{"id":313006,"date":"2026-02-09T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313006"},"modified":"2026-02-07T11:18:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T11:18:34","slug":"starvation-by-design-how-israel-turned-food-into-a-weapon-of-genocide-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/02\/starvation-by-design-how-israel-turned-food-into-a-weapon-of-genocide-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Starvation by Design: How Israel Turned Food into a Weapon of Genocide in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A malnourished Palestinian child is examined at al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 30 Jun 2025
[Eyad Baba\/AFP]<\/p><\/div>\n

Analysis: From destroying calories to \u2018re-engineering\u2019 society, data and experts reveal how the hunger in Gaza was not a byproduct of aggression, but a calculated strategy that reached its deadliest peak in 2025.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

5 Feb 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0In the first three months of Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza in 2023, only four deaths were officially attributed to starvation by health officials in Gaza. By 2024, that number rose to 49.\u00a0 But it was in 2025 \u2013 the year the siege reached its suffocating zenith \u2013 that the death toll exploded, reaching 422 deaths in a single year.<\/p>\n

This represents a staggering 760 percent increase in starvation deaths in just 12 months.<\/p>\n

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri told<\/a> Al Jazeera in August 2025 that the global standard for famine analysis, known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), tends to be \u201cconservative\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality on the ground was unequivocal. We raised the alarm when we started seeing the first children dying,\u201d Fakhri explained, noting that the crisis met the strict technical criteria for famine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Health Ministry in Gaza gave the breakdown of the victims: 40.63 percent were elderly (over 60), and 34.74 percent were children. In 2025 alone, cases among children under five spiked from 2,754 in January to 14,383 in August.<\/p>\n

Legal experts said that what occurred in Gaza wasn\u2019t just \u201cfood insecurity\u201d; it met the strict technical criteria for famine, a designation often delayed by political bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the human rights community, we don\u2019t wait as long \u2026 we don\u2019t have to focus on measuring pain, suffering, and death,\u201d Fakhri explained. \u201cWe raised the alarm when we started seeing the first children dying \u2026 because when a parent is holding their child in their arms, and that child is wasting away, that means an entire community is under attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Interactive_Gaza_food_IPC_report_May13_2025<\/p>\n

Anatomy of a strategy<\/h2>\n

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and other parts of the occupied Palestinian territory have accused consecutive Israeli governments of a decades-old policy to use food and aid as a weapon of war.<\/p>\n

Suleiman Basharat, a Palestinian commentator and researcher on Israeli affairs, traces this strategy to the blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel in 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was based on the idea of starvation and narrowing daily life,\u201d Basharat noted. This doctrine was infamously summarised in 2006 by Dov Weisglass<\/a>, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, who said the goal was \u201cto put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger\u201d, adding that the war marked a shift from \u201cmanagement\u201d to \u201celimination\u201d.<\/p>\n

Senior Israeli ministers made their intentions clear at the very start of the genocidal war on Gaza. Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had declared a complete siege against \u201chuman animals<\/a>\u201c.\u00a0 His remarks were quickly reinforced by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who argued that blocking aid to Gaza was \u201cjustified and moral<\/a>\u201c, even if it meant starving millions.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s moves to ramp up this policy were thorough. Before the war on Gaza began in 2023, the United Nations said 500 trucks carrying aid and food were needed to keep the people in Gaza sustained.<\/p>\n

But during the war, an average of 19 trucks a day were allowed in the Strip \u2013 a 96 percent reduction \u2013 which some Israeli media have referred to as the \u201ccalorie collapse\u201d.<\/p>\n