For the first time since the war began, there are credible concerns of hunger in Gaza. The main indicator, as expressed both by Gazans and economists, is the price of food in the enclave, a variable that can at least be used to calculate supply and demand and therefore offers a general picture of the overall trend. And that trend suggests that a future hunger crisis might be on the horizon if nothing changes.
The caveat—and it’s a big one—is that there is enough food in Gaza. Testimony of Gazans and videos of fat, ogreish Hamasniks stuffing their maws have made this fact undeniable: Hamas is intentionally starving the rest of Gaza.
Additionally, nearly a thousand UN aid trucks have passed through the Israeli inspection points and sit in Gaza with their goods undistributed. Trey Yingst, a fairly harsh critic of the Israeli counteroffensive, reports that the IDF offered the UN five different routes to distribute the aid; as of yet the UN does not appear to have accepted any of the distribution offers.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the U.S.- and Israel-backed organization that distributes aid to Gazan civilians instead of Hamas, has been appealing to the UN to join the distribution efforts and work with GHF to get the food to those in need. Yesterday, GHF offered simply to deliver the UN’s stalled aid for free. Again, thus far no one has been able to compel or convince the UN to deliver needed food aid.
Why are Hamas and the United Nations starving Gaza? The answer is different for each.
There is no question that Hamas is the reason Gazans have diminished access to food, as it intentionally withholds from civilians the food aid that comes through.
But there is something even more monstrous to Hamas’s strategy: It has backed away from a cease-fire that Israel has bent over backwards to bring to fruition. “Hamas is the problem now,” one non-Israeli negotiating source told Barak Ravid a few days ago. “Every day they delay their response, more Palestinians die. We can’t keep waiting for the answer of a few f–king Hamas leaders in Gaza. Who do they even think they are?”
It’s been two weeks since Israel agreed to a cease-fire deal that would likely have ended the war. At the time, I asked if Hamas really wanted the war to end. We have our answer: no.
The reason is both simple and demonic. The deterioration of conditions for civilians under Hamas’s thumb has convinced the terror group to keep the war going and to try to bring the enclave to calamity.
And why is this even a workable strategy for Hamas? Here, the answer implicates all those Western leaders who carp and lecture Israel to Hamas’s benefit.
The European Union reportedly decided that Israel’s actions in Gaza violate a 25-year-old Israel-EU trade agreement, opening the door to sanctions. British Foreign Minister David Lammy threatened UK action against Israel for the situation in Gaza. The EU then threatened to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement, again over the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“Other steps could be suspending an aviation agreement, blocking imports from settlements, limiting scientific and technological cooperation, and curtailing travel for Israelis in the visa-free zone known as Schengen, according to a leaked document sent by the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, to member states,” the AP reported.
Notice the consistent element of all these stories? That’s right, they all assume Israel is fully to blame for the situation. There is no real threatening of Hamas; on the contrary, the push for Israel to let Hamas-linked UN agencies take over the aid delivery amounts to material support for Hamas.
And yet this whole issue proves why destroying Hamas must be a priority for all involved. If there is a cease-fire or if Israel relents on Hamas-linked aid delivery, there will be a temporary amelioration of the possible hunger crisis. But Hamas will hoard the aid and resell some for astronomical markup. In other words, Hamas’s strategy is to keep the people of Gaza perpetually close to a hunger crisis because that triggers international pressure on Israel to let Hamas restock its own shelves and refill its own coffers.
Hamas’s near-unprecedented monstrousness is being sustained by the supposedly humanitarian West, which is sacrificing the lives of Gazan civilians out of irrational animosity toward Israel.
