The World Food Program (WFP) announced on Feb. 20 that they had been forced to pause their deliveries of desperately needed food to northern Gaza, because of the “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order.” Israel has not only refused to provide minimal security needed to deliver the food; they have actively destroyed food convoys as well. CNN published a report Feb. 21 including evidence that on Feb. 5 IDF troops blocked a food aid convoy and then fired on the trucks—not the drivers, but to destroy the trucks and scatter the food on the ground. This was an UNRWA convoy; but the World Food Program also reports attacks on its trucks.
The results of the intentional starvation by Netanyahu’s Israel are staggering. AP reported that “entry of aid trucks into the besieged territory has sharply declined by more than half the past two weeks, according to UN figures. Overwhelmed UN and relief workers said intake of trucks and distribution have been crippled by Israeli failure to ensure convoys’ safety amid its bombardment and ground offensive and by a breakdown in security, with hungry Palestinians frequently overwhelming trucks to take food.”
The WFP warned of a “precipitous slide into hunger and disease,” insisting that “people are already dying from hunger-related causes.” UNICEF official Ted Chaiban said in a statement that Gaza “is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths, which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza.”
