By Nauman Amin
This article examines the systematic starvation inflicted upon Gaza’s population following the events of October 2023. Beyond indiscriminate bombings and infrastructural devastation, Israel’s imposition of a “complete siege” amounts to a calculated policy of deprivation—weaponizing hunger, water, fuel, and medical supplies to collectively punish over two million people. The article situates this within the broader frameworks of apartheid, settler colonialism, and global imperial complicity, and argues that this is not a collateral consequence of war, but an intentional act of genocidal violence. Drawing from legal frameworks, global solidarity movements, and historical analogies, the piece contends that academic neutrality in such a context is a moral failure. The call is for engaged, intersectional resistance that challenges both the local manifestations and global enablers of such violence.
Since October 7, 2023, Gaza has endured more than shelling and urban devastation. It has been subjected to a meticulously engineered famine—a cessation of food, medicine, fuel, and water so absolute that it amounts to a weaponized starvation. “They are starving us as a method of warfare,” warned Human Rights Watch, documenting how entire neighborhoods were cut off from all supplies. This is neither collateral damage nor an unintended consequence; it is a deliberate strategy of collective punishment and genocide, rooted in an apartheid logic that has held Gaza under siege for two decades. Any neutral posture in the face of such atrocity is a moral failure. Israel’s blockade of Gaza is an atrocity, and opposing it must be the clarion call of every conscience committed to justice, liberation, and human dignity.
For twenty years, Gaza’s borders have been sealed, its skies surveilled, its economy strangled. Yet the post–October 2023 siege represents an escalation of historic proportions. Within hours of the October 7 attacks, Israel declared a “complete siege”: no imports, no exports, no electricity, no fuel. Power plants were starved of diesel; bakeries and flour mills—Gaza’s last sources of local grain—were bombed into ruin. “Not a switch will be flicked on,” vowed Energy Minister Katz, even as clean water ran out. Water treatment facilities collapsed for lack of pumps. Hospitals, already operating at the brink, became morgues of the malnourished, treating dehydration and starvation rather than wounds.
These measures were not the product of battlefield exigencies but of explicit policy. When Israeli Minister Ben Gavir proclaimed that “all humanitarian aid must stop,” they revealed an intent to weaponize deprivation. They signaled that Gaza’s civilian population would be held hostage—prisoners of hunger—until they submitted or perished. This is the logic of settler colonialism: control territory by any means necessary, displace or extinguish the indigenous, and render any form of viable life impossible.
Under international law, the deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime and, when directed at a protected group, meets the threshold of genocide. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits “collective penalties” and the Rome Statute criminalizes the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Yet Gaza’s siege is textbook collective punishment: entire neighborhoods deprived of food, over two million people barred from sustenance, entire generations at risk of stunted growth or death. By spring 2025, at least 57 Palestinians—mostly children and the elderly—had already starved to death, succumbing to a protracted death by inches as their blood sugar plummeted and their organs failed. 90% of families in the north had spent at least over 24 hours without a single meal.
Even international aid officials have been unequivocal: former UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned recently that “what is going on in Gaza is weaponization of aid to create starvation and children are dying because of it”. There is no way to look at the aid blockade in any other way, Griffiths stressed, noting that even the small amount of aid being allowed in is designed to draw Gazans out of their homes on a one-way trip. This explicit denunciation by a veteran UN relief official underscores that starving Gaza’s population is a deliberate strategy, not a tragic accident.
This is not an unfortunate by-product of combat; it is a central component of Israel’s military doctrine toward Gaza. Airports and seaports remain closed; the Rafah crossing—the only potential lifeline—has been sealed or restricted at will. Aid convoys, when permitted, are delayed for days at checkpoints, their contents spoiled by heat or theft, then subjected to arbitrary “security inspections” that further erode their efficacy. Over 3,000 aid trucks now sit stranded on the border, with most basic supplies rotting in the sun. Even now, only about 100 aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza – a fraction of daily needs and “a drop in the ocean” compared to pre-war levels. Prime Minister Netanyahu even announced that displaced Gazans would receive aid “and then… they don’t necessarily go back” to their homes, explicitly tying life-saving food to forced displacement. Warehouse facilities have been struck, “accidentally,” creating a chilling deterrent against any remaining logistical cooperation.
The human suffering defies comprehension. Within weeks of the siege’s inception, the United Nations World Food Programme warned that nearly half of Gaza’s households faced “severe” hunger levels; by late 2024, food prices had spiked manyfold, and entire families scavenged for scraps. Hospitals have run out of pediatric nutritional supplements, and clinics have become triage centers for dehydration rather than trauma. Clean water, once a basic right, is now a luxury, with infectious diseases surging as Palestinians drink brackish, untreated runoff.
To understand Gaza’s engineered starvation, one must situate it within the broader architecture of Israeli apartheid and global imperialism. Gaza is a laboratory of enforced statelessness: no freedom of movement, no sovereignty, no access to basic resources. It relies on international aid—and yet that aid is strangled at the border, manipulated by political calculations in Tel Aviv and Washington. This current starvation policy can be traced back to January 2024, when Israel and the United States spearheaded the withdrawal of funding from UNRWA, cutting off critical food and schooling support for Gaza’s refugee population. U.S. military financing underwrites Israel’s blockade; European banks fund settlement infrastructure in the West Bank; arms manufacturers profit from perpetual conflict. Local acts of resistance—fishing boats shot at for venturing beyond limits, citrus groves bulldozed to expand buffer zones—are all tethered to the same imperial logic that deems Palestinians disposable.
Gaza’s starvation is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of interlocking systems of oppression: settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism. The dispossession of Palestinian land parallels the expropriation of Indigenous territories in the Americas, the subjugation of African nations under colonial rule, and the exploitation of resources in the Global South. Solidarity with Gaza is thus inseparable from anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and ecological struggles worldwide.
Academic neutrality is untenable when genocide is underway. Scholarship divorced from activism sanitizes atrocity and shames its victims. An engaged, radical critique compels us to move from witness to resistance. This entails: immediate lifting of the siege, targeted sanctions & divestment, and intersectional solidarity.
Gaza’s manufactured starvation is a conscious act of war—a genocidal strategy cloaked in administrative decrees and “security” rhetoric. This is not a distant tragedy but a present atrocity, unfolding in real time. Neutral observers risk becoming complicit in genocide through silence and inaction. For scholars, activists, and citizens of conscience, there is no permissible neutrality: our research, teaching, writing, and protesting must cohere around a single moral imperative—dismantle the siege and restore Gaza’s right to life, dignity, and freedom.
When children die for lack of bread, when families bury their young in mass graves, when the international community pleads for “humanitarian corridors” that never materialize, history will judge us not by our objectivity but by our courage to confront injustice. Let us choose solidarity over silence and humanity over genocide. Any other stance is not merely inadequate—it is a betrayal of our common humanity.
Nauman Amin (numan.amin24@gmail.com) is a development practitioner working at the intersection of climate and livelihoods.
1 Jun 2025
Source: countercurrents.org
