It Is Not Enough
It's still a genocide.
You can’t starve children to death in self-defence. Yet, we have been watching Israel do this for months now. Since May 19th, Israel has only allowed 70 aid trucks to enter Gaza each day, just 11% of what is needed to feed the population, plunging the entire strip into a deadly famine. On the 27th of May, the US and IDF-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” militarised aid in the strip, luring thousands of starved Palestinians towards IDF guns. Delivering aid this way is illegal under international law, and now we can see why, given that over 1,000 Palestinians have been shot dead by the IDF while they sought essential aid from these sites. Not to mention the fact that the famine has intensified, with 90,000 women and children now requiring urgent care for acute malnutrition, and 147 people, including 88 children, having already died of malnutrition. Fourteen of these deaths occurred in the last 24 hours (as of writing), indicating that the death toll of this man-made famine is about to skyrocket. But don’t worry, this is all solved now, as the IDF is letting aid be air-dropped into the country and is beginning to allow aid corridors to open. Problem solved, right? No. Absolutely not.
This is not a famine. It is a weaponisation of aid. It is a forced starvation meant to weaken and kill a native people. Furthermore, it is a textbook example of a genocidal act and a clear-cut crime against humanity. And it isn’t me saying that — two leading Israeli human rights organisations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, have labelled it a genocide.
A single aid agency, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, currently has over 6,000 aid trucks on standby at the border, ready to enter Gaza, which have been there for weeks now. There are dozens of other aid agencies in the same situation. Gaza needs between 500 and 600 aid trucks a day to keep its population watered and fed to satisfactory levels, and the regional supply has consistently exceeded that. The only reason Palestinians are starving is because Netanyahu and the IDF are purposely not allowing these aid agencies to enter the territory. The tiny amount of aid they do allow in is militarised by the IDF, essentially turning Palestinians into fish in a barrel.
World leaders have failed to control Netanyahu’s actions for months now and have instead enabled them by giving Israel cover at the UN and providing biblical amounts of weaponry to the IDF. That is, despite the fact that international law clearly states that every country must actively work to stop any genocide from happening.
But, there is only so much cover Trump, Starmer, and the other Israeli apologists can give, and international pressure is mounting. So, in recent days, the IDF has allowed aid to be air-dropped into the territory and is seeking to open up aid corridors.
Sadly, this is closer to a PR stunt than actual humanitarian aid.
For one, the IDF is deliberately air-dropping aid pallets that weigh close to a tonne and land at speeds of approximately 50 miles per hour directly onto densely packed refugee camps. If that isn’t weaponising aid, I don’t know what is, and at least 11 Palestinians have already been injured from aid air drops crushing them in their tents. It is f***ing barbaric.
And air drops aren’t even a solution anyway. They can’t deliver aid safely or ensure that aid gets to where it is most needed. They are also deeply inefficient and unable to deliver aid at the scale currently required. Gaza might have only needed 500 to 600 trucks per day before the famine, but getting the population healthy again will likely require up to around 1,000 truckloads over the course of weeks and months. A single air drop can barely deliver a single truckload. So, to stop the forced starvation, you would need tens of thousands of flights, which is simply not possible.
As of last Sunday, the IDF is pausing military operations, opening up land-based aid corridors, and allowing the UN to deliver and administer food, water, and medicine to Gaza. This is far more effective, as the aid can be delivered safely, incredibly quickly, and at the scale needed. This is a much better solution.
Or at least it would be if the IDF didn’t strangle them. Military operations are only paused for ten hours a day, and the aid routes are only open for 17 hours a day. This means that the IDF can continue to weaponise aid centres, as Palestinians will still need to gather in large numbers at IDF-controlled aid sites. Let’s also not forget that the road infrastructure in Gaza is ruined due to the IDF’s bombing. So how can enough aid trucks make it over the border, drive for hours over broken roads to the destination, deliver their aid, and make it back before the routes close? These limitations mean that nowhere near enough aid will be allowed to pass in. So in reality, this doesn’t solve the problem of militarising aid or the forced starvation at all. And we are seeing that reflected in the numbers, because even though this aid has been flowing since Monday, the number of malnutrition-related deaths per day has continued to increase.
And it gets worse. The IDF has said the aid absolutely must not get into the hands of Hamas. This stance is wildly illegal for a lot of reasons: namely, international law, lack of statehood, occupying forces, and what is and isn’t a military. But I am not an expert on international law, so I will leave that there. Nonetheless, this should raise huge red flags. Israeli and IDF leaders have famously said newborns in Gaza should be considered supporters of Hamas. They can, and have, called anyone in Gaza, no matter how tenuous their links are to Hamas, a member of Hamas. So, this stance is obviously setting up a way for the IDF to shut off aid whenever they want.
Okay, Israel has been accused of genocide through indiscriminate military action and forced starvation, not just by almost every genocide scholar internationally, but by its own humanitarian organisations. Yet, they are still not letting anywhere near enough aid into Gaza, and they are still militarising aid sites. These massively limited air drops and aid corridors are not meant to solve this problem — they are a PR stunt to ease international pressure and allow this genocide to continue.
And this problem goes even deeper than that. B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights not only label what Israel is doing a genocide, but also state that Israel’s allies have a moral and legal responsibility to stop it. And they are right. Under international law, if another country is committing genocide, you are obligated to stop them; otherwise, you can be held culpable for their actions. Still, Israel’s allies, such as the UK and US, aren’t sanctioning Netanyahu or the IDF, aren’t breaking aid blockades, and aren’t threatening to cut Israeli aid or support. Instead, they are continuing to supply Israel with biblical amounts of weaponry and offering it cover for its horrific crimes. In short, they are enabling them, and as such, many Western leaders are at risk of being dragged to The Hague.
So, when I say it is not enough, I’m not just talking about the pitiful amount of aid reaching Palestinians. I am talking about the impotent veneer of Western leaders wanting to look empathetic while sitting back comfortably and allowing this genocide to happen. This could have been stopped months ago, or never happened at all, if we in the West had actually stood by the morals laid down in the aftermath of World War II. Maybe in a fairer timeline, we would wear red poppies for the Palestinians.
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Sources: Al Jazeera, Times of Israel, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Conversation, NBC News, BBC, BBC
The western response to the genocide in Gaza has been excruciatingly slow.