There is No Famine in Gaza

There is certainly a problem with some people not getting enough to eat in Gaza. But that has nothing to do with a famine. There is plenty of food entering the Strip. Right now, 150 trucks, each one carrying 12,000 kilograms of food (as well as medicine), enter Gaza each day. That is a total of 1,800,000 kilograms of food per day, or 0.78 kilograms of food for each of the 2,300,000 residents of Gaza, most of whom are children. 0.78 kilograms is 1.72 pounds of food. If it were evenly distributed, there would be enough for everyone in Gaza.

But much of that food aid is immediately seized — hijacked — by Hamas, which keeps a good deal of it for its own fighters and their extended families, and sells the rest of what it takes at wildly inflated prices to civilians who scrape together what they can to buy food stolen by the terror group. More on the reasons for hunger in Gaza can be found in an article here: “Editor’s Notes: ‘There is no famine in Gaza’ – comment,” by Zvika Klein, Jerusalem Post, March 8, 2024:

World media has been focusing in the past week on what it called the “Hunger” in Gaza.

Biden administration officials told Minister Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday that the “food shortage crisis” impacting Palestinians in Gaza is “intolerable,” and improving the distribution of humanitarian aid in the region will be a primary focus during their discussions.

According to Reuters, the United Nations said in February that more than a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were “estimated to be facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.” It said that without action, widespread famine could be “almost inevitable.”

“The food shortage and use of the word ‘hunger’ have been exaggerated,” a senior Israeli defense official told me [Zvika Klein] on Thursday during a briefing. “There is no hunger in Gaza,” he said, explaining that most of the food that Israel has been sending into the Strip has “immediately been taken by Hamas terrorists, who then sell some of the supplies for ten times more than what it’s worth.”…

A former senior Israeli defense official who I spoke to on condition of anonymity has also said that “there is no food shortage in Gaza; there are those who are hungry since Hamas has taken all of the food and they don’t have enough money to pay Hamas on the black market.”

According to this former official, the food does not reach those who need it most since Hamas controls approximately 70-80% of the area. What happens is that Israel and foreign countries bring food and aid into Gaza. Then gangs take the supplies at gunpoint, and a significant portion of the population is left unable to afford necessities….

Furthermore, according to this former official, Hamas actively works against the distribution of food, attempting to shoot down food drops from the United States, Jordan, and the UAE. The presence of shoulder-fired missiles adds to the difficulty, as it becomes increasingly challenging to deliver aid accurately from a very high altitude, sometimes resulting in supplies being swept kilometers off course or into the sea.

Hamas doesn’t want the air-drop program to succeed, because — unlike the food that enters Gaza on trucks — the terror group won’t necessarily be able to grab such parcels for its own operatives. Ordinary Gazans may get to them first. Hence the attempts by Hamas to shoot down those food parcels to prevent anyone from getting them where they are most likely to fall near its operatives. And the threat that Hamas might shoot down the planes delivering the food parcels causes pilots to fly at a much higher altitude, where the aid that is dropped may land far from the intended area or may even end up in the Mediterranean.

The motive behind targeting food aid is clear: to demonstrate a lack of food and, by extension, an ongoing state of hunger. This tactic aims to suggest that any resolution in Gaza that diminishes Hamas’s power – including peace – is undesirable. From their perspective, any solution that might improve conditions in the embattled enclave without their involvement signals the end of their rule. Thus, the humanitarian crisis continues, driven not by a genuine concern for the population’s well-being but by fear and their desire to maintain control….

Just as Hamas benefits from an increase in civilian casualties, which allow it to paint Israel as a deliberate killer of “women and children,” it also benefits from hunger in Gaza, which is shown to the world in heart-rending videos of sunken-cheeked children, too malnourished to even move. These photos and videos make a deep impression on the world, that is prepared to believe that Israel is deliberately starving these innocents. It is doing no such thing. Israel is now delivering 50% more food aid to Gaza than it did before October 7. There is enough food now being delivered from all sources to Gaza, that each person would have 1.72 pounds of food if it were fairly distributed. But it is not: Hamas seizes a great deal of it for its own operatives and their extended families.

One partial solution to the problem of Hamas seizing food aid will be possible when the Americans can bring that aid on ships from Cyprus (where Israelis will have checked their cargo), to be offloaded in Gaza at the temporary port Biden now promises to build. Then American, and possibly contingents from other Western armies, should be able to ensure that the aid is distributed to various representatives of Gaza’s civilian population, including the heads of powerful clans whose own armed members can prevent a much-weakened Hamas from seizing that food aid for itself, as it has been doing. But that pier will not be completed for several months.

Another possibility is for armed UN peacekeepers to be sent to Gaza to accompany the aid trucks all the way deep into Gaza, from Rafah in the south to Gaza City in the north, to ensure the orderly distribution of that aid when the trucks spread throughout the Strip to the points where the food aid is to be offloaded and delivered in orderly fashion, to civilians. These armed peacekeepers should be able to prevent Hamas’ food thievery, and also to enforce order among the civilians so that there is no repetition of the stampeding and trampling one another to death, as happened on February 29. Would Hamas dare to fire on these peacekeepers who would fire back? The terror group now has fewer than 15,000 operatives able to fight; that is half its prewar size. It needs to save its strength for confronting the IDF.

If the outside world wants to help the Gazan civilians to receive their fair share of the food aid, instead of scoring points against Israel, it ought to proclaim the following:

First, there is no need for there to be hunger in Gaza, if the stealing of the food aid by Hamas is stopped.

Second, the donors of the aid — chiefly the Western powers — will contribute troops to a UN peacekeeping force that will ensure the orderly and safe distribution of food to Gazan families, making sure that powerful terror groups, like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or nonpolitical criminal gangs, do not seize any of that aid. If necessary, those guarding the food will use live fire to prevent it being taken.

Third, those who try to steal food aid will be arrested by the peacekeepers and held in a Gazan prison, as much for their own safety, as to punish them.

Then the “famine” in Gaza that never needed to be — even now, there is 1.72 pounds of food arriving each day for every inhabitant of Gaza — will end.