Why is Gaza’s starvation will never defeat Hamas

As Israel continues to issue hard denial, the continuous daily number of people in Gaza is either dead or dies from malnutrition indicates that famine in the region takes a deepening process.

In the past two weeks since the first authority of the world for food insecurity Advertise a famine in Gaza City70 people died of hunger, according to local health authorities.

One of them was Ahmed Ali Al -Batniyeji, 17.

In an interview with CBC News shortly before his death, the teenager described the painful details his battle to survive and what appears to be his body is melting and eventually starting to close.

“Every day, I feel pain – and the matter gets worse after today,” said Ahmed Freelance Mohamed El Saify in Gaza City on August 20.

He said: “There is a rash on my body and my feet swelling,” and he pulled his shirt to detect a small frame with prominent bones and a hollow body with hunger.

Large stains of conflicting red leather across Ahmed indicated the weakness of his circulatory system, which was facing difficulty in pumping blood to its limbs.

“My life is hopeless. I have been destroyed,” he said.

A pre -existing case

Before the war, Ahmed was healthy, although digestive disorders made him tolerate gluten and asked him to avoid foods that might damage his digestive system.

In normal circumstances, and even during the first year of the war, he said that his condition is manageable.

But last March, Israel imposed a semi -food and humanitarian supply coming to Gaza. Gluten -free foods on which they relied disappeared from the markets and the specified malnutrition.

“We used to eat chicken, fish, meat, eggs and milk,” he said. “But they (Israel) closed the crossings and cut the chicken. The only food I can eat now is the rice – it’s the only food that works for me.”

Hunger group in

Ahmed spoke to CBC News in a shelter for his temporary family a week after the IPC classification (IPC) She issued her reportWho said nearly 210,000 people – most of them in Gaza City and around him – are currently at the worst stage of starvation.

He referred to nearly one in four conquests, or 500,000 people, carrying the harshest category of hunger, and he had almost nothing, with another million people what IPC calls the “emergency” stage.

Over the course of August, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that 185 people, including 12 children, had passed away due to hunger. On Wednesday, she said that there are six additional deaths during the past 24 hours.

For its part, Israel denied the existence of starvation and The food blockade in Gaza said It was necessary to pressure Hamas – to liberate the remaining Israeli hostages and cut the armed group’s access to food, assistance and other supplies coming to the region.

Western aid agencies said Israel Exaggerated for the amount of aid Hamas was stolen or managed to convert it.

In late May, the Israeli government has partnered with the Gaza Humanitarian Corporation (GHF), an American non -profit group that uses US private security and logistics companies to obtain supplies in the region, bypassing the traditional aid distribution system headed by United Nations agencies.

Rights groups say the GHF model – which uses aid “centers” in areas where the Israeli Defense Forces operate (IDF) – at a horrific cost of Palestinian life.

Doctors San Frontières (MSF) GHF distribution system is called “The trap of death” and “slaughtered, denies as humanitarian aid” after more than 1,400 people were killed while trying to get food in the first few weeks of its operations.

People are still risking their lives to get food on GHF sites, where 12 were killed in the last day, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

It is not always clear to shoot, but many Palestinians blame GHF security guards or the accompanying Israeli army soldiers, while Israel accuses Hamas of shooting.

GHF also denies the accusations whose practices contributed to hunger in Gaza. In a post on social media, NGOs said that their model is “meeting the needs and requests specified for the Palestinian people, and it works”, after it has provided more than 2.4 million food boxes.

Israel launched its attack on Gaza in October 2023, after he attacked Hamas fighters in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Since then, the campaign, which followed more than 63,000 people, has been killed in the region and injured another 160,000 people, according to local health officials.

“It cannot target hunger”

According to one of the most prominent world experts in hunger and starvation, the idea that Hamas will weaken in one way or another by reducing the delivery of food in Gaza was illogical from the beginning.

“You cannot target hunger,” said Alex de Wal.

“The armed men will be the last to be amazed. You actually know that targeting your hunger will reach the poorest and more vulnerable first.”

Amid the declaration of IPC and anger at all over the world, Israel allowed more aid trucks to enter the pocket. Compulsion The official Israeli agency says 320 trucks for humanitarian aid entered September 1-but this is still much less than 600 a day that was crossing during the short-term ceasefire last spring.

Since the Palestinians continue to risk their lives to get supplies from GHF sites, it is clear that more food is needed – because there are no other alternatives often.

“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is like nutrition in the zoo,” he said. “He is great and strong that he gets.”

In response to a question about the ongoing accusations of famine in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Army said in a statement to CBC News last week that Cogat is making “major efforts” to stabilize the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

She said: “The Chief of the General Staff affirmed the commitment of the Israeli Defense Army to prevent famine and do everything in his power to continue enabling humanitarian aid to reach the civilian population directly, instead of Hamas.”

Kojat issued another statement on Wednesday, saying this before The expected Israeli Defense Army military attack In Gaza City, it increases its humanitarian response in southern Gaza, so that it can “get the population”, if people flee.

“Food, medical equipment and shelter supplies have been increased,” she said.

Tragic

About a week after our interview with Ahmed, his mother told CBC News that she woke up and found him barely responding.

“His face and hands were like ice.”

She and her husband put their son on a vehicle and hurried him to the Shiva Hospital in Gaza City, where the doctors said that they could not have done little.

“If there is no food, there is no immune system.”

The bear said that while it could provide nutritional supplements for patients with malnutrition, it is only a temporary solution. “If it is absent from the only food he can eat … he will die.”

Even as the additional aid trucks entering Gaza are now entering, Al -Debs said that the number of malnutrition cases he sees is still increasing, “day after day, when the immune system is completely destroyed.”

After visiting Ahmed’s Maggdia Hospital, his mother said that she returned the teenager to the family’s shelter, where he died later on the same day.

“Last week, there was nothing that he could put in his mouth-he was eating like a bird.”

“There was no gluten -free food available; vegetables were cut,” she said. “May God have mercy on his soul. He is a martyr of hunger, the martyr of the siege.”

Denial of famine and misleading demands

Some of the country’s leading politicians hinted that hunger can be justified in a war of nearly two years, even when the Israeli government denies a famine in Gaza strongly.

The Israeli right -wing Israeli finance minister, Bizalil Soutrich It was widely convicted In early August after saying, “No one will allow us to rent two million civilians who die from hunger, although he may have justification and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

and In a radio interviewAnother minister, Amichay Eliyahu, said, “There is no nation that nourishes its enemies,” and the government of Israel “accelerating Gaza.”

At the same time, Israel’s efforts to encourage famine accusations It included staining those who died by proposing basic health problems were more relevant than the lack of food.

The government also published videos of people in Gaza who eat pizza and shopping in fully shelves. “This is not what a place looks with the expected starvation,” a comment is read under a video published by Cogat.

Either way, Israeli allegations are very misleading, said Francesco Kockechi, the epidemic scientist at the London College of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“It is not the case that people die from their pre -existing circumstances,” he said. “There is a full group of individuals in society who have pre -existing conditions, and who will be the first to feel the effects of starvation and die for it.”

He said that the width of stores containing food on the shelves does not explain the differences in the distribution of food.

“I think there is a continuous famine in Gaza, in pockets of the tape, especially in Gaza City, the situation is much worse than anywhere else.”

“There are inequality in the entire population. There are people who still have a little money, who still have some things for sale – and they will be able to eat while others will be in a completely terrible strait.”

Israel has not yet responded to an acceptable proposal from Hamas, who is seeking to stop the war and release at least some of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza, and it is believed that 20 of them are still alive.

Instead, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicates its next steps is more war and fighting – with a warning in the IDF in Gaza City with a million residents to leave before the next attack.

Alex De Wal, a food security expert, says that such an invasion will definitely play most of these to the worst famine.

He said, bearing in mind that the driver of distress and deaths in this situation is not only the lack of food, but rather those unbearable living conditions, “he said. “It will be a disaster.”