Starvation crisis deepens amid calls for ceasefire & unhindered aid access

Gaza, an enclave often referred to as Israel's open-air prison, for almost two years has been witness to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis-thousands of Gazans have been displaced and today they live in the streets or makeshift tents even as destroyed infrastructure has made access to water and power difficult. But the most pernicious aspect of the Gaza horror has been the lack of food for the unfortunate inhabitants, with scores of Palestinians, especially children, dying daily of hunger and malnutrition and the UN's Palestinian refugee agency (UN-RWA) noting that one in five children in Gaza City was malnourished in an environment akin to a famine.

More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned last week that "mass starvation" was spreading, the situation being so dire that even journalists reporting from the ground are struggling to stay alive! According to the World Food Programme, 90,000 women and children are in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition, while one in three people are going without food for days.

Little wonder that there has been a worldwide condemnation of the Israeli endeavour to starve an entire population into submission. So far, the far-right Benjamin Netanyahu-led regime in Tel Aviv has been impervious to the chorus of condemnation, but now it has been forced to acknowledge the realities of the dire situation in the Strip and announce a "tactical pause" to the fighting.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it would pause the assault in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Mawasi, three areas with large populations, so as to "increase the scale of humanitarian aid" entering the Gaza Strip. This would be the first of a series of steps giving the aid agencies other land routes to tackle the deepening hunger crisis.

A positive outcome has been that Jordanian and Emirati airplanes have been able to immediately air-drop food into Gaza, but this is merely a drop in the ocean, considering the requirements of the over two million dwellers if they are to be pulled away from the brink of starvation. It may be noted that, before the conflict, around 3,000 aid and commercial trucks would enter Gaza every week; now, with this lifeline cut off, and food availability being reduced to a trickle, extreme hunger and malnourishment have taken root in Gaza.

Almost all aid agencies are unanimous in their belief that, given the insecurity prevailing in the Strip, with aid-seekers being killed while standing in line, a mere pause in the fighting will not be sufficient to rescue the Gaza residents. A few truckloads or airdrops of food is not enough rather than a tactical pause the need of the hour is a genuine humanitarian response, which entails the imposition of a permanent ceasefire, a complete lifting of the siege, and continuous large-scale flow of aid into the strip.