NOTE 22/RESIST!

[22]

TOTAL BLOCKADE AND DEATH TRAPS: HOW

ISRAEL IS STARVING THE GAZA STRIP

21 AUGUST 2025

Since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. This includes the killing of tens of thousands, bodily and mental harm to hundreds of thousands, massive destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, starvation, displacement and obstruction of humanitarian aid – all carried out systematically, as part of a coordinated attack designed to destroy living conditions in the Gaza Strip. Israel is continuing the onslaught despite countless warnings, and mounting evidence on the ground, of its lethal consequences. Together with many public clarifications by policymakers that the target is the entire population, this proves the political and military leadership’s intent to eradicate the continuation of Palestinian existence in Gaza.

Immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza. In the months that followed, it intermittently barred entry of food, water, fuel and medicine through land crossings under its control. The aid it did allow in, following international pressure, was severely inadequate for the population’s needs. Within a short time, Israel also destroyed the civilian infrastructure for producing and distributing food. These measures left hundreds of thousands of people entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. The shortages also led to sharp price hikes across the Strip, further limiting access to food for most of the population. Aid organizations warned in the early stages of the fighting of a steep drop in food security. In April 2024, UN bodies declared that “without massive and consistent food assistance that can be delivered freely and safely, famine thresholds in Gaza will be breached within the next six weeks.”

Israel has also waged an unprecedented assault on Gaza’s civilian and social order. Throughout the months of fighting, Israeli forces have methodically targeted all law enforcement actors in the Strip, including police officers and commanders, as well as civil defense units. The resulting law enforcement vacuum was filled by armed criminal gangs, which operate across the Strip and have gained power thanks to Israel.

At the same time, Israel has painted a false picture that there is no severe hunger crisis in Gaza, accusing Hamas of stealing UN aid in areas where shortages existed. This allegation was denied by aid agencies on the ground. In a New York Times investigation published in late July 2025, senior Israeli military officials even admitted the military had never provided evidence of Hamas systematically stealing aid. Contrary to Israel’s claims, numerous reports and policy statements indicate that one of the main reasons Israel blocked aid into Gaza was to pressure Hamas, including by fomenting internal unrest among the civilian population. Two US government agencies responsible for aid distribution determined that Israel deliberately blocked and delayed humanitarian aid, and that it is primarily responsible for the hunger ravaging the Strip. In January 2024, UN experts concluded: “Israel is […] using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.”

The deliberate starvation of Gaza, which branches of the UN designated “the hungriest place on Earth” in May 2025, is one means of destruction Israel is using in the genocide it is committing in Gaza. With every passing day, the hunger in Gaza deepens and more people, including children, die from causes related to hunger and malnutrition. Yet Israel continues its attempts to suppress the reality of the hunger crisis in Gaza.

This document presents Israel’s system of starvation in the Gaza Strip, which includes destroying food and means of food production, preventing food from entering, undermining existing aid systems and creating deadly conditions for obtaining food.

Starvation in figures

The latest analysis of food security (according to the IPC Famine Classification) found that about 2.1 million residents – almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip – are experiencing varying degrees of acute food insecurity. Roughly 37% of the population, about 775,000 people, are in “Crisis” (Phase 3), while more than 1,169,000 people (54%) are in Phases 4 and 5, classified as “Emergency” and “Catastrophe.”

At the end of July 2025, IPC experts issued their most severe famine warning to date, stating that “the worst-case famine scenario is now unfolding in Gaza.” According to the warning, about 500,000 people – a quarter of Gaza’s population – are currently experiencing daily famine. Indeed, throughout July, daily reports began emerging of people dying in Gaza from causes related to hunger and malnutrition. As of 21 August 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported 271 deaths related to hunger and malnutrition, including 112 minors.

Israel’s system of starvation in Gaza

Withholding food and Destroying food production infrastructure

Blockade: Preventing the entry of aid

Even before the current Israeli offensive, about 64% of Gaza’s residents suffered from food insecurity, and around 80% required some form of humanitarian assistance. As soon as the attack on the Gaza Strip began, Israel declared a total blockade on the Strip, which led to a growing shortage of food products. That blockade lasted until 21 October 2023. At that point, Israel allowed in a very limited amount of humanitarian aid, and only through the Rafah Crossing on the border with Egypt. From 21 October to 23 November 2023, a total of 1,554 aid trucks entered through Rafah, 927 of them carrying food – compared with about 360 food trucks that had entered the Strip every day prior to the attack, when 20%–30% of food consumption was based on local production. During the first ceasefire, from 24 to 30 November 2023, a total of 1,209 aid trucks entered the Strip, 851 of them carrying food. On 17 December 2023, Israel began permitting aid in through the Kerem Shalom Crossing, as well. From 1 December 2023 to 18 January 2024, a total of 5,917 aid trucks entered, 4,048 of them carrying food.

Throughout 2024, some 41,000 aid trucks entered the Strip – an average of about 90 trucks a day, the vast majority carrying food. Almost all were sent to the southern Strip, where most of the population was concentrated at that stage, and the amount of aid that entered was far from sufficient. At the same time, only minimal amounts of food reached the northern Strip, via deliveries from the south, limited airdrops and a handful of trucks that entered directly.

* Trucks with general items, not only food

After the second ceasefire was declared on 19 January 2025, Israel permitted relatively broad entry of aid: about 600 trucks a day, including some 50 fuel trucks. Some of the trucks entered northern Gaza directly through Zikim Crossing. However, on 2 March 2025, Israel again imposed a total blockade on the Strip, and on 18 March it violated the ceasefire and resumed fighting. For the next 77 days, Israel completely blocked aid from entering Gaza. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only in mid-May 2025 was the Kerem Shalom Crossing partially reopened. Over three days, 198 trucks entered, some intended for the northern Strip, but were delayed by logistical disruptions, gunfire, looting and access blockages, and not all reached their destination. OCHA reported that these trucks were merely a drop in a bucket compared to actual needs: 60–64 trucks a day, at a time when at least 500–600 were required. Direct truck entry to the north via Zikim was restored only on 12 June.

On 27 July 2025, following international pressure, Israel announced it would allow more aid trucks in and establish humanitarian corridors and pauses for distribution. OCHA reported that about 100 trucks entered the Strip that day, but added that moving the aid to its intended destinations within Gaza remained extremely difficult even during pauses in fighting, and medical workers feared that the meager aid would arrive too late to save those already starving. That day, the Israeli military also carried out the first airdrop of food into Gaza – a practice that experts criticized as ineffective and that had caused fatalities when undertaken by the US and other countries during an earlier phase of the attack on Gaza. The amount of food dropped, equivalent to a single truckload, was negligible compared to the need.

Destroying food production infrastructure

Until October 2023, between 20% and 30% of food consumption in the Gaza Strip was based on agricultural produce grown within its territory. Yet, already in the first months of the assault, Israel disabled all local food production systems. According to analyses by FAO and UNOSAT, the Israeli assault has destroyed 75% of Gaza’s farmland, about 96% of livestock have died, more than 80% of the wells used for irrigation and over 70% of the greenhouses have been damaged, and the fishing industry has almost entirely shut down. Residents’ livelihoods have collapsed, and local food production has ceased to exist. The onslaught has not only caused the total collapse of food sources available in Gaza, but also inflicted severe, long-term damage that is likely to undermine the population’s ability to produce food in the future.

Undermining existing aid systems

International organizations, most notably UNRWA and the World Central Kitchen (WCK), as well as local initiatives such as community kitchens, have made dedicated efforts to prevent the starvation of the population from the beginning of the attack, striving to provide food. Yet Israel has continuously worked to thwart their operations:

UNRWA

Since the beginning of the attack, Israel has restricted the entry of aid into the Strip and in many cases refused to allow UNRWA convoys to transport aid from the south to the north.

The Israeli government, which has long sought to undermine and even eliminate UNRWA’s operations as part of its efforts to erase the Palestinian refugee status, exploited the Hamas-led 7 October attack to escalate its campaign against the agency, based on unproven allegations that some of its employees participated in the attack. In 2024 and early 2025, Israel passed legislation banning UNRWA’s activity inside Israel, as well as in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. By January 2025, reports already indicated that UNRWA was preparing to halt its operations in these areas. According to UNRWA’s official reports, international staff have been barred from entering Gaza since late March 2025, and limited operations have continued only through local staff.

Israel’s forced shutdown of UNRWA, with full knowledge that no other body in Gaza can replace its wide range of civil functions, is expected to worsen the already severe hunger crisis and further undermine healthcare services. In addition to the political aim of dismantling UNRWA, Israel is seeking to deprive residents of any aid source not under its control, thereby increasing their dependence on the Israeli military and its affiliated aid mechanisms.

Community kitchens

As early as October 2023, a network of community kitchens was established in the Gaza Strip, initiated by the WCK in cooperation with UN agencies and Palestinian aid organizations. Community kitchens distributed hot meals to Gaza’s residents while suffering from a shortage of ingredients, as well as water and cooking gas, and often forced to use wood as fuel. They frequently had to suspend operations due to evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military or fighting nearby, and faced looting by desperate residents and organized gangs.

In three documented incidents, the military attacked WCK workers: on 1 April 2024, Israeli forces killed seven WCK staff members when they attacked an aid convoy near Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Following the incident, the organization suspended its operations in the Strip for about a month. Prime Minister Netanyahu described the attack as tragic and unintentional.  On 30 November 2024, the military attacked WCK aid vehicles again, this time in Khan Yunis, killing three staff members. On 27 March 2025, Israeli forces killed a WCK volunteer while he was distributing food near a community kitchen in Gaza City.

By May 2025, most WCK kitchens had either closed or been transferred to local partner organizations, due to the severe shortage of food supplies after the blockade was reimposed in March 2025. On 21 June 2025, WCK resumed partial operations, distributing about 10,000 hot meals that day – compared with the 133,000 hot meals it distributed daily in the early months of 2025.

Alongside the WCK kitchens, grassroots initiatives were launched, first in the north and center of the Strip and later also in the south, to operate civilian aid kitchens (tiqiyeh). These kitchens were set up by residents and maintained partly by volunteers, with funding and coordination from international aid agencies, chiefly the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in cooperation with local NGOs. They were often established in ruined buildings or open areas, without access to electricity or water. Even so, they succeeded in distributing hundreds of thousands of meals daily.

According to OCHA, in January 2025, during the second ceasefire, 170 kitchens operated in the Strip, distributing about 600,000 meals per day. In April 2025, after aid shipments resumed during the ceasefire, the kitchens provided a record one million meals. However, by May 2025, the impact of the full blockade Israel imposed in March was felt, with the number of meals dropping to 249,000. On 4 August, OCHA reported that 259,000 meals had been provided since 20 July 2025, 98 in northern Gaza and 161,000 in the center and south.

Making food seeking lethal

Shooting at people seeking food in the northern Gaza Strip

According to UN experts, between mid-January and the end of February 2024, at least 14 incidents were documented in which Israeli forces opened fire or carried out airstrikes against civilians who had gathered in different areas of the Strip to receive aid. In a particularly grave incident on 29 February 2024, soldiers fired at a crowd that had rushed flour trucks on a-Rashid Street in Gaza City. More than 100 people were killed and about 760 injured – some directly by military gunfire, others trampled by the panicked crowd. Later that month, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documented eight more incidents of Israeli forces shooting at people seeking food, including an incident on 14 March in which the military fired at a crowd of thousands of civilians gathered near a square on Salah a-Din Road in southern Gaza City. The shooting – carried out with tanks, attack helicopters, and drones – killed more than 80 people and injured around 200 others. Nine days later, on 23 March, the army again fired on a crowd that had gathered at the same square, killing at least 30 people and wounding 80 more.

In July 2025, two incidents were reported in which the Israeli army opened massive fire and killed dozens of people seeking food as they tried to reach aid trucks that had entered through the “Zikim” crossing in the northern part of the Strip. In the incident on 20 July, around 79 people were killed, and in the incident on 30 July, at least 48 people were killed.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, as of 20 August 2025, Israeli forces had killed 2,018 people in the Strip while they were attempting to obtain food and injured 14,947 others – most of them near GHF distribution centers.

GHF food distribution centers in southern and central Gaza: Death traps disguised as aid

In February 2025, amid mounting international criticism over the situation in the Gaza Strip, the US announced the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Israel did not officially admit to co-founding the initiative but acknowledged transferring funds to cover the cost of building the sites, claiming they were intended to enable the direct distribution of food, water and medicine.

On 27 May 2025, GHF began operating four distribution centers through private American contractors and in coordination with the Israeli military: three in the southern Strip (two west of Rafah and one in Khan Yunis) and one in the center, in the “Netzarim Corridor.”

In their first days of operation, a UN representative already described these compounds as “death traps” where masses of hungry, exhausted people were forced to crowd together, inevitably leading to clashes over aid packages.

Since the opening of these centers, lethal shooting has regularly been documented inside and around them, including tank fire and, according to witnesses, quadcopter attacks, directed at unarmed people seeking food, killing and wounding many every day the centers were open.

On 3 June 2025, in response to a query by Haaretz, the Israeli military admitted that troops had fired at civilians approaching an aid compound, adding that it is “aware of reports regarding casualties, and the details of the incident are being looked into.” The military claimed that the fire was meant as deterrence, for example against “identified suspects who breached the designated access routes” to obtain food. Yet numerous testimonies contradict this claim.

In testimonies given to Haaretz in June 2025, soldiers and officers said they had been ordered to shoot directly at unarmed Palestinians gathered around distribution centers, both before and after the food was handed out, in order to drive them away. According to these accounts, the armored corps shot live ammunition and tanks fired shells at civilians waiting for aid – not as warning shots, but as targeted fire, although they posed no threat.

Anthony Aguilar, a former US Army officer who worked as a security contractor for GHF, described what he saw at the centers to Israeli TV Channel 13 on 26 July 2025: “IDF soldiers firing live ammunition at the Palestinians […] I saw artillery rounds being used. I saw machine gun fire being used, mortar fire being used, tank rounds, main tank rounds from the Merkava tanks.”

A month earlier, an American security contractor employed by GHF in Gaza gave an account of the systematic violence around these centers to the news site Zeteo. He described heavily armed soldiers working alongside young, untrained civilian workers, and said he never saw shooting coming from the people receiving aid. He reported the Israeli fire was often indiscriminate, targeting even those quietly waiting in line, which made the access to food dangerous, chaotic and violent.

UN agencies, including the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), OCHA and UNRWA, as well as human rights organizations such as Gisha, Médecins Sans Frontières, CCR and al-Haq, issued an official call to end the initiative. They argued that combining aid distribution with military control is not humanitarian, and that shootings occurring at aid sites may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.

From the outset, the UN and other aid organizations refused to participate in the GHF centers, arguing that concentrating a limited number of mass distribution points mostly in the southern Strip would force starving residents to move with their families toward the area near the Egyptian border, “indicat[ing] a deliberate policy of forcing residents from the north – a pattern observed previously in the conflict.” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher called the initiative a “cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement.” He said the project aimed to create military buffer zones, especially in the north, while pushing the population southward. An Israeli official involved in planning the project admitted that its goal was to present the world with a “show” of aid distribution to ease international pressure on Israel.

Despite mounting reports, Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his government refrained from publicly addressing the casualties at these centers.

Taken together, these facts indicate that the GHF centers were designed, in part, to serve Israel’s plan to forcibly transfer Gaza’s population, in the spirit of the Trump Plan, rather than to provide access to aid that would actually help the starving population, while further worsening living conditions. In other words, these so-called aid centers are in fact another tool for implementing Israel’s policy of starvation as an instrument of ethnic cleansing.

END