Almost a third of Gaza’s population are not eating for days at a time, according to the World Food Programme [Getty]
Medics, humanitarian workers and journalists in Gaza are increasingly at risk of starving to death as food supplies run out amid Israel’s blockade.
Twenty-one months into the siege, the workers most critical to providing humanitarian support are now beginning to fall victim themselves to what the UN and rights groups say is a deliberate starvation strategy carried out by the Israeli military.
“We’ve lost the ability to feel our own bodies. The muscles in our legs are giving out,” said Bahaa al-Khatib, an employee for the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based in Gaza City.
“Most of the time we sleep during the day to escape the hunger,” he told The New Arab.
From the outset of the war, Israeli authorities have imposed a siege on Gaza, preventing the entry of food, medical supplies and fuel and pushing the territory of 2.2 million people towards famine.
Recent analysis by a UN-backed food security monitor predicted that 1.5 million people – around two-thirds of the pre-war population – are at risk of acute malnutrition or starvation.
The World Food Programme now says that almost a third of the population is not eating for days at a time. Tens of thousands of women and children are now in urgent need of treatment.
UNRWA says it has enough food stockpiled in Egypt to keep Gaza fed for more than three months, but Israeli authorities refuse to allow supplies to enter.
The number of people dying of malnutrition is now accelerating at its quickest pace since the start of the war.
Thirty-three people have reportedly starved to death since Saturday, taking the total number of people to have died of hunger since October 2023 to 101.
Eighty of those killed were children, the Gaza health ministry said.
‘Desperate messages’
“Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties,” UNRWA said on Tuesday.
The UN agency is now receiving “desperate messages of starvation” from its staff. The malnutrition suffered by essential workers is pushing what remains of Gaza’s humanitarian system towards complete collapse.
“We’re very worried about not just their state of mind but also physically because they themselves who are supposed to caretakers they need care themselves,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications. Â
“I can no longer work effectively like I used to. I walk long distances to get to work, often having not eaten anything for two days,” Bahaa al-Khatib told The New Arab.
He works in one of the dozens of UNRWA schools now serving as shelters for the displaced and says he can no longer carry out his duties properly.
‘Hunger has affected every part of our lives’
The journalists’ union of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency on Monday warned that reporters in Gaza risk starving to death.
“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us can recall seeing a colleague die of hunger,” AFP’s union wrote in a social media post.
“We refuse to see them die.”
Mohammed Adwan, a journalist and father of three, told The New Arab that he is no longer able to work due to the severity of the hunger.
“My body is exhausted. I constantly feel dizzy and lightheaded. My muscles are weak, and I can’t concentrate,” he said.
He hasn’t been able to find flour to feed his children for three days due to the food shortages and spiralling prices in the markets, where one kilogram now costs more than 200 Israeli shekels (US$60).
“Hunger has affected every part of our lives,” said Yousef Abu Watfa, a Gaza City-based journalist.
“Our mobility has decreased, we constantly feel dizzy, our faces are pale, and we can’t stand for long periods. Sometimes we go two days without eating a single meal,” he told The New Arab.
Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza has been the deadliest conflict for journalists on record.
At least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since 7 October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, with the Gaza health ministry giving a higher toll of 231.
Israeli blockade
Israel has maintained a near constant siege of Gaza since October 2023, only allowing in a small fraction of the food required to feed the population.
The small amounts of food that have been allowed into the strip have since the end of May been distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israel-backed organisation that has seized control of aid distribution from the UN and other relief agencies.
Humanitarian groups have refused to work with the GHF, whose sites have been the scenes of almost daily massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces.
The Israeli military has killed more than 1,000 people trying to receive food and wounded more than six thousand others since the GHF began operating two months ago.
In one of the largest such massacres, Israeli tanks and drones on Sunday gunned down dozens of people near a World Food Programme aid convoy, according to the UN agency.
The UN and humanitarian agencies have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
In November, the International Criminal Court indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians.
Israel has denied restricting the entry of food into Gaza and says the shortages are caused by Hamas stealing aid. It has not provided any evidence of large-scale theft by the Palestinian armed group.
