By Arwa Damon
EARLIER this week, Israel announced plans to intensify its war on the Gaza Strip, including indefinitely seizing control of large parts of the territory and, once again, forcibly displacing the population – potentially permanently. Alongside this escalation, Israeli officials have privately put forward a plan to take over aid distribution in Gaza, shutting down the existing UN-led system and replacing it with one that UN officials say deliberately weaponises aid as part of a military strategy of control.
For the people of Gaza, the objective is clear: to permanently corral them into an even smaller pen of misery where they have to beg their occupiers for a loaf of bread. Many I have spoken to say the idea of being permanently stuck in what is already a hellscape is beyond terrifying.
The plan to take over aid distribution was first floated at the end of last year. The humanitarian community stood firmly against it then and now. But Israel is lobbying some organisations to bring them on board, which is just adding to the murkiness. No one has real clarity on how, practically speaking, this is going to play out.
The plan outlined by Israel involves forcing Gaza’s population into areas “clean of Hamas” and establishing so-called hubs where aid would be distributed from. These hubs would be guarded by the Israeli military and located in central and southern Gaza, and they may potentially be staffed with armed security contractors.
Recipients of aid would be screened for intelligence purposes, and only one member of each family would be allowed to approach the hubs to collect assistance, after being ordered to do so by text message, once or twice a month. How? There is no transport in Gaza. A food parcel for two weeks can weigh up to 50 kilos, so having someone pick it up is hardly straightforward when you have to walk for hours through a war zone to get to and from a hub.
The maximum number of aid trucks allowed to enter per day would be 60, according to information making the rounds in humanitarian circles. Gaza needs at least 500. Food is also just one portion of what aid organisations are doing – and of what people need.
“The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”
No one has any clue how fuel would be distributed, how clean water would reach the population, how hospitals and clinics would be restocked, or how malnutrition would be addressed. There is similarly no clarity about how education would be provided, who would provide protection services and mental healthcare, or who would maintain sewage systems and the pumps that run them, and so on.
“The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies,” reads a statement from the UN’s emergency aid coordinating body, OCHA, categorically denouncing the plan. “It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy.”
All of this comes as Israel has refused to allow any aid into Gaza for over two months now, openly declaring its intent to starve the 2.1 million inhabitants of the Strip, ostensibly to pressure Hamas. But for the population of Gaza, nothing Israel does – none of the pain and suffering being inflicted upon them – has anything to do with Hamas, and everything to do with ensuring Gaza is uninhabitable and that they are all exterminated.
Hunger is everywhere
It is not just that Israel is not letting any aid in. It is also not allowing the UN to pick up millions of litres of fuel that are already in Rafah. One organisation has been attempting for weeks to reach 500 pallets of food in Rafah, also with no luck, because Israel will not give them the approval needed to do so.
On 25 April, the World Food Programme announced it had depleted its stocks. World Central Kitchen announced on 7 May that it had also run out of supplies to cook meals and bake bread. Oxfam’s Ghada al-Haddad recently stated in a press briefing that at least 60,000 of Gaza’s children are malnourished. UNICEF says more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.
“I stopped by a shelter with people with special needs. They were distributing pasta with sauce. But each portion was like barely enough for one person, never mind a family; you’d eat and be hungry again in an hour.”
My charity, INARA, had to stop our hot meal distributions a few days ago. Before that, we were really only able to serve people rice. The team has been scouring Gaza looking for items to distribute – anything that can be cooked – but just about everyone is out. Prices in the markets are insane. A 25-kilo bag of flour, for example, if you can get your hands on it, costs upwards of $350. Sometimes it is as high as $700 – again, if it can even be found.
Colleagues at INARA tell me that hunger twists at people’s intestines and makes children cry out while parents crumble under the pain they see in their little ones.
“The hunger is everywhere, and it’s real. It’s everywhere,” one of my INARA staff members messaged. “I stopped by a shelter with people with special needs. They were distributing pasta with sauce. But each portion was like barely enough for one person, never mind a family; you’d eat and be hungry again in an hour.”
She sends me videos, and I stare at the faces and the desperation etched across them.
“At the end, there was a girl, there wasn’t any left for her,” she says. “I went back to the distribution tent, and I began scraping the bottom of the pot for her. I was able to get two spoonfuls. This is how bad the catastrophe is.”
A psychological war
In one of the videos I’m sent, there’s a woman baking bread in a makeshift clay oven in a camp. For a minute, I’m confused. But then the explanation comes. She’s not cooking bread with flour. People are grinding up pasta or boiling it to soften and then smashing it into a dough.
“Starving has become a collective activity,” one of my nearest and dearest friends in Gaza, with a dark sense of humour, explains, her voice dripping with sarcasm and laced with bitter acceptance. “Our conversations are all really surrounding food. How much we have in stock, how to ration, what we would rather be eating.”
She mulls over how they did not know what starvation was really like until now – even after over a year and a half when Gaza has been on the brink of famine multiple times – and how everyone is so obsessed with food that no one even talks about a ceasefire anymore.
“I didn’t know how much food controls your being, your temperament, your views on the world, and yourself,” my friend says. “There is something truly shattering about losing agency over what your next meal is or when.”
Starvation. The current bombing and killing. The approval of an expansion of the campaign. The promise to seize and hold onto territory. The vow by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move the population. “All the news just makes your skin crawl,” another INARA colleague based in Gaza City messaged. “Everyone is terrified of another displacement. It’s such a psychological war, it’s a war on our psyche, what’s left of it. It’s like they see that we are barely holding it together and they want to deliver this death blow.”
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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
