Oxfam: Starvation in Gaza ‘deliberate, engineered’

Palestinians in Gaza are starving as a result of a “deliberate, entirely engineered” policy being implemented by Israel, Oxfam said today.

Commenting on the recent Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report on Gaza warning that a risk of famine is “increasingly likely” if intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persist or worsen, Oxfam’s Food Security and Livelihoods Coordinator, Mahmoud Alsaqqa said: “Gaza’s starvation is not incidental – it is deliberate, entirely engineered – and has now created the largest population facing starvation anywhere in the world – a preventable famine unfolding in real time. It is unconscionable and is being allowed to happen.”

“For over two months, Israel has enforced a total siege, blocking food, water, medicine and aid, while thousands of trucks filled with life-saving supplies ready for swift distribution, are waiting at the border, metres away, blocked from entering.”

He added that families are “wasting away from hunger”, while children are “malnourished” and “too weak to cry” as entire communities are surviving “without food or clean water”. Oxfam’s field teams reported that in one displacement camp, only five of 500 families had any flour left to make bread.

The rights group slammed Israel’s plan “to militarise the delivery of humanitarian aid”, describing it as “an egregious violation of international humanitarian law – threatens to push this already catastrophic crisis into full collapse. Turning aid into a tool of control endangers civilians, erodes the neutrality of humanitarian work, and risks unleashing even greater chaos and suffering across Gaza.”

It called on the international community to take action to put in place a permanent ceasefire and allow the “unimpeded” entry of humanitarian aid, warning that “silence in the face of this manmade starvation is complicity.”