🌊 The Siege of Gaza

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By Max Frost

This week, we’re running a three-part series on the current state of the war in Gaza. Yesterday we released part one: Back to War. Today is part two, on the humanitarian crisis. 

Once the ceasefire collapsed, Israel sealed Gaza off from the world via a total humanitarian blockade. For 11 weeks – from March 2 until May 18 – not a single truck of relief aid was allowed into the enclave. Food, fuel, and medical supplies all came to a stop.

This total siege rapidly depleted Gaza’s reserves of essentials. By April, markets had virtually run dry of many goods. “In the market, you could only find spoiled, infested flour with the worst smell imaginable,” the World Food Programme said in a report, a statement corroborated by many other witnesses.

With no fuel entering, bakeries and water pumps shut down, leaving families to scavenge for firewood and drink brackish well water. “Civilians are in an endless death loop,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in early April, as the blockade strangled Gaza’s economy and aid groups were kept out. Guterres accused Israel of “callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour.”

To Israel, this was the price of both destroying Hamas and forcing it to the negotiating table. Israeli officials – supported by both Western and some Arab governments’ analyses – accused Hamas of siphoning fuel and food from UN supplies, selling it for profit, using it to power its rocket industry, or distributing it as rewards to loyalists. One Gazan lawyer recently told the Wall Street Journal that Hamas was “mainly dependent on humanitarian aid sold in black markets for cash.” Without it, he said, “There is a big crisis in Hamas in terms of getting the money.” 

Meanwhile, UNRWA (the UN agency in Gaza) stated that it “is not aware of… any systemic diversion of aid” by Hamas and that aid distributions are closely monitored. Some humanitarian groups have said that instances of aid theft were isolated and not routine. They accused Israel of playing up the threat to use aid as a weapon of war. Humanitarian groups and Hamas leveled the same accusation at Israel: That it was “weaponizing aid.”

Regardless, the humanitarian situation deteriorated after the blockade began on March 2. People went hungry as food ran out, facilities like hospitals were left to burn wood or plastic for heat, and scarce clean water led to a surge in water-borne illnesses, especially among children for whom dehydration and diarrhea can be fatal. 

Israel dismissed these reports, with Netanyahu saying that those who believed them had "bought into Hamas's propaganda that says Israel is starving Palestinian children." Many Israel supporters have argued that the institutions documenting the civilian suffering in Gaza – from humanitarian groups to the media and government bodies – are simply anti-Israel or the victims of propaganda. It’s not just the Hamas health ministry death toll that can’t be trusted, they say, but all reports about what’s happening on the ground in Gaza. 

Regardless of politics, the blockade has had indisputable impacts. One is hunger.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading. For those of you who are new to We The 66, we created this newsletter to provide a factual, unbiased presentation of current events that shares perspectives from both sides of the aisle. Thanks for joining, and we hope you enjoyed today’s article. Let us know what you thought about this report by emailing us here. 

And in case you missed part one or are interested in reading our other recent reports, find them below:

• The Gaza War: Part One

• The Red Line in Iran Negotiations

• Roca Exclusive: America's Lone Pro-Tariff Economist

• Why No One Trusts Institutions Pt. 37

• The AI That Wanted to Live

That’s all for today. See you tomorrow for part three.

–Max and Max