Starving Gaza
JVL Introduction
The item below was posted in Adam Tooze’s Chartbook Newsletter.
The headline says it all. There is nothing to add to it.
This article was originally published by Chartbook Newsletter on Thu 9 Nov 2023. Read the original here.
Starving Gaza
Starving Gaza
Before the war the average person in Gaza received 80 litres of water a day. In emergencies, the UN says a minimum of 15 litres is needed for drinking, cooking and hygiene. The typical daily allotment now is just three litres, much of it dirty stuff that comes from agricultural wells. Bathing has become an unimaginable luxury for many Gazans, and dehydration is a common complaint. Health workers say there have been thousands of cases of diarrhoea caused by poor sanitation.
Food is scarce too. Shoppers struggle to find basics like eggs, rice and cooking oil. They queue overnight at the handful of bakeries still operating to secure a few loaves of flatbread. A typical meal is ready-to-eat staples and a few vegetables: canned tuna and raw onions, perhaps with a bit of bread. Some mothers are using contaminated water to prepare baby formula.
On November 7th the Israeli army denied that there was a shortage of food, water and other basic supplies in Gaza. It said that 665 lorries carrying 3,000 tonnes of food and 1.15m litres of water had entered the enclave since October 21st, when Israel lifted its veto on aid deliveries. The numbers sound impressive—until you divide them among 2.2m people over 18 days. The shipments work out to just 76 grams of food and 29ml of water per person a day.
Source: The Economist
Keir Starmer’s inhumane words that day on LBC – his ‘misspoken’ support of Israel’s siege of Gaza – was clear enough to begin with. He’s not yet called for a ceasefire after all – which is the surest way to get supplies of food, water and medicine, at volume, into Gaza. Obviously for the Labour Leadership, the risk of Palestinians dying of hunger or thirst today comes a poor second to any possible repeat of the 7th October. Besides Israel isn’t even allowing humanitarian aid into the north of Gaza, are they? Certainly, they must’ve destroyed all the necessary infrastructure. No, at this moment in time, for the besieged Palestinians of Gaza access to food and clean drinking water seems conditional on moving south. So these ‘humanitarian’ pauses Starmer determinedly advocates (as against a ceasefire) only serve to quicken the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the now uninhabitable north to the south of Gaza. That is, of those Palestinians not killed or severely injured by Israeli bombing, those too sick to travel on this disease-inducing, starvation diet.