War Will Continue

As famine takes over in Gaza, the Israeli military is purposefully targeting humanitarian aid operations to ensure that its genocidal plan can continue.

On April 1, Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed a World Central Kitchen aid convoy as they drove away from distributing food in central Gaza, killing seven aid workers. Citizens from Australia, the UK and Poland were among seven people killed in an Israeli air attack.

It has become increasingly clear that anyone attempting to prevent people in Gaza from starving to death is interfering with the Israeli government’s war aims–the genocide of Palestinians. They then become a target in their own right.

Aid agencies are getting the message. World Central Kitchen suspended its operations after the strike, and ANERA, another major aid agency, announced in the aftermath of the killings that it too is suspending its operations in Gaza “after six months of constant bombing and flagrant violations of international law”, UNRWA, meanwhile, has already been banned by the Israeli government from entering northern Gaza and defunded by the US through 2025 following unsubstantiated allegations against a miniscule portion of its staff, supporting Hamas.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is beyond dire. And as Israel forces aid organizations to withdraw, the few lifelines that exist are being cut.

Even if Israel’s bombs stopped tomorrow, this genocide would continue through starvation and disease alone.

The Israeli government’s determination to deepen the crisis in Gaza means that the world may be looking at even more cataclysmic levels of death and hunger in months to come.

Since October, when Israeli politicians jumped at the chance to cut food, medicine, power, and fuel from Gaza, the Israeli government has taken a two-pronged strategy: the total military decimation of Gaza, hand-in-hand with the deliberate creation of unliveable long-term conditions. Both have been carried out to kill as many Palestinians as possible. Even if the bombing ceases, the crisis conditions will remain just as deadly.

Six months later, the facts on the ground in Gaza paint a devastating picture of the crisis that the Israeli government has orchestrated.

•     More than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have already been killed.
•     At least 6,500 more “excess deaths” can be expected, even if there was a ceasefire tomorrow–the result of injuries, hunger, and disease. 5,000 others are “missing”, likely buried under the rubble.
•     This means the total number of people killed in this genocide is closer to 44,000.
•      74,000 people are currently wounded in Gaza, and receiving very partial medical care: During the genocide, the Israeli military has damaged all 36 hospitals in Gaza and 100 clinics and health institutions.
•     In Gaza, children suffer from infectious diseases at a rate 23 times higher than normal.
•     90% of children under the age of five in Gaza suffer from one or more infectious diseases.
•     1.1 million People in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity.
•     One-third of children under two are acutely malnourished in the north of Gaza.

The levels of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza are “unprecedented in modern history”.

The Palestinian national economy has been shattered beyond recognition. The old arrangement that allows Palestinians to seek jobs in Israel and occupied territories, in sectors that lack sufficient Jewish labour, such as construction, agriculture and service industry, is gone and it is unlikely to get revived unless there is a permanent ceasefire the possibility of which seems remote at the moment. It means labourers who had some kind of social and economic security before the war started, are also starving.

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Frontier
Vol 56, No. 43, Apr 21 - 27, 2024