The severe hunger crisis in the Gaza Strip has blackened Israel’s reputation, left Israeli hostages in the lurch, and diverted attention away from the war Israel has been assiduously waging against Hamas for almost the past two years.
In a bid to improve its battered image, which ties into false assertions that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the Israeli government on July 27 announced that its military forces would pause operations daily in three parts of Gaza from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. to allow humanitarian assistance to flow in.
Prior to this announcement, the Israeli army let it be known that it would simplify the process of allowing aid convoys to move through Gaza along designated routes and revive the practice of dropping supplies from aircraft.
The practice was cancelled last year after some airdrops injured Gazans clamoring for food and water, damaged property, or landed in the Mediterranean Sea or inside Israel.
The Israeli Air Force dropped the first airborne packages over northern Gaza on July 26, after which Jordan and the United Arab Emirates took over.
It is unclear whether this mode of delivering basic supplies will suffice. Aid organizations have been critical of it, but it seems like an improvement over the previous method.
This past May, Israel and the United States created the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to replace the United Nations aid system, but it appears to be an abject failure. Since then, 1,100 Palestinians have been killed lining up for GHF food packages. Some were fatally shot by Israeli soldiers as crowds converged on them. Still others seem to have been killed by local criminal gangs and Hamas provocateurs.
The upshot of it all is that Israel is being blamed for the breakdown of the food/medical delivery system, which has led to widespread hunger and even starvation. According to Gaza’s health ministry, which is administered by Hamas, more than 50 Palestinians have died of starvation this month.
Amichay Eliyahu, an Israeli cabinet minister, poured oil on the fire when he said that Israel was under no obligation to avert hunger and acknowledged that the Israeli government seeks the expulsion of Gazans.
The global perception that Israel is mainly responsible for the current situation rests, in part, on Israeli policy.
From March until May, Israel blocked nearly all aid bound for Gaza in an effort to wring concessions from Hamas. The tactic backfired. Hamas, though seriously degraded militarily, refuses to disarm or relinquish power. Hamas, too, continues to insist on a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent end to the protracted war.
These are demands that Israel rejects out of hand.
Due to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel has come under international pressure to improve the humanitarian delivery system.
Last week, 100 aid agencies and civil rights groups warned of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions, while 28 Western countries issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip feeding of aid” to Gaza 2.2 million inhabitants.
Several days ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese intervened in a sharp critique of Israel. Carney condemned Israel’s failure “to prevent the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian disaster in Gaza.” Albanese said that Gaza is in “the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe” and urged Israel to immediately permit the United Nations and other aid organizations to step in.
U.S. President Donald Trump has not publicly criticized Israel, but he has accused Hamas of systemically stealing food. This accusation has yet to be supported by hard evidence, according to a New York Times report citing Israeli army sources.
Despite this claim, Israeli spokesman David Mencer maintains that the food shortage was caused by Hamas and poor United Nations coordination.
David Satterfield, the U.S. humanitarian official during the early phase of the war, refuted this claim. “It is disingenuous — knowingly false — for any party to assert that it is failure, lack of courage, or deliberate conspiratorial withholding of aid by the UN or international organizations that is responsible for the humanitarian suffering in Gaza,” he said.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed claims that Israel is starving civilians in Gaza. “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza,” he said, claiming that Israel has facilitated the delivery of 1.9 million tons of aid since the start of the Israel-Hamas war” in October 2023.
The uproar over starvation in Gaza has drawn attention away from Israel’s current offensive there, which is taking a toll. Nearly 60,000 Palestinians have been killed. On July 26, two Israeli troops were killed in Khan Younis, bringing to 459 the number of soldiers killed since Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the events of October 7.
Efforts to hammer out a ceasefire have failed miserably. Last week, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said that Hamas has exhibited “a lack of desire” to achieve a truce.
What this means is that no one should realistically expect the return of the remaining Israeli hostages in the near future. This tragedy proves that Israeli military operations have not succeeded in gaining their release from Hamas’ captivity.