has also surpassed those killed in any other conflict in recorded history.

The Zionist entity also allowed its extremist settlers to stage protests at one of the border crossings into Gaza, blocking aid from reaching those who desperately needed it for weeks on end, before aid agencies attempting to send the aid were forced to consider alternatives. Even the US has taken the measure of airdropping aid into specific areas in Gaza, instead of sending trucks, due to the Zionist policies designed to prevent the entry of aid. 

While South Africa has appealed for the ICJ to add measures to prevent the famine to its provisional rulings in the Genocide case, in an attempt to force the Israelis to prevent a famine in Gaza, the Israeli leadership requested the World Court not issue new rulings on the issue of famine. Looking at the Israeli attacks on infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and those helping to coordinate aid transfers, a clear pattern is emerging which indicates a specific plan is being implemented to manufacture famine at a more rapid rate than would have occurred otherwise.

On top of this, we have the various Flour Massacres, in which two of those massacres inflicted over 100 deaths against desperate Palestinian civilians waiting for food aid near the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza City. The Zionist military have also upped their attacks on aid centers, where food is stored, with one of the most severe bombings targeting Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza; an area which was deprived of food aid deliveries for over a month.

A bombing against Palestinians waiting to receive aid at the Kuwait roundabout, last Tuesday, killed 23 civilians who were part of a “people’s committee” which had been formed by tribal leaders in order to organize aid distribution. The need for such committees has arisen as police officers in Gaza are connected by the Israeli military to Hamas, which means they are more likely to be murdered if they directly help in security and distribution of aid. In that same airstrike, one of those killed was Amjad Abhat, who was the head of an “emergency committee” for aid distribution. 

The US government is now highly publicizing its planned “Gaza Port”, which it says will be used for the sole purpose of delivering humanitarian aid to those in desperate need. Yet, there have been no specific details released on how this alleged aid port will be constructed and used, other than that it will be a deep-water port. Such an initiative would take at least two months to construct according to experts, and begs the question as to whether it will even work to send sufficient aid if it goes ahead as planned. Without considering the other possible functions of said port, it appears that the aid element here is nothing more than cheap American propaganda, used to suggest that it is taking drastic steps to push aid to the people of Gaza. 

In two months-time, it may already be too late for one, while on the other hand, why build an expensive port for delivering aid, when it is much quicker and simpler to pressure the Zionist Entity to let sufficient truckloads enter? There is still no plan as to who will coordinate this aid delivery, who will manage the security of the operation, and how it will actually play out. As the US enters election season and the majority of Democratic Party voters favor a ceasefire and younger demographics of voters voice their support for Palestinian human rights, the aid port propaganda appears to be a means of silencing criticism more than actually delivering aid.

All the needed food, water and medical aid is only hundreds of meters, or at most a few kilometers away from those starving to death in Gaza, yet the Zionist entity will not permit its entry into the besieged coastal strip of land.

What we have to understand is that in the absence of any way for the Israelis to secure a military victory against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, they are using the method of slow mass murder of the entire population instead. It has been made clear that it is politically untenable for the Israelis to ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza into the Sinai desert, while a mass murder operation in the southern city of Rafah is also a political disaster for them. As an alternative, it appears that a genocide through mass starvation and disease is the tactic of choice here, and at this point, the US government is providing the perfect cover for the implementation of this plan. The Israeli leadership has made its intentions to starve the people of Gaza to death clear, from day one, they stated that they would block all aid and fight a long war.

The only way to stop this now is a large escalation on one of the various fronts. If the situation in Gaza remains the same, the famine could be allowed to kill tens of thousands of civilians, perhaps hundreds of thousands. We have reached a point of no return, where the US and their Israeli proxy forces are refusing to bow down, they want to take this war all the way and “defeat Hamas” by inflicting a full-scale genocide against the people of Gaza. They seek to make society non-functional, eliminate all those responsible for civil authority, managing aid, law and order, in addition to pushing the population into starvation and death by disease.