“Walking corpses”: Israel’s blockade starves Gazans, aid groups say

Two months ago, a coalition of aid groups warned that Israel’s war on Gaza—and restrictions on food entering the strip—would cause mass starvation in Gaza imminently. Now, it has arrived, according to officials and aid groups.

On Wednesday, more than 100 aid groups issued a statement outlining just how dire the situation has become for Palestinians as doctors report record rates of malnutrition as a result of Israel’s aid blockade. “As the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families,” the letter states. “[H]umanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.”

The signatories of the letter—which include Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam International, and Save the Children—urged governments to “open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now.”

As of Tuesday, more than a dozen children and adults had died from hunger within 24 hours, according to the UN, which cited reports from local health authorities. The World Food Program (WFP) says that nearly one in three people is going days without eating in Gaza and that 90,000 women and children need urgent malnutrition treatment.

The latest developments come two months after the launch of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US-backed Israeli aid distribution system that aid groups have decried as inefficient and dangerous. They say the four distribution sites, all under the control of the Israeli military, are difficult to access and do not distribute enough food. Israeli officials have claimed the system is necessary to prevent Hamas from interfering with food distribution, though officials have not provided evidence that this was ever happening in a coordinated way.

Gazans who do make it to the distribution sites often fear death. Harrowing reports have emerged of hordes of Palestinians being gunned down and killed at the sites. On Sunday, the WFP reported that a crowd of people seeking food from its convoy in northern Gaza were shot and killed by “Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire.” The organization’s director of emergencies called the incident “one of the greatest tragedies we’ve seen for our operations in Gaza and elsewhere while we’re trying to work.” Subsequent reports suggested that at least 80 Palestinians were killed in that incident and at least 95 people injured, and that 40 others were killed in other attacks near aid points in Rafah and Khan Younis over the weekend.

This week, the Untied Nations reported that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the new aid system debuted, nearly 800 of whom were killed near the US-backed aid sites, and the rest of whom were killed near UN and other humanitarian groups’ aid convoys.

Spokespeople for the Israeli Defense Forces did not immediately respond to questions Thursday from Mother Jones. President Donald Trump, who previously floated taking over Gaza and driving Palestinians off the land to an unspecified “permanent place,” has so far been silent on the latest details about the starvation in Gaza; his most recent comments appear to be from May, when he acknowledged “a lot of people are starving.” Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Thursday.

The US has funded Israel’s war broadly. A report from Brown University, published last fall, states that the US government had spent at least $18 billion on Israel’s military operations in Gaza since the war began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 people and led to more than 250 being taken as hostages, 50 of whom reportedly remain in captivity.

Aid groups say that they have supplies to support those in need, but that Israeli forces are preventing them from entering Gaza. Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, said in a post on X on Thursday that the UN agency has “equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt,” and called for “unrestricted & uninterrupted humanitarian assistance.” He quoted a colleague in Gaza who he said told him, “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.”

“When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food & care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold,” he wrote. “Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.”

“Parents are too hungry to care for their children,” Lazzarini continued. “Those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice. Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened.”

Lazzarini added that the agency’s health workers “are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all,” and “increasingly fainting from hunger while at work.”

“When caretakers cannot find enough to eat,” he added, “the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.”

News organizations have also warned that the few journalists left in Gaza are also facing starvation. On Thursday, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Associated Press, BBC News, and Reuters issued a joint statement saying they are “desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.” Earlier this week, a group of AFP journalists issued a statement outlining the dire conditions facing the ten who remain in Gaza: “We watch their situation worsen. They are young and losing strength. Most no longer have physical capacity to travel the enclave and do their jobs,” says the statement, translated from its original French.

The statement quotes a post the group’s photographer, Bashar, 30, put on Facebook over the weekend: “I no longer have the strength to work in media. My body is weak and I cannot work.” His brother died of hunger over the weekend, the statement says.