In its latest report, the United Nations, not Hamas, has issued a tragic warning: without immediate intervention, the entire Gaza Strip risks plunging into an unprecedented food crisis. After the massacre caused by Israeli airstrikes of nearly 60,000 people, people in Palestine are beginning to die of starvation.
Nineteen months since the start of the conflict and with over 70 days of complete interruption of aid deliveries and supplies of basic goods, the population is facing food insecurity conditions that go beyond any acceptable limit.
According to the latest UN data, one in five people in Gaza – approximately 500,000 citizens – is on the brink of famine (meaning they do not receive even one meal a day), and this percentage is set to increase if conditions do not change rapidly.
The prices of essential goods have skyrocketed: a 25 kg sack of wheat flour can cost between $235 and $520, an increase of about 3,000% compared to February.
Sugar, fuel, and other fundamental necessities are now unattainable for many: gasoline costs up to €13 per liter.
Food insecurity is accompanied by an increase in mortality and malnutrition, with community kitchens recording a drastic drop in meals distributed: from 840,000 to just 260,000 in a few days, a sign of rapid and unstoppable deterioration.
The lack of humanitarian aid is the main cause of this humanitarian catastrophe: the blockade imposed by Israel and the absence of an effective way to deliver supplies represent a serious and blatant violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2720, which continues to call for respect and facilitation of humanitarian access for civilians in Gaza.
International authorities, including the World Food Programme, clearly indicate that if this situation persists, within a few months the humanitarian crisis will reach unimaginable proportions, with the population reduced to conditions of extreme famine.
This latest horror looming before our eyes is no longer a hypothesis but an imminent reality, with increasing mortality rates and an entire community suspended between hope and despair.
Despite various pro-Israel analysts continuing to justify the massacre in Gaza that began after October 7, 2023 (which the writer has firmly condemned, defining it as a horrific and intolerable act of terrorism), claiming that aid is not blocked by the Israeli army “completely” but is often looted by Hamas, the Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders, Christopher Lockyear, denounces that “the US and Israeli plan for food distribution in Gaza has been a failure and ineffective, and is yet another inhumane treatment imposed by the Israeli authorities on the Palestinian population. It seems to be a cynical ploy to feign compliance with international humanitarian law. In practice, it uses aid as a tool to forcibly displace people as part of what appears to be a broader strategy of ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip and to justify the continuation of a war without limits.”
The situation worsens day by day.
As if the war itself were not enough, the few basic necessities are now unattainable or cost exorbitant amounts: sugar at €7 per kilo, flour between $20 and $50, gasoline at prohibitive prices. An unsustainable market, the consequence of an unjustifiable humanitarian blockade: a hell on earth for the civilian population of Gaza.
The international community can no longer remain silent in the face of this tragedy.
The violation of the UN resolution and the indifference shown so far represent a betrayal of moral and legal obligations towards the hundreds of thousands of displaced people who cannot be condemned to die of hunger, famine, and abandonment.
The time for words is over: action must be taken now, because silence and inaction risk sealing, making irreversible, the cruel fate of millions of innocent people.
