Country: occupied Palestinian territory Source: International Crisis Group Israel’s new U.S.-backed aid scheme in Gaza integrates food into military strategy. Since the war began, Israel has restricted aid, easing up when famine alerts appeared, tightening as attention faded. Now, amid a bloody rollout, the new mechanism risks entrenching starvation rather than ending it.As mediators chase an elusive ceasefire, a new U.S.-Israeli aid scheme has made food distribution another front line in Gaza. The U.S.-registered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), unveiled in May to sidestep the UN and other relief agencies that have long worked in the strip, lost its director before distributing a single meal after he cited violations of humanitarian principles. Within days, the U.S.-Israeli plan for handing out rations at four “fortified hubs” devolved into widely predicted lethal chaos. Since the GHF began operations, dozens of Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points have been killed, many by Israel, and scores of others have been wounded.Since the Israeli offensive in Gaza started in October 2023, following the Hamas attacks, aid access has been severely restricted. Within this broad pattern, Israel has imposed three separate all-but-total blockades of about 90 days – twice on northern Gaza and once on the entire strip. When the UN and others have warned of imminent famine, as they did in March and November 2024, Israel briefly relaxed some controls to increase the flow of supplies, only to tighten them again after international attention faded. In May, facing a new famine alarm after an eleven-week closure, Israel partially reopened crossings while maintaining most restrictions. If the pattern holds, a blockade of part or all of the strip will resume if the severity of the immediate crisis appears to lessen.This cruel cycle exploits a deadly distinction. In the terminology used by the UN-led humanitarian apparatus, “famine” is a statistical threshold requiring specific consumption gaps, death rates and acute malnutrition levels. “Starvation” – the process of organs shrinking, the immune system breaking down, cognition dimming – begins long before. Observers may debate whether Gaza’s plight has crossed the line, but in the meantime, biology does not wait. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the yardstick the UN uses, reports that all 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are facing life-threatening food insecurity; over half are in Phase 4 (Emergency), surviving on scraps; nearly a quarter are in Phase 5 (Catastrophe), where food vanishes and communities fall apart. Each round of deprivation and partial recovery compounds life-long, even intergenerational damage.The world, it seems, is witnessing an experiment: an attempt to indefinitely maintain Gaza’s population below the famine threshold while turning food into a weapon of war. With Gaza’s local food production capacity nearly destroyed, controlling the crossings now means controlling survival itself. Israeli restrictions limited the World Food Programme (WFP) to delivering fewer than 1,600 calories per person daily, far below its 2,100-calorie target, from July 2024 until the January 2025 ceasefire. The GHF promises to bring in marginally more, with 1,750 calories, but only to the “fortified hubs”, which Palestinians must cross battlefields to reach. If the resulting bedlam thwarts even this insufficient goal, Gaza will edge toward the mass death that the IPC’s Famine Review Committee warned would follow if the GHF cannot deliver adequate aid.Starvation as StatecraftPlanning for the GHF is not the first time that Israel has calculated Gaza’s caloric intake. In 2011, the Israeli High Court heard a case brought by Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation, against the Israeli Ministry of Defence. As part of its ruling, the court released the “red lines” presentation, a Defence Ministry document setting the minimum requirement for avoiding malnutrition in the enclave at 2,279 calories per person daily. Today, through the GHF, Israel plans to provide 75 per cent of that threshold, to a population far weaker.The GHF aims to replace the roughly 400 existing aid distribution points with four “secure sites”, perhaps expanding later to as many as ten. To get to these sites, Palestinians must travel up to tens of kilometres on foot, often through combat zones, and pass through biometric checkpoints. Then they must haul the provisions they get back to their families. The journey would exhaust the well-fed, let alone the starving, injured or otherwise vulnerable.The GHF touts its promise to distribute 300 million meals in its first 90 days, but the math reveals a grimmer reality. Divided among the population, this number yields just 1.6 “meals” per person (with the daily ration seemingly comprising the allotted 1,750 calories, though the GHF does not define the term “meal”). The parcels appear to contain only dry goods, distributed to people who lack the clean water and fuel needed for cooking. Beyond food, the GHF mechanism provides none of the health care, shelter or other aid essential for survival. It resembles less a structured aid program than a crude dumping of commodities into Gaza. Focusing on meal counts deflects attention from the truth that these rations are inadequate: they cannot sustain human life, let alone restore health to a population that has suffered months of deprivation.The new system in effect incorporates humanitarian aid into Operation Gideon’s Chariots, the campaign Israel launched in May to establish open-ended territorial control of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described its purpose as emptying the northern districts Israel intends to clear while concentrating Palestinians in army-held “sterile” areas in the south, contradicting GHF statements about establishing sites in northern Gaza. Biometric checkpoints turn food collection into intelligence gathering. The 1,750-calorie dry ration, without health care or clean water, creates conditions for forced displacement from Gaza that Netanyahu euphemistically calls “voluntary emigration” – now a stated requirement for ending the war.Comments by Israel and its supporters suggest that they see avoiding famine primarily as diplomatic liability insurance. On 19 May, Netanyahu issued a statement that Israel must provide “minimal assistance” to prevent “images” of starvation or famine from circulating in Washington, as they might threaten U.S. support for Israel’s military campaign.Whether driven by sincere conviction or political calculation, the prime minister is not alone in treating starvation as legitimate policy so long as it remains below the threshold of international outrage. In January, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew applauded keeping Gaza “from crossing over into malnutrition and famine”, a claim so divorced from Gaza’s nutritional reality as to defy comprehension. Whatever he meant by malnutrition, the assertion contradicted ample evidence of malnutrition across Gaza, including U.S. government-funded analysis.Such statements paint the bare avoidance of mass death as humanitarian success. This approach treats famine warnings as ceilings to hover beneath rather than floors to rise above. When northern Gaza neared this ceiling in December 2024, the Biden administration suppressed a famine warning, forcing FEWS NET, the U.S.-funded famine watchdog, to retract its warning within a day, the first known censorship in its 40-year history. FEWS NET had stated the obvious: indefinite blockade inevitably produces famine, a conclusion the IPC would echo five months later. But stating the obvious becomes controversial when policy depends on denying it – when success means ensuring that the debate never moves beyond thresholds to ask why a population is starving. Gaza is not the first case of governments gaming famine metrics, but it represents a new model for subverting the international humanitarian warning system. The IPC was created to prevent catastrophes, but in Gaza its work is being used to calibrate one.Israel’s most senior officials publicly deny both intent to starve Gaza and the existence of mass starvation there, attributing aid restrictions to military necessity. Yet Israeli military officers privately acknowledge the reality, while prominent cabinet members openly approve of it. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said starving Gaza’s residents “to death” would be “just and moral” until the remaining Israeli hostages in the strip are freed. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has said “the only aid entering Gaza should be to aid voluntary emigration”, insisting that while hostages remain captive, “the enemy” should get “no food, no electricity and no other aid”. These extreme voices reflect a widespread anti-Palestinian animus according to which mass civilian suffering is acceptable.The result is calibrated starvation as policy, not side effect. During pauses for hostage-for-prisoner exchanges and under diplomatic pressure, many hundreds of trucks have crossed into Gaza daily, proving that capacity exists when political will does. Aid officials told Crisis Group that Israel even adjusted security protocols to facilitate inflow when low truck numbers threatened to ruin a temporary ceasefire and interrupt hostage releases. The bottleneck has never been logistics but decision-making: how much deprivation serves Israel’s purposes versus how much risk it poses to the country’s international standing.An Experiment That Cannot LastIsrael’s balancing act – maintaining starvation while avoiding famine – cannot last indefinitely. Each cycle leaves Gaza’s population weaker. The focus on caloric thresholds obscures simultaneous collapse: sewage contaminating water supplies, summer heat approaching in overcrowded camps, nineteen months of compromised immunity amid a devastated health care system. An epidemic among starving people could kill thousands before monitors declare famine. Public health experts no longer ask if disease will strike, but when. Gaza has become an experiment in testing exactly where a strategy of managed starvation tips into unmanageable famine.Israel insists that aid restrictions are needed to prevent Hamas from stealing supplies for itself, a theoretically valid concern in Gaza, where aid shipments are an obvious target amid general scarcity. While Hamas likely does extract some revenue – a common practice by authorities in conflict zones – comprehensive audits show that less than 1 per cent of assistance has been lost to theft, far below levels elsewhere. Despite its vaunted intelligence, Israel has released no evidence for its claims of rampant pillage. David Satterfield, the Biden administration’s humanitarian envoy, reported that Israeli officials did not even allege theft in confidential briefings. Organised looting, as UN and Israeli military assessments confirm, occurs at the hands of armed gangs, which the Israeli army encourages as an alternative to Hamas control. Aid officials and Gaza residents told Crisis Group that the Abu Shabab gang, armed and protected by Israel, has been the single most prolific looter since the war began.The real logic runs deeper. Unable to decisively defeat Hamas, Israel has adopted a strategy of resource denial, treating Gaza as an undifferentiated hostile territory where any sack of flour might lend succour to the enemy. Food, fuel, medicine: all become weapons to withhold rather than needs to meet. The doctrine’s logic becomes clear in practice. In mid-May, Israel banned the WFP from supplying food directly to families, claiming that it would be vulnerable to Hamas seizure, and required distribution through bakeries instead. Predictably, starving crowds overwhelmed the sites, ending distribution within days, and then later looted a newly filled WFP warehouse. The result is collective punishment by default, a remorseless logic whereby starving Hamas inevitably means starving Gaza.The Israeli government believes the strategy is working. Military briefings describe Hamas as panicked and under tremendous strain, with officials confident that the new aid scheme will permanently break the movement’s grip on Gaza. They interpret crowds defying Hamas threats to reach distribution centres as proof that the organisation’s control is slipping.Hamas is indeed under unprecedented pressure, after months of blockade and escalating military assault. But the belief that its power rests on food distribution is fantasy. Israeli officials mistake biological desperation for political transformation. Starving people rushing toward food proves survival instinct, not political realignment.The GHF’s early operations already expose these flaws. Interviews indicate that distributed goods are appearing in Gaza’s markets – whether resold by recipients trying to meet other survival needs or seized by the ablest at distribution points. GHF sites have at times operated on a first-come, first-serve basis, leaving food in the open to be grabbed by crowds. Rather than reaching the neediest, supplies often end up with the strongest. Ironically, these markets create new opportunities for Hamas to extract revenue – an own goal for a system designed to prevent the group from profiting from aid.Still, not surprisingly, Hamas sees the mechanism as a threat. It denounces the food depots as occupation infrastructure and demands their elimination, a predictable response from any armed movement watching humanitarian aid become its adversary’s strategic tool. The result is deadly competition over food distribution – precisely what happens when relief loses its neutrality and is dispensed at militarised sites. Integrating humanitarian aid into a military campaign ensures that both sides will fight to control it, with civilians caught in between.An Alternative Sits ReadyHistory holds lessons about what it means when people consume fewer than 1,600 calories per day over time. In the 1944-1945 Minnesota Starvation Experiment, healthy volunteers on similar rations saw weight loss within weeks, progressing to organ atrophy, cognitive impairment and psychological damage – even though they were under medical supervision. Palestinians in Gaza are enduring these conditions under regular bombardment and with few, if any health care facilities.A workable alternative is being ignored. On 16 May, after extensive consultations with the Israeli military’s civil affairs coordination unit, the UN presented a comprehensive blueprint that responded to Israeli security concerns: QR-coded cargo, UN monitors at every crossing, GPS-tracked trucks on pre-cleared routes and distribution through 400 sites that once served 1.3 million hot meals daily. In Egypt and Jordan, 160,000 pallets – 8,900 truckloads – were sitting ready.The plan in fact exceeded Israel’s demands: sealed trucks to prevent pilferage, household audits and authority to expel any agency caught diverting goods to anyone other than the intended recipients. In return, the UN asked for humanitarian operational control and predictability: stable crossing hours, guarantees of safe passage from the Israeli military and vetted crowd managers to replace Gaza’s destroyed police. One apparent dealbreaker: the plan withheld the recipient data that Israel wants for surveillance. Israel never responded.The GHF makes explicit what was previously implied – food is power, central to Israel’s war plan. By weaving nutritional control directly into military architecture, it replaces cycles of complete closure with something more sophisticated. “Humanitarian corridors” channel civilian movement according to battlefield objectives, while biometric screening enables selective denial of food to anyone Israel classifies as threatening. Depending on how Israel defines links to Hamas, at least tens if not hundreds of thousands could be considered ineligible.The mechanism’s sustainability is questionable. Without the global efficiencies of established humanitarian networks like the UN, which is not participating, the GHF gets supplies from Israeli markets at higher costs. Israel has supplied substantial funding to date, although high-profile resignations and withdrawals – including that of the U.S.-based Boston Consulting Group, which terminated its involvement and dismissed two partners for allegedly undertaking unauthorised work – now cast doubt on who will oversee and finance the project amid fraught political optics and potential legal liabilities. These costs may prove as unsustainable as the caloric math.Meanwhile, the public conversation fixates on scorecards like daily truck counts, with Israeli officials blaming UN incompetence and UN staff citing Israeli obstruction. After nineteen months of war and two decades of blockade, the metric-driven debate misses the point. The issue is not how many trucks cross into Gaza or the number of calories in the foodstuffs they carry, but the deliberate strategy of calibrated deprivation that has left Palestinians in the strip facing life-threatening hunger. The goal must be food security, not truck tallies – which means ending the starvation policy itself.Whether through ad hoc closures or “fortified hubs”, integrating starvation into military strategy exposes a fundamental truth. When a government admits it cannot win without keeping millions at death’s edge, the response cannot be technical adjustments. The UN’s comprehensive 16 May plan still sits ready, its adoption growing more urgent as another round of diplomacy appears to stall. Gaza’s survival requires ending both the war and the starvation policy Israel deems essential to victory.