Introduction
In this report, I examine Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, as well as the mechanisms behind its denial. The report demonstrates that the starvation in Gaza was rooted not in error, but in deliberate planning, calculated experimentation, and systematic maneuvering around humanitarian “red lines” and varying degrees of international pressure. Furthermore, I analyze how the Israeli discourse surrounding this starvation has served to obscure these deliberate policy choices.
Throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, the existence of a severe humanitarian crisis and widespread hunger in the Strip has been undeniable. The crisis stemmed not only from the war itself, but from the systematic restrictions imposed on the entry of food, medical supplies, fuel, gas, and other essential goods. It has been further exacerbated by repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, food sources and aid workers, alongside a persistent refusal to cooperate with the UN and its partner organizations in establishing safe passage routes, humanitarian zones, and deconfliction mechanisms.
This reality has been repeatedly attested to by UN agencies, international aid and human rights organizations, independent experts, the relevant agencies within the Biden administration, and other allied governments.
By contrast, the official Israeli narrative – widely accepted and echoed by Israeli journalists and researchers – asserts that Israel never pursued a policy of starvation in Gaza, and that severe hunger was confined to the mid-2025 crisis. According to this narrative, food supplies were sufficient throughout the war, with restrictions on aid driven solely by security imperatives.
This narrative gap is remarkable, given that Israel’s weaponization of aid was not only explicitly signaled by key decision-makers, but also openly discussed in its mainstream media.
the mid-2025 crisis cannot be understood as an isolated aberration: it was the culmination of a continuous process initiated at the outbreak of the war in October 2023
States and societies are often prone to denying their involvement in atrocities, whether as direct perpetrators or as complicit actors. Nevertheless, it remains critical to analyze the specific arguments and mechanisms that facilitate and sustain this denial in this case. The primary mechanism involves systematically dismissing empirical evidence and testimonies – from both Palestinians and international aid and medical workers – as fundamentally unreliable.
While isolated data or specific testimonies may occasionally be erroneous in any conflict, the cumulative evidence emerging from Gaza is painfully clear. Ignoring or dismissing it as unreliable has therefore been part and parcel of atrocity denial in this case.
The second mechanism is overlooking a core insight in the study of mass starvation: that the fundamental challenge lies not in the mere availability of food and aid, but in their accessibility to the population, particularly its most vulnerable groups. Aid and food supply thresholds that might suffice under normal conditions become utterly inadequate under the constraints of intensive warfare, widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the systematic disruption of aid efforts.
Finally, those who deny Israel’s starvation policy are nevertheless forced to acknowledge the acute hunger crisis that gripped Gaza in mid-2025. Because this particular peak is impossible to deny, it is framed as an isolated episode resulting from Israeli miscalculations and the alleged widespread looting of aid by Hamas during the early 2025 ceasefire. However, as shown below, the mid-2025 crisis cannot be understood as an isolated aberration: it was the culmination of a continuous process initiated at the outbreak of the war in October 2023.
Ultimately, responsibility rests not only with the Israeli government and military, but with the broader Israeli political community, given the extensive public legitimacy accorded to the state’s actions in Gaza
This process reduced much of Gaza’s population to a state of chronic hunger and extreme precarity, which, compounded by the destruction of hospitals and clinics, claimed many lives already during the Biden administration. Following the presidential transition in early 2025, the minimal constraints imposed by the United States were removed, allowing the Israeli government to pursue its policy to its absolute extreme, culminating in an unprecedented, yet predictable, humanitarian catastrophe.
The full extent of the harm inflicted on the civilian population in Gaza as a result of Israel’s weaponization of aid remains unknown. Yet it can be stated with confidence that most of it was preventable.
Throughout the war, the UN, alongside various aid and human rights organizations, has frequently emphasized that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza was man-made. Yet such statements are somewhat misleading: as scholars repeatedly stress, mass starvation – especially in the modern era – is rarely a product of an absolute food shortage. Rather, it stems from the disruption of a population’s access to food due to political decisions.
In this sense, nearly all modern starvation crises are “man-made,” as witnessed in recent decades in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen. What makes the starvation of Gaza unique, however, is the degree of control Israel exercises over the entry of goods into the Strip, and hence its degree of culpability.
While Hamas bears heavy responsibility for the humanitarian disaster that has unfolded in Gaza since October 7, 2023, the use of starvation as a weapon of war was a deliberate policy choice by Israel. Ultimately, responsibility rests not only with the Israeli government and military, but with the broader Israeli political community, given the extensive public legitimacy accorded to the state’s actions in Gaza.
